"Stupid" has become an epithet. We often call those who disagree with our point of view "stupid" as in "That stupid John Howard got us embroiled in Iraq."

I am using the word "stupid" as a neutral adjective. By "stupid" I mean someone who is, to borrow a phrase from my youth, "slow witted."

Political correctness aside, we have unequal endowments of mental capacity. Some people are simply unable to analyse situations and respond appropriately. Some of us, with the best will in the world, will never acquire skills that enable us to earn a decent income. Some of us are, to be blunt, stupid.

There was a time not too long ago when a strong back and a willing pair of hands was enough to enable you to earn a moderately comfortable living. In 21st Century Australia that is no longer the case. Unless you possess a certain mental agility it is not possible to provide for yourself or your family.

This is not something that can be wished away. It is a reality of 21st Century life.

If you are severely mentally impaired you are classified as disabled.

Should we consider someone who is mentally "slow" to be partially disabled and entitled to a PARTIAL disability pension?

Just a thought?

What constitutes "mentally impaired"?
I was a high scholastic achiever who earned admirable degrees of education.
I can write you a witty poem in perfect iambic pentameter very quickly after recieving your criteria.
Yet, if you give me road directions to find a place I will still get lost. Am I mentally impaired?

I think we need schools to teach people basic skills of being more able to handle their own affairs.
I do hear what you are saying and this is a good thread.
Abused women mostly need help because they were never allowed to make choices or be reasonsible for themselves

It is supposedly politically incorrect to suggest any form of special or separate education...all children are supposedly able to be catered for in the mainstream or 'normal' classroom. I suspect that this actually holds all children back from achieving more of their potential. It is a convenient, short term means of saving money in education - but we all pay for it later.
But, if stupidity is a disability then we must all qualify as disabled because we all do stupid things at times. All of us are also unable to do some things...I doubt Terry Tao could act as interpreter in seven different languages at the highest level. I have a friend who can but she would be struggling to understand maths at Terry's level. Does that make each of them, in their own way, disabled or stupid? Am I stupid because I cannot fly a Jumbo?
So, what do we mean by stupid?

Perhaps we should, but would it mean that most politicians would be entitled to a disability pension as well as their Parliamentary one?

Steven it is already happening.We have 700,000 people on DSP.Many long term unemployed dwell there.That is one of the reasons why we have such record unemployment.Over the years,they have simply been reclassified.

Come even goddess who seems to think I am impaired by a poor education can not surely think those we disagree with are always stupid?
Being for or against the Iraq war makes you stupid? you go too far.
I am then twice stupid and content to be so, I once thought mad evil Saddam and his sons a bigger threat than a lunatic American leader.
I still shudder at the thought of North Korea, a country held hostage by one man.
A nation educated not to be educated stupid, I must be silly as an old sock!
Strange how the left insult the west at will but ignore the dreadful things like that poor country .

Belly
Dont worry about Goddess. She thinks she walks on higher groud than the rest of us.
Must be the higher education- and if i were to guess it would be law.
Give me the bush and the real people any day.
By the way. Good Morning.
oowah! I nearly made a spelling error.
Thats a sin punishable by Goddess as she goes through OLO trying to be -little others.
There are many forms of stupid and many of disabilty.

I do not think I am stupid. But I have often acted stupidly. We all do.

We need to distinguish between a "non-stupid" person who sometimes (often?) behaves stupidly and a person who is intrinsically stupid.

Goddess,

None of us are proficient at everything. I would submit that anyone with sufficient mental agility to communicate on OLO is not stupid though many of us say and do stupid things here.

PALE,

improving schools may well help. But I think we need to face the fact that there are a proportion of people who will not be able to master marketable skills and will therefore never be able to earn a living wage in 21st century Australia.

Is Mise,

politicians, at least those in Parliament, have mastered a skill. It is the skill of politics. It enables them to earn a living. They would therefore not qualify for a partial disability pension on the grounds of stupidity.

Arjay,

I agree with you. My encounters with long term unemployed lead me to believe that a portion – not all – of them are not so much unemployed as unemployable. I think we need to stop pretending they are employable and remove them from the tally of the unemployed.

But what about those that are employed but in very low-paying occupations? Should they get a PARTIAL disability pension?

Belly,

My experience is that native intelligence can often overcome a lack of FORMAL education. I stress the word "formal" because anyone who is really smart – as opposed to "non-stupid" - understands that education continues forever and what you learn outside the classroom can be more important than what is taught inside.

Diagnosis of partial disability because of stupidity is difficult. IQ tests are at best a blunt instrument. With advances in functional MRI technology it MAY soon be possible to detect at least the slow-brained if not the slow-witted.

But disability is a slippery thing. Many years ago when handling disability claims in the insurance industry I learned that what may disable one man may be regarded by another as a minor ailment.

There is nothing wrong with being a Lawyer.
It is good as any profession such as a baker, a cab driver, a doctor or a handyman.
You cannot judge a person's character by their chosen profession.

Stupidity is a word that should never have been introduced to the English language, it has too many facets and often used in the wrong context, especially when used to degrade and used to judge anothers personality, level of inteligence, acts made through unthoughtfulness.

We often hear "that was stupid" or "what a stupid thing to do" when in fact the word stupid referres to the inability to apply ones own understanding of any particular subject or not quick enough for the person you are speaking to, you are then classed as stupid, meanwhile, all you are doing is giving your brain a little more time to decypher, thats all. Ever wondered why the "lights" turn on, only after an hour of ending a particular conversation with another person? Just because brains are apt to continually digest something we did two days ago, doesn't mean a person is stupid, it means some peoples beains are actually more active and alive than those who we think are clever, besides, some people are not as fortunate as others as in some cases where the parents are in a position to send their children for higher education. Stupidity can therfore not be treated as a disabiliy.

I agree with SPANKY the word while we think it is descriptive is one we should not use.
It is most often misused by those who also misuse their own EGO it is a fault some have that in talking to people they both over estimate their own worth and under estimate the opinion of those they debate.
It is worth noting such people quite often see others faults clearly even faults that do not exist.
But rarely hold them selves accountable for their own wrongs.

My wife says that a criticsm of others is often a criticsm of oneself.

After a bit of introspection, I have come to agree.

"Stupid" !!

I never said that!.

kartiya jim, Belly,

I am not using "stupid" in a critical sense anymore than I would use "blind" to criticise someone who had lost the use of their eyes.

Just as "blindness" became "vision impairment" we could dream up some politically correct phrase for "stupidity" such as "minimal mental impairment" (MMI?) or "minimal mental dysfunction syndrome" (MMDS?). But, in the end, we'd all know it meant "stupidity" so I prefer to use the plain English word.

But, I repeat, I am NOT using the word "stupid" in a pejorative sense anymore than I would use the "asthmatic" in that way. I am using it as a neutral adjective.

However, in deference to sentiment here I shall use MMDS from now on.

Spanky,

MMDS has NOTHING to do with lack of education. In South Africa I worked with a man, a refugee from Morocco, who had no formal education whatsoever Not even school. He taught himself to read at age 16.

This man went on to start his own business advising superannuation funds on investment strategy. He developed a computer system for modeling risk which, with updates, is still in use today.

I am talking about people who are UNABLE to benefit from education in the sense that they CANNOT master the skills needed to earn a wage that keeps body and soul together.

So, to rephrase my question.

Should we recognize that there are people who, by virtue of mental slowness, MMDS, stupidity, call it what you like, are UNABLE to master the skills needed to earn a reasonable living in 21st Century Australia? While such people MAY be able to function in some minimum wage jobs, they are in a real sense, partially disabled.

Should such people be given a partial disability pension?

Consider this.

A paraplegic confined to a wheelchair would be considered disabled.

But who is better able to earn a living in 21st Century Australia:

-A competent computer programmer confined to a wheelchair?

-Or a person who is mentally slow?

I think we need to revise our definition of what constitutes disability?

Steven, I think you have a good point. In pushing for a "brainier country" we will leave behind all those who are unable to keep up mentally. This is not to insult them at all, simply to state a fact. At the moment, not all labouring jobs are low paid, but we are looking at a future where that may not be the case. What will happen to all the mine workers when the resources boom crashes? And they are probably the higher thinkers of the labouring class. Many other labourers are paid only basic wages now. What happens when the boom ends and there is a flood into tis labour market? I have a personal interest in this, as have a sister who is a truck driver for a mine in WA. She is great at her job, good spatially, but dyslexic and not at all suited to a desk/office job. She currently earns great money (better than either of her two siblings, who are both professionals), but I dont see it as a long-term prospect given the nature of the industry.

Stevenlmeyer,
I never said education had anything to do with stupidity,I meant the level of education is misconstrude as a reason for stupidity, now who's stupid?

Stevenlmeyer,
Interesting concept;but how would you test for this "condition"?

“Stupid is, as stupid does.” Perhaps this is the wrong sentiment for this discussion, but in my defence, an objective method for determining stupidity based on the actions of an individual would need to be established prior to any policy being established that would classify stupidity as a disability. Furthermore, the difference between Intelligence (the ability to learn, solve problems etc) and how smart or stupid an individual is (knowledge retained and applied), would also need to be taken into consideration. Also there is a substantial difference between ‘concrete’ learning (tangible repeatable things) and ‘abstract’ learning (large intangible concepts) and many people have problems moving between these two areas.

The premise that a disability pension would need to be given to truly stupid individual is also fundamentally flawed, in that often the market requirements for basic skills over pays these people because they have a greater demand then there is for the jobs all the smart people want to do. Not trying to insult any particular industry, but people should know what I am referring to.

Personally, I am a high school drop out (ie left half way through year 11 - with good grades), now I have started Uni and have a Dist. (6.0) GPA. Which I think is a decent result, but this is not said to brag, I have allot of trouble remembering concrete things, numbers, dates, names and I have a lot of trouble spelling. If I was not born into the information era, there would be no way I could ever hand write a pass grade university essay. My ‘smartness’ in abstract leaning would be over looked because of my concrete ‘stupidity’. Hmm, hang on, why am I arguing? Just send me the pension.

Mark

Life is like a box of choclitts...................what yere gonna get.

Stevenlmeyer,
Personally I believe those voracious individuals that consume huge amounts of material goods, ie. waste the world's finite resources, have a Decided disability and are stupid .

They need to be put on a pension for a while while they are helped to contemplate their place in the future of the planet .

Spanky,

In diagnosing stupidity, distinguishing between a lack of education and inherent mental impairment is probably the easy part.

Mark2685,

Forest Gump presented a romantic picture of stupidity. The reality is much grimmer. It is minimum wage jobs punctuated by periods of unemployment. Alcoholism, general substance abuse, petty crime and periodic bouts of imprisonment are often part of the picture.

I am not saying that most stupid people are petty criminals. But a visit to a prison should convince you that many petty criminal are simply people who are unable to cope with 21st century life.

BTW Mark2685, my handwriting is illegible even to me.

You do not fall into my definition of stupid.

kartiya jim,

"voracious individuals that consume huge amounts of material goods" may be behaving in ways that you consider stupid. But they are not inherently stupid people. If they were they would probably not have the wherewithal to "consume huge amounts of material goods."

There are easier ways if curbing conspicuous consumption than to put the consumers on a pension.

Mark2685 again,

Agreed that diagnosis is the hard part. We face similar problems today when assessing the claims of people who claim to be mentally impaired as a result of an accident.

I think however the development of functional MRI technology will one day enable us to "see" which brains are mal-performing. However I suspect that diagnosis of INHERENT stupidity will always be difficult.

Country gal

You are distorting what I've said.

Of course diagnosis will always be a problem as this story shows:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/20/1983881.htm

I would have thought that this Frenchman should qualify for a partial disability pension on the grounds of stupidity.

However, most people with that much fluid in their brains are not able to function in society. This guy, lucky for him, is a fluke.

I always thought it would be a good idea to have THICK tattooed on your head when you are a bit slow on the uptake. It would save people a lot of time and trouble in dealing with you because they would know straight away. There are days when I should have had it tatooed on my own forehead and I felt sorry for the people I confused.

Then again I have days when my brain seems to be extremely perceptive.

Maybe its because of what I ate for breakfast.

Carefull Sharkfin ,
These days many of smarties of the "dodgy Knee Club" start their breakfast with a bit of Shark cartledge on their corn flakes .

As we age we all sometimes think we are getting a bit thick maybe we are but I place no value in the thought some are stupid.
Oh OK one poster who shows more than average symptoms gets my vote.
Good luck in Charlton Stu.

Stevenlmeyer,
My apologiese, I was not aware that a persons mental stability, education or plain awareness of everyday life was based on quotes from the good book. I was just wondering if your vocabulary derived from same? Surely as and if, a man of the cloth, you cannot be so naive as to base your life on the writings made over 2000 years ago, surely not in this day and age. Don't forget, in those days, an educated person was a person who had travelled no further than the next mountain top, so to speak, and could not wait to return to relate his travels to his people.
Think on this as todays technology and human mentality, find it quite difficult to live a life as one did in the days of the good book.

If you are going to give people disability beneifts for being stupid, why not tax people for being smart?

What other human qualities can we rate as disabilities? What about ugliness? Shortness? Gender? Moodiness? Stinkyness? etc.

Sure these examples sound a little silly, but each of them in one way or another is, or in some circumstances at least, a disabling condition.

Take the first example. People are without a doubt, prejudiced against ugly people. Being ugly reduces your social opportunities, impairs your prospects in job interviews and for promotion, reduces your confidence and worst of all, limits your chances of getting laid. All of which is no fault of your own. Shouldn't we legislate, against such discrimination just as we have for gender and racial discrimination. Aren't ugly people entitled to be treated equally also? Shouldn't they be entitled to some partial disability pension to make up for lost opportunities that arise through the unjust social prejudice they suffer.

Just how far should we go trying to right the 'wrong's' of nature. Life isn't fair. Some of us are stupid, some of us are ugly, some of black, some of us are short, slow, strong. All of us are of one gender or another. All of these things are natural disadvantages in certain circumstances. How far should we go to 'fix' these inequities in order to make a fairer world?

Kahlin,
No need to "fix" them ,Better to accept them .

The smart Good Lord was quite happy to put a couple of everything,smart or smelly , on the Ark .

Kalin1,

In fact we do tax people for being smart. Smart people tend to have higher incomes than stupid people and we tax them accordingly.

I take your point though. There are many characteristics that impede people. Perhaps if I were not a bald ugly I would be richer. So should ugliness or baldness be treated as a disability? Where do we stop?

Nonetheless I think there is a reason for singling out stupidity in 21st Century Australia. People with even average smarts can mitigate the effects of ugliness or unattractive bodily features. People who are inherently stupid are generally unable to do so.

In fact the tragedy of inherent stupidity is that it magnifies the effects of other disadvantages.

I want to stress again that I am talking about inherent stupidity, slow-wittedness if you like. I am not proposing to pay a disability pension to smart people doing stupid things.

Stevenlmyer,
Perhaps, instead of taxing smart people doing smart things, we should tax the smart people doing stupid things.

These taxes to pay for the pensions of stupid people doing stupid things .

LOL kartiya jim,

The problem with that is that after a smart person has done something stupid he or she generally does not have the wherewithal to pay any additional taxes.

Stevenlmyer.
Ok ,Let's let's give them a boost and bring their income up to the average weekly wage; and then perhaps we might need to bring in a smart person to manage a large chunk of their new income to make sure their smart offspring weren't disadvantaged down the track by their parents lack of abilities.

I am sure even your stupid people would like that .

We might reflect on the fact that smart people's extra money doesn't seem to make them particularly happy .

At present Australians are more stressed than ever.

Are many of us getting more "stupid" ?

I suspect so .