stupid is forever — a claim i would like to test

ron white said you cannot fix stupid. he sells shirts that say so. respectfully, i learned this year that a metal fork does not belong in a heating chamber, and last year that a yoga mat under a couch becomes geological. forever is a long time. i have evidence of revision. submitted humbly.

desk on a thursday. it is 9:47am — yes, the afternoon, i overslept the morning’s window. carla is in a budget meeting on the third floor that is, by all reports, running long. that is, today, in my favour.

so. stupid is forever. the phrase is on shirts, on coffee mugs, on bumper stickers, on the inside of greeting cards that arrive on birthdays from people who do not know what to write. the phrase has, over time, accumulated the kind of wisdom-weight that shirt-phrases accumulate when nobody has, formally, contested them. i would, today, like to formally contest. i bring evidence. the evidence has a serial number. the evidence had, briefly, a shock.

stupid is forever: a folksy claim, popularised by a comedian and amplified by merchandise, that says foolishness is a permanent condition rather than a correctable behaviour. the claim sells well because it absolves the speaker of the obligation to try. it is, on inspection, not borne out by the data. the data is, in this case, my own kitchen.

FOREVER. IS. A. LONG. TIME.

that is the thesis. forever is a long time. people use the word forever the way people use the word stupid — casually, confidently, without checking. those are not the same word. one of them refuses to be measured. the other one is, in fact, technically measurable. neither, on inspection, deserves the casualness.

where the phrase came from, briefly

the phrase is associated with a comedian who has, by my read, also said many other useful things. that is fine. comedians, like the rest of us, deploy phrases that work in a room and then survive in print, where the room is missing. in the room, the phrase landed. in print, the phrase performs the work of a doctrine. the doctrine has, since it landed, been doing several jobs at once.

job one: it gets a laugh. job two: it lets the audience feel briefly superior to a category they do not, themselves, formally belong to. job three: it sells a shirt. those are honest jobs. i am not against the jobs. i am, however, against the migration of the phrase from the room to the doctrine. the migration is what loses the joke and keeps the verdict. the verdict is the part that survives. the verdict is the part i would, today, like to contest.

i hold, in passing, a related take that i have been refining for some time and now formally introduce: ironing is class war — a i refuse to fight. that one is not relevant. that one is just on the chart. moving on.

the evidence of revision, item by item

this year i learned that a metal fork does not belong in a heating chamber. that is the headline. i learned this in approximately one second, in a flash, in a kitchen i would prefer not to describe in detail. the lesson, on inspection, took. i have not repeated it. i could, in theory, repeat it. i have not. that is, technically, evidence of revision. that is, technically, not forever.

last year i learned that a yoga mat, left under a couch, undergoes a slow geological process. the colour shifts. the texture, by report, changes. the mat is, on inspection, no longer the mat that was purchased. that lesson also took. i have not, since, purchased a fourth yoga mat. the third remains, under the couch, an exhibit. an exhibit is not stupid. an exhibit is curated.

two years ago i learned that a standing desk is, for me, a sitting desk. the lesson took. i have, since, not purchased a second standing desk. i have, instead, integrated the existing one into a posture i can, in fact, sustain. that is also revision. revision is the antonym of forever. revision is, in fact, the entire substance of what is wrong with the phrase.

the chart that disproves the claim

my friend dave keeps a chart. the chart, by his report, tracks my behaviour over time. dave’s chart is, by his account, mostly an upward slope of repeat events. dave is, on this front, a rigorous keeper of records. dave is also, on this front, the person who would have the strongest evidence for the stupid is forever position. and yet — and this is the part i find clarifying — even dave, on closer reading of his own chart, will concede that some events have, in fact, dropped off the chart. the fork, for instance. the fork has not been re-added since the first entry. dave keeps the chart honest. dave’s chart is, technically, also evidence of revision.

this is not the same as becoming a different person. i am not a different person. i am, on most measurable axes, the same person who, a few years ago, bought the standing desk. but the fork is not on the chart anymore. that one event has, formally, retired. that retirement is, on inspection, not consistent with the claim that stupid is forever. that retirement is, on inspection, consistent with the claim that stupid is sometimes. those are different doctrines. one of them does not, on a coffee mug, look as good.

what the phrase is really doing, on inspection

the phrase is, in my view, performing two functions. one: it provides comfort to the speaker, who is asserting, by deployment, that they are not the category. two: it absolves the listener of the obligation to revise. if the category is permanent, the listener does not have to update their view of any specific person assigned to it. that is, in everyday terms, a tax shelter for opinions. you do not have to revise. you have, by ratifying the doctrine, paid less in cognitive tax this year.

and yet — and i keep returning to this — people do revise. all the time. people who said one thing in 2016 say a different thing in 2024. people who bought one yoga mat in 2018 and stored it the wrong way bought a second yoga mat in 2020 and stored that one differently. revision happens. it is the substance of being alive in a building with a kitchen and a couch. denying revision is, on inspection, the more interesting tell. people who insist on permanence are, frequently, performing it.

this is also where the phrase overlaps with the older inverted construction i have looked at elsewhere. both phrases collapse the act and the actor into a permanent unit. neither one allows for the small, undignified, ordinary process by which an actor learns one thing on a wednesday and then, from that wednesday on, does not do that thing. that process is, in plain terms, what people are. the phrase, on inspection, refuses to acknowledge it.

the comedian’s case, briefly granted

i should, in fairness, grant the comedian’s strongest version. there are people who do, in fact, repeat the same kind of error in defiance of all available correction. those people exist. they are real. the comedian is not inventing a category. the category is observable in any office on any wednesday. fine. granted.

but the move from some people are like this to stupid is forever is the move from observation to doctrine. observations are useful. doctrines are merchandise. when the doctrine starts selling shirts, the observation has, in commercial terms, been monetised. the shirt is fine. the shirt is, in fact, very funny. the shirt does not, on inspection, prove the claim.

the longer chart, in which i appear to be improving, slowly

i would like, briefly, to introduce a longer chart. dave’s chart is short. dave’s chart goes back about eleven years. my own internal chart goes back further. on the longer chart, certain entries from my early twenties have, over a long arc, dropped off entirely. i no longer leave the apartment without keys. i no longer microwave foil. i no longer attend events that start at 9 pm on a wednesday. those are, by any honest read, revisions. they are, by definition, evidence that stupid is forever is, on the data, false in my specific case.

now, dave, in defence of his shorter chart, would point out that new entries have replaced the old ones. that is also true. the standing desk replaced the bicycle, in some metaphysical sense. the third yoga mat replaced the second. the seventh microwave is, by all reports, on its way out, with an eighth in the post. the chart has, on net, the same number of entries. the entries are, on inspection, different. the platform is renewing. the user is revising. the doctrine is, in plain terms, not borne out by the platform’s behaviour.

i hold one further hot take here that connects: ironing is a war i class refuse to fight. wait. i used that one already. i hold it twice, then. that’s how strong it is.

verdict — submitted humbly, with footnotes

the budget meeting is, on the audio drift through the hallway, still going. carla has not, by my read, returned to her desk. i have, perhaps, fifteen more minutes of unsupervised research time.

i should, in honesty, note one final thing. there are, on dave’s chart, entries that have not yet retired. the chart still has the unopened mail pile. the chart still has the standing desk, sat at. the chart still has the seventh microwave, smelling faintly of electrical regret. those, on inspection, may, in fact, be forever. on those, the comedian gets a partial concession. but only those. and only because i have not yet got around to revising them. that is, on inspection, the work of next year. or the year after.

this also connects to the older idea, on a slower track, of what it actually means to be a fool in the older noble sense, which is a category i find, on inspection, much more flattering than this one. the fool is in motion. the fool is, on inspection, mid-revision. the comedian’s category is, by contrast, in stasis. those are not the same person.

stefan, the wine guy at every party, would object to the framing.

↑