The Crazy Story

I wrote this essay in late 2015.  I refreshed it, and republished today.

This morning, I noted there's this news item out of New York City.  Being from Bama, I have this appreciation of New York City.

The City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is going to release a report where they indicate via research and polling efforts.....they've determined that one out of five New York City folks....are mentally "crazy", deranged, having psychological disorders, dippy, batty, moonstruck, or flaky.

So you do the math.....8.4 million folks living there, and you come to a minimum of 1.5 million who've got an issue.

The thing that bothers me about this is that New York is trying it's best to outdo Alabama for "crazies".  Everyone knows.....that Alabama has more crazies than any other state.  My humble guess is that for each three adults.....we maintain a 33-percent average....meaning one in three Alabama folks are plain crazy.

My brother would cite personal evidence from attending college in the state, conversations with co-workers, and noting personal observations from the local region......agreeing that it's pretty near a 33-percent craziness level.

The thing is about Alabama craziness......we have different categories.

We have NCAA-crazy....where 40,000 state residents are willing to break into a fist-fight if you insult their team or their level of play from last weekend's game.

We have satan-crazy....where 16,000 people are charged up on religion and believe satan might be a living character and possible the guy in front of them at the gas station.

We have engineer-crazy.....where a guy has a garage lab set up and spending $20,000 a year to develop a watermelon cannon that would fire rapid shots and up to six miles.

We have Republican-crazy.....where you keep saying Republican moral stuff, but cheat on the wife daily, have a same-sex liaison situation, gamble constantly, drink bourbon throughout the day, use meth, and voted for President Obama twice.

We have Democrat-crazy.....where you talk like a Democrat twenty hours out of the day, but you tend to freak people out by quoting Reagan constantly, and support the NRA.

We have meth-crazy.....where you do enough meth to marry some gal over the weekend but you can't remember who was or what she looked like.

We have people-who-are-touched-crazy.....who claim they worked for the CIA, knew Castro, and flew fighter jets in Vietnam.

We have other-people-who-are-touched-crazy....who say they saw Jesus over the weekend, and he convinced them to have a second wife, and burn down the house.

Generally, we don't say much when in the company of such crazies.....we try to respect them and give them as much freedom as possible.  They might be neighbors, friends, relatives, or fellow-church-members.  They might be psycho.....but friendly-psycho.

So, when you read this news item and get all worried about that many crazy folks in New York City....don't worry, the best they can do is number two, and Bama will forever have a majority of crazies around.  This is not a case where some fraudulent NCAA bowl committee can rearrange things and bypass us as number one.

Are People More Stupid Than They Used to Be?

Typically, this is a question that you'd ask at a Alabama bar-b-q and to be thrown out to several individuals who claim some rural-intellectual status.  Some will admit they attended some state university for six months before they discovered the instructor was actually a third-cousin of Einstein (so they claim).  Some might even say speak up that they know sixty different math equations that relate to some electrical charge but then admit they don't know much about some Chaucer-guy from English literature or how the Sun radiates the Earth.  And a handful through farming will claim enough common sense to make up for four Einstein-guys and their limitations.

There is some basic belief by brilliant people and journalists that we've surged ahead over the past fifty years and have lots of smart people around today.

Generally, ever since the mid 1980s....I've gone with the philosophy that being able to assemble information, determine values from the information, prioritize, and come to a basic summary which explains the best choice.....is the key point where you can grin and admit you are more smart than stupid.

The rest of this book-smart stuff?  Worthless.

I've sat through sixty odd university-related classes via University of Maryland, Louisiana Tech, two community colleges, and the Air Force.  I came to realize after reading a fairly deep summary of Greek tutors from over two thousand years ago....that education alone doesn't really do much.  You need to have some ability take that information and make use of it or rationalize the big picture.

In this way, my answer is that most people probably are more stupid today....than what existed decades ago.  Oh, they may have some certificate and claim to have finished such-and-such university....but beyond that....there's no comprehension.

The brighter crowd?  The engineer brings in the formulas and relates them to his work.  The scientist with an analytical view will be able to gauge what he sees and bring some solution to a problem.  The analyst with some respect for questions will ask enough until there's nothing left in front of him except an answer.

We live in a stimulating age....where kids are hauled off from high school to a university....pay down $10,000 to $30,000 a year and get some status in life of being smarter.  So far, no one much goes to challenge that behavior and we've developed this to a national stage....where kids graduate from such-and-such school....must be offered $80,000 a year for a master's degree but their measurement in wit or brightness would equal some Chinese seventh-grader.  It's bad enough now that we have headhunters, who only specialize in people in this position....helping to find idiots in companies, who will hire new fresh idiots out of graduate school.

The eventuality?  We probably will eventually produce enough stupid people to tell us that we need more smart people, but can't really identify the ways from which you'd produce such people.  That's when you know we've gotten pretty screwed up.