Stupid is as stupid does
Watching various threads with (distant) interest, which of the following sentences represents how you see yourself:
A'I have read Jung, Nietzsche, Descartes, therefore I am (rah rah rah)!'
B'I have read Jung, Nietzsche, Descartes - therefore I can read'
I'm definitely B. I don't need to rely on verbosity (get me!) as a means of showcasing whether or not I'm intelligent/academic/intellectual.
No right or wrong, and I don't care if you go off topic. This is a forum
I didn't particularly go anywhere, other than have to take a sharp left and get some websites of my own on the go. I lost earnings here like everyone else. Gotta pay the rent some other way now
Thanks all the same though.Mark I do believe that you've made me want to vomit. Well said otherwise
@ UW - that's the 'lol' of the day.
As for the books I used, insert any high-falootin' literature/author. Hume, Dante's Inferno, Dostoyevsky. The question relates to the fact that some people assume intelligence because they've read these or similar.
I can read music, I can play tunes by ear alone - but I can't write a musical score for toffee- Motown2Chitownposted 12 years ago
0I'd say I'm B too....at least I would certainly hope that how I appear to others, because that's how I appear to myself.
*nods*
Mark don't bother. I have a weak stomach. The silliest things make me hoof, it doesn't have to be soemthing I can see, just something I can imagine
None of the above. I don't subscribe to any particular philosophy, because each have partial truth and many have mystic inclinations, depending on when each came to being.
As for stupid is as stupid does, just matches my "SIM"- stupidity in motion.
Shades as always you can be relied on to inject some clarity into *any* thread. Top answer, I am thoroughly bamboozled, well done
@ WA - I don't actually do it anymore. I did it more when younger, as someone usually had an instrument lying around. I wasn't a genius at it, I could/can just hear the notes and 'replicate' them.
@ Haunty - I was raised on HG Wells, Shakespeare, a smattering of the philosophers, a huge dose of ancient history texts, poets such as Wilfred Owen and WB Yeats and a cacophony of music. I'm a mental car crash
chuckles as I remember the exact sentiments while reading such high minded verbosity. I think someone just missed having a bit of attention.
oh, and I would say B, two of my favorite quotes came to mind while wading through those threads,
"we're all bozos on the bus." Wavy Gravy
&
"show me a sane man and I'll cure him for you." Jung
&
if you don't like America, leave.
we say the same about Florida.
I'm guilty of my own brand of verbosity (I like to think of it "being enthusiastic" and "liking to share conversation"
In fact, I NEED to explain it away as that. 
). It has nothing to do with reading, not reading, all or part of anything any of those people ever wrote. (I'm sure it shows in a lot of the stuff I say too - but I'm not out share anyone else's ideas in conversation anyway. )huh? I don't understand the question. I guess there are two parts to it and we're supposed to say we are A or B? Hell - I haven't read none of that there philosophikal shyte, so does that make me n/a? never you mind, honey, I won't even try to keep up with y'all intellekshuls! I like it when you're funny though!
"People who have plenty of it don't usually talk about how much they have of either and don't need to prove anything to anyone. They spend their lives doing, talking about, and thinking about, more meaningful things."
Amen to thatCan I hear a "Hallelujah" from the choir?!
I'd do that "Hallelujah" for you, but since I was the one that said the thing about not needing to prove anything, I can't "hallelujah" my own words.
(Here comes some verbosity, so get ready to scroll if it's not your cup-of tea. ) :
In all seriousness (although this that I'm about to add is kind of funny - and yet not all that comfortable for me): Hours after I saw, and response to this thread, I realize that only hours before I posted a reply to someone looking for information, and it was, as mine often are, pretty verbose (nothing new for me; and although I'm often self-conscious about my tendency to be long-winded, I've always been secure in knowing that my motives are "pure"). What's sort of funny (but sort of making me feel uncomfortable, or whatever it is) is that, after years of almost never (maybe even never) referring to any reading I've ever done, it was in that thread that I actually went on and on about reading what kind of stuff when. It wouldn't have occurred to me that anyone would have misinterpreted the motives behind that post - until a few hours passed and "dawn broke on Marblehead".
Actually, I'm thinking of Steve Urkle (Family Matters) and how he'd say, "Did I do that???????" On the one hand, I don't take much of what goes on in the forums very seriously or care much who likes what that I do or don't do. On the other hand, I do care who thinks what in some ways if, by any chance, someone may 1) be factoring in something I did at all, and 2) be misinterpreting some "innocent thing" as something nastier than that.
So anyway, having rarely, but so recently, been guilty of mentioning reading in a thread, I guess I care enough about what people think of me to want to clarify why all that talk about reading happened. I'm not so self-centered or paranoid that I think this thread was aimed at me. In fact, with some other goings on recently, I thought I knew what/who it was aimed at. Then it occurred to me that it may have been aimed at nobody in particular, or maybe someone else AND me. In any case, I thought I'd address it on the "off chance" (or maybe even plain, old, chance) that my "contribution" on that thread was among those someone found objectionable.
Basically, I'm all about trying to promote peace and harmony when I detect something else. So anyway, in defense of that reading-reference post that I did so recently, here's what was behind it: (If I'm being paranoid or self-centered to wonder if my particular post was among those being criticized; of it looks like I'm trying to turn something that had nothing to do with me into something that's "all about me", please overlook it. If you were in my shoes (with that recent reading-post) you'd probably wonder the same things that I am.
In defense of that particular post (again, not that I'm assuming anyone has even read it, let alone is thinking about - because it was a pretty un-dramatic, uninteresting, thread without any fighting on it), the heavy-duty talk about reading that I did on that was my attempt to figure out a date that something someone else was looking for was written. It's something that a lot of people in my age range have probably seen several times in the course of their lifetime, and I pretty much saw the question asked in the thread as one like, "Does anyone remember what year the new Daryn showed up on Betwitched, and can does anyone know where I can find a copy of the third episode?"
So, I put on thinking cap and proceeded to think aloud (or at least on the post) in my attempt to come up with anything in my own life that might help me zero in on where and when it was I saw that piece of writing. I know that a lot of people on here are a lot younger than I am, so I was think a lot of them may not have ever run into that very common piece of writing the OP of the thread was looking for.
As for verbosity, I may as well throw in a few words to defend my own here, as long as I'm already probably making myself look like self-centered, paranoid, and obnoxiously verbose person:
I can't speak for other people, but I know where my own tendency to be long-winded comes from, and it has nothing to do with trying to get attention or prove anything. With me, one reason I tend to have a lot to say is just that I'm a verbal person. I value communication, and I've learned that not being thorough about ideas and, instead, saying too little often leaves people to fill in the blanks on points that weren't thorough enough.
When I was younger (say, thirty/twenty years younger) I didn't have a clue about how people will fill in blanks that are left in conversation. I've had thirty-something years of adult life to learn, little by little, to see how often, and in how many ways, people will read into what someone didn't say, rather than just take what he did say and maybe ask for further clarification if he had questions. People don't ask questions, though. They just see/hear what you say, make up whatever they want to make up about what you're implying, or what your motives are, and go away from the conversation, never really understanding what you really did mean or why it was you said whatever it was you said.
People (not all, only some) will often just write you off as not knowing what you're talking about, or as being stupid, because they don't ask questions in a conversation. They'll often just write you off and/or assume you're implying thing, or motivated by things, that are only a matter of what they're imagining.
In a forum, it doesn't really matter who understands what it is you are and are not saying or implying, or what your motivations are for saying it. In real life, it matters a real lot. I used to keep so many things to myself and think, "Nobody cares about what I'm thinking or doing. Nobody's interested." I really didn't imagine that anyone was thinking anything about me at all, because I don't have that kind of ego. It never occurred to me that while I was keeping my thoughts and activities to myself, some other people were filling in some blanks. As a result, things happened that meant I saw how lives, people, and relationships can be destroyed by something as stupid and simple as a communication problem.
I'm not playing victim here, because I'm a strong individual with healthy self-esteem; but after seeing for myself the kind of stuff that can happen by not realizing that while we're being quiet and minding our business, someone else can be imagining unflattering things about who or what we are, as people. Normally (and especially on the Internet), we don't have to worry about who misinterprets what. We just mind our business and let whoever thinks whatever they do, and not worry about it. In offline life, though, I saw how not explaining enough (even if people have no right to expect an explanation, or no right to have an opinion about what we do or don't do) can lead some people to create serious, serious, problems for us.
When we come to the Internet, we bring the "us" we are our "real", offline, life. If we're in the habit of doing something in offline life, there's a good chance we do the same kind of thing in Internet interactions. Twenty years ago, I was changed from someone who saw no real need to try to guess about what someone else might misinterpret or incorrectly infer.
I'm not looking for sympathy here, but I was shocked and shaken to the core to discover what can happen if a person just minds her business, does her thing, and assumes everybody else is minding theirs. Maybe other people have no right to be spinning their wheels over what I'm doing or thinking; but, for some reason, it appears some people aren't above over-stepping bounds in some relationships.
In any event, I decided back then that from then on I would make sure I clarified, explained, covered all the possible things anyone might construe from something I said, and generally aim to have where I'm coming from, and what I think, made good and clear to anyone I deal with (again, in "real"/offline life). Call it "damaged". Call it "wiser". Maybe it's just something a lot of us learn the longer we live.
The thing is, that over-talking, over-explaining, over-worried-about-being-misunderstood person I am in real life is the person who brings that way of operating to the Internet. Maybe it's not how everyone else operates, but people are different. Besides, this is a writing site, and the forums are for discussions. It's all about communicating information and ideas. Even if I'm just over-cautious because of some things that have happened in my life, I don't really think it's all that peculiar or out-of-place for a person who aims to communicate effectively to resort to the way she believes she can best do that.
I know I can't possibly be the only one who tends to get as wordy as I do. (I may be one of the ones who are old enough and sure enough of myself to be able to overcome self-consciousness about it and just be what I am.) There are people who just want attention, or who are trying to prove something (to strangers, to boot) with whatever they do on here; but in fairness to those who may be long-winded (and, granted, boring) for reasons that have nothing to do with ego or attention-getting or proving anything, sometimes a person is just naturally "high-energy chatters" and come to a writing site (or forum) out of the belief that others there are the same (or at least understand).
We're all different and have different ways of doing things. It'd be nice if, when people don't do things the we do, or don't post whatever it is we thought they ought to, we didn't assume they're stupid or uneducated or arrogant or whatever other negative thing they might be, and instead relax and give them the benefit of the doubt (unless they out-and-out say and do something nasty).
End of yet another display of verbosity. I'll go disappear for a few days and work on my own stuff for awhile (to make up for verbosity I just posted here ). Two verbose Hubs and a couple of verbose forum posts: Time to maintain a lower profile for another while.
UW I was about to answer Lisa's post with 'well awesome, nail on the head', and you beat me to it.
@ Mega the whole thing was just me trying to make sense of why some people assume intelligence just because they consider themselves well-read. I said earlier that I've read (some) HG Wells. It didn't leave me feeling 'dead clever', if anything I was kinda depressed
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