I thought I’d add a new component to Freud’s structural model of the psyche. That would be the Stupid. It sits apart from the Id in that it can be at play in both the conscious and the unconscious mind. Unlike the Id, the Stupid can be both subconscious and premeditated. It can slip out as an urgent flash from the lizard brain and fly past the ego into full view. Freud felt that the role of the ego was to mediate between the Id and reality. Sometimes, thoughts can overwhelm the mind’s layers of protection. The Stupid can display itself in its full regalia abruptly or after much rumination. It begins with a swirl of feelings that erupt into a kind of psychic solar flare that blasts out into the world for all to see. For a glorious moment it provides a pulse of gratification that seems “Oh, So Right”. But being the Stupid, it can promptly collapse under the weight of it’s own, well, stupidity, or it can float around out there and mingle with the thoughts of others for a long period of time. Even find it’s way into print for all eternity like this post.

Of course, the previous paragraph, while having an appealing ring to it, is total fiction.

My interest is in rehabilitating the word “stupid” in my own mind. I have always avoided using the word because I believed it was meant to accuse someone of being mentally deficient and therefore slanderous. It is widely felt that even if well founded, its use is rude. I had a midwestern Lutheran upbringing and so rude was something that you just don’t do.

I’ve been struggling to find a word that describes a person who harbors Republican evangelical, fascist or totalitarian fantasies, but who may appear and function normally. They seem to be everywhere. While I would like to include those who attempt a gibbering explanation of a libertarian utopia, I’m as yet undecided. A wave of the hand and dismissal with a bell curve argument isn’t enough. Is this cognitive elitism? Yeah, pretty much.

Mental deficiency is only one of several meanings of the word stupid. Google defines stupid as “having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense.” Excoriating someone for being mentally deficient or lacking in intelligence is mean spirited and is to be avoided in a civilized world.

The question of how common is common sense is a matter of debate. At its base, common sense would be a grasp or recognition of something that most would agree should be obvious to everyone. But, it seems to me that common sense is something that is learned over time and experience. You couldn’t just pop out of the womb and instinctively know that safety glasses should be worn when handling chemicals. People will vary widely in their inventory of common sense notions. Maybe common sense cannot be a universal package of instinct. Maybe the very idea of common sense rests on feet of clay. That it is just a rhetorical slight-of-hand used to make a hasty judgement and win the argument.

According to Wiktionary, stupid can also mean “exhibiting the quality of having been done by someone lacking in intelligence”. “Exhibiting the quality” is not the same as being fundamentally unintelligent, is it? It’s just the appearance of unintelligent. I think I’ll run with that.

I’ll have to come clean. I have shown a good deal of exhibiting the quality of stupidity in the past by my previous unfortunate choices. No, seriously, it is true. But that doesn’t disqualify me from recognizing it elsewhere. I know what I’m looking for.