Come forth into the Light of Things

The romantics had it right.
I tell myself this after a particularly frustrating day. Live like a noble savage far from the maddening crowd and let nature be your teacher. Transcend the disappointing ridicule and annoying irritation of the so called social order and communicate your thoughts to nature who welcomes ideas with a pleasant charm and inspires you and makes you see good in all God’s creatures and creations.
On a bad they I am absolutely confident that when the Good Lord banned man from paradise and cursed him to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow and told woman she would suffer childbirth, it seems He also bestowed upon them a secret embedded curse. This clandestine curse decrees that man should be gregarious in nature. It never ceases to amaze me how frustrating people can be and yet we yearn for company and an entourage of people. This is my only explanation for society. It is to punish us and help us remember and yearn for the good old days in heaven. Were I referring to an earlier period, I would say that being gregarious is our tragic flaw.
But now, let us get back to our topic: what is a bad day, you might ask? A headfirst encounter with arrogant stupidity is a major recipe for a bad day. Now you might ask what I mean by arrogant stupidity and how that might differ from headstrong stupidity and professional stupidity and simple stupidity. It is after many years of reflection, during those many hours in the arms of nature, that I have reached my satisfactory definitions.
Let me start at the beginning.
Simple stupidity is a natural and acceptable behaviour be it due to a lack of intelligence, or a sudden unusual reaction at a given time. If a person is innately born with a low IQ, then he cannot be blamed but rather his behaviour is supported and accepted by others because he can’t do anything about it. Also, when a person does something foolish during a brief absence of thought, it is simple stupidity and the intelligent and normal person can laugh at this stupidity if he hasn’t caused himself any major bodily or psychological injury.
Professional stupidity is a combination of arrogant and headstrong stupidity. This performance occurs on the professional level and not on the personal or emotional levels. The victims of such stupidity are not the professionally stupid people but those colleagues within the reach of such folly, unfortunately,
Headstrong stupidity is behaviour which occurs when a person is so stubborn he does not consider his next move, and thus behaves foolishly. It is a blind determination to develop in one direction and have people bend to his will. It is the inability to see more than one solution to a problem because this would require an effort. This behaviour involves all within reach of the behaviour although it does take time for the fool to recognise he is a victim of his own actions.
Arrogant behaviour of course takes place when a person is too full of himself, or herself and believes that he or she has the right answer. This folly is a form of contempt for others. This undesirable behaviour inevitably backfires and renders the doer the target of much sarcasm and scorn. The fool and his actions also serve as a good basis for jokes. However, when combined with headstrong stupidity, the active fool is rarely the victim.
This said, one must remember that there is a difference between stupidity and malice and one should not take for malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. The truth be spoken, even though stupidity is the root of most of the causes of my frustration, at the end of the day I cannot but feel sorry for those people.
Like the romantics I discover that perfection exists only in nature. Also, to exist among the maddening crowd, according to my nature, I need to accept certain truths as inevitable. Not everybody is stupid and there are lessons to be learnt even from the stupidest of arrogant, headstrong or simple fools.
Ironic, isn’t it, that a bad day should be just another lesson in life.