From Here & Back Again
By Jim Coufal
(Cazenovia, NY- May 2013) It’s so easy to call someone ‘stupid.’ It happens too often in the media today, including the pages of our own Madison County Courier. It is easier to make such an accusation in writing, at a distance and especially anonymously rather than face-to-face.
I just responded to an Internet comment on one of my earlier columns that ended, “You are ignorant.”
In another instance a commenter on Facebook said “All liberals are idiots.” If you are a frequenter of the Internet and look at responses to posts, you’ll find that the responses quickly lose sight of the substance of the original article and get onto the task of name-calling and degrading each other.
If you come in at the tag end of the responses, you would likely have a hard time figuring out what they are supposed to be responding to.
How sweet it is.
There are many problems with calling someone stupid. First, it usually says more about the one making the accusation than about the one being accused. If you are not ignorant, you can figure out what this means, but I will say calling someone stupid seems often to mean they have a different view than yours. It is used as a discussion-stopper, eliminating the need to provide any evidence about the accusation or the substance of the earlier writing.
There is also the question of just what the accuser means. My Merriam-Webster online dictionary gives seven definitions of stupid, ranging from vexatious or exasperating to slow of mind or obtuse, and including “lacking intelligence or reason.”
So what is meant when one is called stupid? My guess is that as it is commonly used, the accuser means the accused is lacking intelligence, slow of mind or to look at the list of synonyms he or she is brainless, half-witted, lame-brained, feebleminded.
“Ignorant” is not listed as a synonym, but as a “related” word. It means uninformed or ill-informed but is often used derogatorily.
Is “stupid” a word that is likely to enhance civil and reasoned discourse? I think not. Is it something that you would like to be called? I think not. Does it prove the superiority of the accuser? I think not!
We fault the politicians we elect for not carrying on reasoned debate while we ourselves offer ad hominem attacks.
Politicians make impossible assertions, use inappropriate words, twist meanings and use other tactics that do the same thing – words like stupid, unintelligent and idiot – they take the role of silencing the discussion.
Author Jason Stanley points out how difficult it is to engage in reasoned debate about tax cuts or the estate tax, but when they are called ‘tax relief’ and the ‘death tax,’ things change.
Words have power and negative words have negative power. They can change the political discourse, the act of legislature, the decision of a judge or jury and the psyche of an individual. We’ve all witnessed the impact of negative words on children, parents, employees and on friends.
Why do we think they can be bandied about carelessly in everyday conversation with having negative impacts? Because name-calling happens so regularly that the effects of such words becomes overlooked. The use of such words often dulls our sense of having engaged in a rational discussion.
As has been said, we are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.
Bill Moyers, respected journalist and author, has a website where he writes about our use of language. He looks for input, asking: What do you think? Has American political discourse become so toxic as to be counterproductive? Do you expect it to get better, stay the same, or become worse? How consistently is your own political expression tolerant, even-handed and fair? What are your ideas for restoring civility to America’s political discourse?
These are compelling questions we all need to be concerned with, but perhaps we need to start by asking such questions of our everyday discourse.
Jim Coufal of Cazenovia is a part-time philosopher and full-time observer of global trends. He can be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.