Confident Dumbness is the Real Problem

This one is going to be a short rant. These days, I have become extremely irritable. But not at normal stuff, at people. Otherwise, I am a very peaceful person. And that too, only if you do or say something that just triggers me or rubs me the wrong way. I had never been this angry at people. Probably because I was too numb to their dumbness. Common sense really has become a rare commodity these days. That doesn't mean I am a perfect being; I do dumb shit all the time. But the difference is the levels. Relative to other people, I would definitely consider myself someone who has extreme common sense. I might be dumb to people who have extreme common sense as their baseline. The second difference is that when I do dumb shit, I am pretty much aware of it. And if someone tells me that was dumb, I agree and move on because my mind has already said it inside: "Bruh, that was pretty dumb." The person just validates it by saying it out loud.

I think social media, reduced reading, lack of curiosity for knowledge, impatience, and lack of critical thinking are things that contribute to this dumbness. But common sense, I believe, takes one extra ingredient: drag, the will to make things efficient. Just like there is a spirit animal, I have a spirit anime character from Naruto, Shikamaru. I identify as an embodiment of Shikamaru. Shikamaru had too much drag; he found everything too inefficient. He always had this feeling that if these guys had just applied a little thinking and calmness, there would have been no war. I might not be doing the story justice, but he always pushed for applying common sense before jumping into anything.

See, dumbness with confidence makes you arrogant. I spent the last two days with two such people. By the end of the second day, I was searching for common sense, reduced ego, and smart shit. So I went to my friend's place, talked with him for like 30 minutes, and I was back to normal. Why? Because my friend is one of those people who has even higher common sense than I.

My anger goes up not when someone says something dumb, but when they don't acknowledge it, refuse to accept it, or are too confident in what they said and won't back down. In that moment, I feel like taking a shotgun and blowing them up, Terminator style.

And here's where it sits. The issue isn't the dumbness itself. Dumbness is human. We all have blind spots, we all miss things, we all say shit that doesn't make sense sometimes. That's fine. That's normal. What's not fine is when dumbness comes wrapped in confidence like it's some kind of armour.

Everyone's in a rush to have an opinion before they've even thought through it. And when someone calls them out on it, they just dig in. They defend their position not because they've reasoned through it, but because admitting they were wrong feels like losing. That's where my trigger lives, in that space between dumbness and refusal to think.

Shikamaru would have had a field day with this. He understood efficiency, that most problems collapse the moment you actually think about them. But people don't want to think. They want to be right. They want to win the argument. So they stay confident in their bullshit.

The guy who says "I'm not sure, but here's what I think" and then listens when you point out a flaw? I can work with that. That's someone with actual sense, actual drag pulling them toward something better. The person who says "This is how it is" with zero investigation and won't budge? That's when the terminator instinct kicks in.

Here's what I want: Be dumb if you're going to be dumb. We all are sometimes. But have the decency to be humble about it. When someone tells you that doesn't work, or that the logic is flawed, or that you missed something, ask them questions. Actually engage. Try to understand. Let your ego take a backseat and let your mind do the work. That's critical thinking. That's the ingredient Shikamaru had that most people lack: the willingness to stop, think, and adjust.

The world doesn't need fewer dumb people. It needs fewer confident dumb people.