This is not a question. It is the start of an answer. Simply a statement of the obvious made to reach beyond ‘what is the matter with us.’

The reason that we cannot easily overcome those things which make us stupid is that they are all qualities which might serve as well to make us happier, better, smarter, or more able. Importantly, they seldom involve rational choices. In some cases, never. They are all emotional in nature. They are the aspects of our individual being which combine to make us both unique and typically human. They are the source of everything we think of as good, and everything we believe to be bad.

Love

Hate

Faith

Fear

Patience

Sentiment

Candor

 

By definition then, overcoming a failure in any one of these aspects of our character is problematic–ambiguous, debatable, uncertain.

Which quality is most important would also be arguable. Love does not conquer all and its ability to blind us to serious questions about the character of the person or object to which we have given our hearts is the prime suspect of literature through the ages. Perhaps it deserves top billing for that reason alone–that and the simple fact that a life without love would be sterile and without value, making all other matters unimportant.

Hate might be argued as a negative alone–but it is clearly the sure and powerful shorthand to knowing what will hurt our lives or kill us. Like love, to which it is so closely attached, it is unreasoned. It impels us. It guards us. It separates us. And it is an emotional state that can be ruinous or quickly and crucially motivate us to save what we hold dear.

It can be argued that what we love and what we hate are both made possible by what we have come to believe. Our faiths. I do not include philosophy within this category more rightly composed of religion and politics because I cannot imagine a contemplation of the meaning and value of life, by itself, as a negative. I cannot remember any philosopher hurting another human being, though philosophers have themselves been punished and murdered for their ideas, and I suspect that any example offered would more likely be a case of one or more failing in another aspect of their lives. More important then, for practical reasons, is the modern replacement of religion by various political faiths. These political religions are, like sharia, overt attempts to guide us, mold us, and to determine our judgment in every aspect of our lives. That they are religions is clear by their absolutism, their need for unquestioned obedience, and their unwillingness to offer empirical evidence for their claims.

Fear is the most common guide to our everyday lives. Simply, we often don’t do things because we fear the consequences. And just as clearly, this can be a good thing for our survival, and a bad thing for our greater experience of life itself.

Patience is the quality that makes almost anything possible, yet carried on too long can stop anything from happening. The constancy of love is endearing and awesome to witness, while the lack of diligence can make learning impossible. A lack of patience–impatience–might appear to be a small matter in this context, but in fact it is both of greater harm and good. It can drive us forward to seek answers. It can make us act when we are unprepared.

Sentiment might appear, at first study, to be more of a modern killer. When before in history have we ever been so wealthy as to allow for preserving the past for its own sake? But why should the past take precedence over the present or the future? Collecting is more than a hobby for some. It is an occupation and obsession. This is an emotion that saves our heritage. And this weakness buries us in the junkyard of our hoardings. Sentiment keeps us in places which can no longer benefit us or anyone else. It hides the decay in our relationships.

Candor is the sword with two edges. Truth and honesty are its virtues. Respect is its victim. Lying is rarely necessary to maintain sincerity, but telling the whole truth is seldom necessary or even possible. The idea that we might speak the truth at every turn assumes that we know what the truth is, and then that we have the talent to express it clearly. Many things are better left unsaid. Many things must be spoken.

We live our lives from moment to moment each day with all these emotions. We cannot rationally analyze our every move. Thus we depend on these emotions to carry us through. Too obviously, educating ourselves to be aware of them while shaping them by better understanding can save us. Lacking such self-awareness will always result in misery.

Ernest Hemingway, a man of profound and lifelong unhappiness, a poor husband, bad father, and unfaithful friend, who, despite acclaim, wealth, and a Nobel prize, spent the last years of his life in a state of paranoia, finally placing the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger, famously said, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” It is by just such ‘wisdom’ that we make ourselves stupid. Hemingway, a great writer none-the-less, made many such comments and most should be equally ignored. He is a fine example of a man who did not understand himself or enough of the world around him–but in his favor, he wanted to know, he sought answers, and his prodigious talent made the quest more interesting for the rest of us.

In this age of blatant stupidity (and at least for the foreseeable future), it would not be fatuous to place Love and Hate amongst such concrete items as Television and Booze. Because of the widespread use of drugs and computers, for example, we have transformed our daily lives in substantial and crucial ways. Far more time is spent by some on texting than sex. Drugs and alcohol have destroyed first the judgment and then the lives of too many to be contested. But the use and abuse of technology and drugs, like the abuse of food, is more the result of a weakness in one or more fundamental quality of our character. We should not blame the car for the accident. The fault, as someone once said, is in ourselves.

 

 

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