stupid does as stupid is — a phrase i’d like to deconstruct

forrest gump’s mama said it. people quote her like she filed a paper. the line is circular and i can prove it. if stupid is what stupid does, and stupid does what stupid is, we are stuck inside a loop with no exit. i have been inside loops. i recognize one when i hear it.

posted at the desk. carla is downstairs in the budget meeting — the one nobody volunteers for. i have until ten-thirty, give or take.

the phrase is “stupid is as stupid does”, often said with a small nod, often said by someone who is not, themselves, currently doing anything. i have heard it deployed at me, around me, and once over my shoulder in a supermarket queue. it is one of those sentences that sounds like wisdom because of the rhythm. say anything in that meter and people will nod. it’s not the content. it’s the cadence.

stupid is as stupid does: a phrase popularised by a 1994 film, used today as a kind of folk verdict — “you are what you do”. the trouble is the sentence is structurally circular: it defines stupid by its own behaviour, which is the same as defining “wet” as “what wet things are”. it sounds final, but it answers nothing. and yes, i looked into it, on a tuesday morning, from a desk that is technically not mine for this purpose.

CIRCULAR. SENTENCES. ARE. NOT. WISDOM.

that needs to go on the record. i have been collecting circular sentences for a while, in a small mental file, and this one is the most popular of the lot. it gets quoted on coffee mugs. it gets quoted on the sides of pickup trucks. it gets quoted, occasionally, by people who think they are quoting a philosopher when they are, in fact, quoting a man on a bench in alabama.

where the phrase comes from — forrest gump, allegedly

the phrase, as far as i have been able to determine without leaving this desk, comes most famously from the 1994 film “forrest gump”, in which the title character says “stupid is as stupid does”, or some close cousin of it, with the calm conviction of a man who has already, by that point in the film, run across an entire country. the film said it. the audience accepted it. the phrase escaped the cinema and has not been caught since.

i should say, before i continue: i am not coming for the film. the film is fine. the film has a feather. the film has a bench. i have nothing against the film. what i am coming for is the way the phrase has been treated, in the thirty years since, as if it were lifted from a serious philosophy, when in fact it was lifted from a man on a bench. these are different things. one of them, at minimum, ate chocolates throughout. mondays are objectively worse than fridays — i quoted that hot take in a different post and i stand by it; this one is similar in spirit.

and yet the phrase has been carried, like a small flag, into millions of conversations where it does not, on inspection, do any actual work. people say it the way people say “it is what it is” — as a way of closing a conversation that has nowhere left to go. that is, by the way, the function of most folk wisdom: to end conversations gracefully. it is not, despite the packaging, an instrument of thought.

why it’s circular and unhelpful

let’s actually look at the sentence. stupid is as stupid does. what is being said? it is saying: stupid is defined by what stupid does. the problem is right there, in the sentence’s bones. the word stupid appears on both sides of the equation. the predicate uses the subject as a definition. you cannot define a word using itself. you can only sound like you have.

compare it to a phrase that actually does work. “actions speak louder than words” — that’s not circular. that has two distinct things being compared: actions and words. you can disagree with the comparison, but you can at least find one. stupid is as stupid does has no comparison. it has stupid, and then more stupid. it is one term repeated until you stop asking.

this is not a small complaint. circular phrases are how we excuse ourselves from thinking. they sound like answers. they feel like answers. they have the shape of an answer. they are not an answer. they are a verbal stop sign at the end of a road that didn’t, before then, look like it was ending.

what would be a better formulation

i would, if asked, replace the phrase. i was not asked. i am, however, at this desk, and the budget meeting is not yet over, and the algorithm of language correction has, in this case, decided that i am the correction. so here is my proposed amendment.

option one: “stupid is as stupid is rewarded”. this version actually says something. it locates the cause of repeat behaviour outside of the doer. it admits that what gets called stupid is, in many cases, simply what got rewarded. the man who keeps doing the same thing is doing it because, on a tuesday in 2017, somebody clapped. amend the rewards, amend the behaviour. the original phrase has no amendment available, because it has no causation in it at all.

option two: “stupid is as stupid is allowed”. similar logic. behaviour persists where there is permission, structural or social. a phrase that locates stupidity inside the structure that lets it continue is more honest than one that locates it inside the person doing the thing. it is also, i note, less satisfying — and that is, in my view, why it loses to the original. people prefer phrases that blame individuals. it’s quicker.

option three, and this is the one i actually believe: “stupid is what we don’t yet have a smaller word for”. this admits the truth. stupid is, in current usage, an umbrella term that covers a half-dozen distinct phenomena — haste, ignorance, distraction, conviction, fatigue, and on bad days, hope. give each of those its own word and the umbrella collapses. you don’t need stupid if you have tired-on-a-tuesday. but tired-on-a-tuesday doesn’t fit on a coffee mug. so we keep stupid. i have, in fact, written a longer post on the word stupid by itself, on a different morning, at the same desk, against the same advice.

examples of the phrase being misused, mostly at me

i have been the recipient of stupid is as stupid does more times than i have, frankly, the energy to count. but here are three that stand out, because they illustrate exactly the wrong thing the phrase tends to do.

misuse one. i was at a hardware store, buying a single hook for a single coat. the man behind me said, mostly to himself, “stupid is as stupid does”, because i was, apparently, blocking the aisle. i was not blocking the aisle. i was standing in the aisle, which is what aisles are for. the phrase, in his mouth, was a verdict on a non-event. i had not done a stupid thing. i had simply existed, slightly, in his line of sight.

misuse two. a productivity expert online, whose tweets i continue to read for reasons i don’t fully understand, posted the phrase under a screenshot of someone’s work-in-progress list from 2022. the implication was that the person had not finished their list and was therefore, by the phrase’s logic, stupid. i looked at my own work-in-progress list from 2022. i still have it. it is on a sticky note attached to the side of this monitor. it has, on it, things like “renew passport”, which i did not do, and “open the bank app”, which i continue to not do. by the productivity bro’s reading, i am stupid. by my own reading, i am simply a man with a list. the list is fine. the list is not the problem. the productivity bro is the problem. the productivity bro should not be allowed near a phrase he doesn’t understand.

misuse three. i once, at 2am, in a parked car outside an apartment block whose lights i was watching go out one by one, said the phrase to myself. i said it about myself. i said it as a verdict. that was, at the time, the worst use of the phrase i have personally been responsible for. i was not stupid. i was tired. i was sad. i was, in retrospect, dehydrated. the phrase did none of the work that tired, sad, dehydrated would have done. it took a complicated 2am feeling and replaced it with a flat label. i should not have done it. i did, however, drive home shortly after, which suggests the phrase, while wrong, is not fatal.

verdict — i’d amend it, on a tuesday morning, from this desk

carla strolled past. minimized. she didn’t pause. that usually means we’re clear.

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