The Joy of Being Stupid
Todd Hayen
Yesterday I was engaged in my typical morning routine. Scanning the internet for interesting stories to read and news to soak in. Reading a few things here and there and watching a couple of videos. I settled in after a bit of this to write an article for my Substack “Shrew Views.”
The topic is unimportant—typically something to do with something that caught my fancy during my news scanning, or something someone said to me yesterday about whatever, all mixed in with my learned and experienced knowledge of archetypal psychology. Nothing earth-shattering, mind you, but hopefully an insight some people might find interesting, resonating with their own observations, maybe a bit funny, insightful, whatever. Who really cares.
I consider myself and my ideas interesting. Sometimes informative, sometimes insightful, and nearly always consciously honest and authentic. Not always “right,” mind you, that isn’t possible, of course, but always intended to be truthful. To be honest with you, I don’t really know why I write—at least I don’t know why I write publicly.
I just started doing it during the beginnings of the Covid koo-koo-fest, and it seemed a handful of people enjoyed (is that the right word?) what I was writing, so I kept doing it. I have written well over 500 articles as of today, and don’t plan to stop, although at times I have seriously considered it.
I am not a particularly smart guy (as I am sure many of you would agree). And at times I believe I am quite stupid. But I do think my heart is in the right place. And I do believe that counts for something. To say it again, I am not very smart—certainly not compared to so many people I have run across in this weird journey since 2020.
I am again and again blown away by the people out there who are chock full of pertinent information—many of them seem to know nearly everything there is out there to know about a particular subject. And not only do they know what they know, but they are incredibly skillful at putting that knowledge together in such a way that their opinions, insights, and intellectual conclusions are mind-numbingly relevant.
These are impressive people: I admire them and am in awe of them. I’m not one of them.
Maybe you, who are reading this, are one of these people. Maybe not. Maybe you are more like me. Just a human being living on this planet in this strange time, trying to make some sense of what you are experiencing. Maybe you are terrified, maybe you are not. Maybe you are very sad and depressed, or maybe you are able to find joy in your life regardless of what you are seeing. Maybe you don’t even see it. Maybe you are stupid like me, maybe you are not. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. More than likely, you are being called to do whatever you are doing. Whatever that is, whether it is significant or insignificant, you are doing it. So, to you at least, it matters.
But maybe you don’t agree. Does it really matter to you? I see many people every day in my psychotherapy practice who tell me that what they are doing in their lives doesn’t matter to them. They wonder why they are here, and they wonder what they are doing.
They wonder if they matter at all. If I ask them what they think they are being called to do with their life, they just stare at me with a blank stare. “What? What do you mean by that?”
If you are being called, then who is calling you?
I do believe our calling can be effectively covered up, and if we don’t make an effort to uncover it, we may never see it. But even if covered, as long as it is not pathologically obliterated, we will tend to move toward it. Call it intuition, call it an archetypal pull to allow creativity to express, call it divine inspiration, whatever it is, it usually will push through the junk and move you.
From my personal observation, most people do their best to ignore that push. They pay more attention to the calls of the flesh, satisfying the senses. They pay more attention to protecting the body and being as safe as they can possibly be. They are more apt to listen to and trust external forces claiming they will protect them from harm. Their own inner calling is ignored.
So, what does all this have to do with the joy of being stupid? Being smart or being stupid has nothing to do with anything. What we are called to do, does. Being “stupid” in the eyes of the world may actually be one of the last refuges of the free soul.
The smart ones—the credentialed, the data-drenched, the ones who can rattle off every study and counter-study—often end up paralyzed by their own sophistication. They see every angle until they see nothing at all. Meanwhile, the simple-hearted keep moving because something inside them says this matters, even if they can’t cite a single peer-reviewed paper to prove it.
I’ve come to suspect that the real division in our time isn’t between the informed and the ignorant, but between those still listening to an inner voice and those who have traded it for the louder, shinier, externally validated one. The former may look stupid to the latter.
They write Substacks instead of bestsellers, speak truth at dinner tables instead of on TED stages, refuse the jab, the mask, the narrative—not because they have a 400-page dossier, but because something in their chest simply says no. That quiet refusal is, in its own way, luminous.
So, I keep writing. Not because I’m brilliant, but because I’m called. The words arrive awkward and imperfect, yet they arrive. And every time someone messages me saying “this is exactly what I’ve been feeling but couldn’t articulate,” I remember: authenticity has its own intelligence. It cuts through the noise where IQ alone never could.
Maybe the deepest joy of being stupid is discovering that love, courage, and a stubborn commitment to what feels true are smarter than we ever needed to be. In a world engineered to make us feel inadequate, showing up as your uncredentialed, occasionally bewildered self, is a quiet act of rebellion.
Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here
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Thank you, Todd – yes, it seems to me (too) that it is hard to put something in words that is implicit rather than explicit. All the world today is explicit, turned outwards, enjoying [measurable] validation everywhere that you are “modern”, “going smart”, magnificent, etc. etc. Not to subscribe to this state of mind is “dumb”, “old fashioned”, “uncool” – because, you know, everything is possible today, can be “produced”, achieved! You just have to want it, just have to join in. And everybody following is so smart, so intelligent …
There are a lot of people around me who may be more intelligent than me – IQ-wise. And almost everybody plays along – goes to war [against any inner calling], to name it. Me, “the stupid one”, has some doubts … Is this a kind of rebellion already? I don’t know.
Sometimes the inner voice is what keeps people mired in bullshit. And you’re not stupid, you’re average like most of us.
https://cosmiconion.substack.com/p/rabbit-hole-poison
Thanks Todd, magnificent piece.
I am not sure that ‘stupid’ is the right word, even in semi-jest.
Terhaps ‘intuitive’ , those who listen to the Tao.
An article written by a self-admitted idiot, praising stupidity. That should sit well with the vast majority of urbanites today lol. I scanned it, only read a few sentences here and there, nothing of value.
It isn’t the joy of being stupid. It’s the joy of being “stupid”. And if you don’t get that, then look at what passes for being “smart”.
Good to see you back, Todd. Much to think about in your article. As another “stupid” person, I too saw through the Covid con and made myself unpopular with my opinions. Having had many different, and often dangerous experiences in Africa before moving to Canada in late middle age, I now find joy in waking up in the morning with most of my body and mind working as it should.
Self-depreciation seems safe but is it honest?
Judgements establish rules and filters of awareness that effectively generate mutually agreed masking and distancing as the social order.
I listen to the current of thought and attention for signs of life and the living – despite the packaging or ‘flesh’ of identity in image and form.
My willingness to listen is the call to attend or be present with, which is both a ‘not knowing’ and a receptivity to being shown.
What I then write is not a personal claim but a with-ness in shared worth-ship – for such is awareness and honouring of being – as distinct from a mutually agreed game of masking distance framed in fear of attack – (which runs as the corollary of judgement).
Discernment is within life and living, while judgements operate AS IF set over or apart from the judged. They cut the Son of God into pieces – and I use the term for All That Is – not for a self set special and apart.
That we can make a ‘self’ from the praise or depreciation of ‘the other’ to then assume social status, is to seek our right on the basis of a wrong perceived in the other. But once entranced, we raise the self-image to a status of our self – such that it governs thought and perception until and unless we question and release invested story to a grounded or connected recognition of being. Story sounds easy to release, but grievance set on fear and hatred of pain and loss – targeted to ‘others’ (or to a self-judged guilt, shame or lack of worth) can run as ‘too big to fail’ or irrevocably set and thus specially protected against questioning, challenge and change. All else must then subordinate and be made sacrifice to idols of guilt-driven ‘solutions’ by which to mitigate or escape pain by limiting awareness to a projected ‘models’ or ‘narratives’ that save us from knowing what we do.
The call to awaken in truth will meet resistance from the call to engage and experience or explore the ‘self-will’ – which presents as freedom, while framed in tyrannous dictates that may be masked over by ingenuity of self-justifications, applied even the instant after the act as a ‘post processed experience’.
If we call to the ego, we reiterate its predicates as our guide and protector.
If we call to truth that heals, that reveals peace of being, we are called to release the ego of self-judgement, blame and sacrifice – whether taken in or projected to the ‘other’ as if to scape or mitigate and mask pain of life for a tolerable containment or compartmentalisation.
All are called but few choose to listen. But this is only a matter of time.
The timing of our readiness and willingness to listen, give welcome, recognition and honour is each our own but never each alone for in truth we live in each other – though a world of bodies given causal or creative agency would limit love to a partiality of self-specialness seeking mutual reinforcement.
When two or more join in willingness to heal they release the terms and conditions of vested self-illusions to a quality of recognition that is not in the world, but though us, blesses the world. Withholding our presence runs as a self-presentation – to ourselves and to others, of who and what we are not.
I don’t care for smart drawn against stupid – nor to think of myself in either frame.
For look – they play together in false praise and blame!
Beneath the mask is the love that you are – as I am.
But not as the world judges.
Yes I can judge myself in others, and recognise that self-hatred runs far deeper than the defences raised against it. Or suffer to believe it real.
But the split of a mind to self and othered is the reflection of a denial or rejection of God, such that God is ‘remade in the image’ and mind of a special Self Exclusion – masked and distanced.
Persisting in what does not work and can not work can run a definition of a stupid behaviour. To take the Name in vanity is indeed to run off in a vain attempt to make illusions real. Nor is this a real war!
Name, nature and identity or recognition are integral to giving and receiving as one.
But the idea of getting rises from the lack and disconnection of unwatched or wishful thinking.
If we want fulfilment in living, we need to give from a living sense of appreciation.
A world cursed as unworthy – that fails to meet our demands – is discarded for an internalised ‘screen’ of ideal substitutions, just as Narcissus gazed on the image of his own reflection, heedless of Echo’s call.
Whatever we write as ‘meanings that can be received, or mistaken there is the space between the lines. There is the More of what I cannot speak. And there is where I read the hearts of others – regardless the current form of expression that the Field of Relationship is given. Align with, in and of the living – as vigilance for the Call – which cometh when ye thinketh not!
BTW the use of the ‘AI’ enables the drawing together and assemblage of vast amounts of ‘information’. The mind set in fixed meanings runs a structured identity in dead concepts running ‘dark’ as rules and filters of self-interest.
But the mind of a transparency to the movement of being knows when to get out of the way and when to serve. Discerning what we need to know when we need to know it is at the edge of a revealing fulfilment.
What is truly resonant and relevant to who you are the unfolding of, may not be at all according to what you think you should be doing or not doing.
The mind is expert in discarding and denying the prompts to healing.
Learning to release ‘default thinking’ in service of the living instead of running a private show, runs contra all that we have learned, and defended as a self-separate authority.
Locked down and lockstepped ‘assumptions and definition’ need to be brought to awareness as questionable. In asking within, we are not merely inward thinking, but calling on That Which Knows – and thus creating a space of willingness to hear or receive answer in whatever way or form and timing serves the living moment of the Whole.
tldr
Why even put that comment up, if you didn’t read it then there’s no need to comment on it – unless of course you’re and arrogant obnoxious little shit, who takes pleasure in remarks like the one you posted above.
‘tldr’ is the typical response of the spawn of the digital age, who lack the focus for anything longer than a tick-tok video .
When presented with the complete works of Shakespeare, or the Bible, his response is probably ‘tldr’.
By the way ‘Baxter’ was the name of a robot/android in that WEF video from 2014, which was trying to instill fear by telling us how all our jobs were going to be automated away within a few years.
Always enjoyed your Saturday morning musings Todd. Very very glad to have you back.
This is perfectly expressed –
“I’ve come to suspect that the real division in our time isn’t between the informed and the ignorant, but between those still listening to an inner voice and those who have traded it for the louder, shinier, externally validated one. The former may look stupid to the latter.”
The Covid con was a really sharp turning point in which all “systemic” knowledge as it had evolved over the last few decades was seriously called into question. I recall that one self-declared Marxist who turned up frequently on the OffG comments poured relentless scorn on the idea covid was a hoax because “capitalism doesn’t work that way”. And this distinguished gent was utterly contemptuous towards all those morons who just couldn’t grasp the fundamental historically established formulae for how capital operates etc. This despite the acknowledgement (from the Communist Manifesto itself) about how capitalism has proved to be the most dynamic system ever – all that is sold melts into the air etc.
But no – we had a period of these smug lectures telling us all how dumb and “Right Wing” we were. From such rational folk cheering on the latest vax scam and fretfully concerned about the LGBTQ++++ community and how the planet was catching fire.
Eventually they all fucked off over the horizon to plague the “serious and fully informed” networks of dupery still operational and churning out the mainstream edification for all things “Groovy Left”.
In opposition to this, I think it’s essential for punters everywhere to get their oar in and rant away about crap that’s happening right in front of them. And if you find yourself in a little group which eventually excommunicates you because you offended against some shitty systemic shibboleth then Fuck that! Tell them to shove their psychanalytic postmodernist social commentary up their arse.
In the meantime, I’ve seen more honesty and relevance from “tin foil hats”, Icke followers, Bible bashers etc. I’ll go wherever I hear the truth.
Great comment George. I found this place during convid. Didn’t comment much back then but coming here and reading ATL and BTL was most of what kept me sane. Yes there were a host of morons and shills – as ever – but also some gems of insight and intelligence. You were always a commenter I enjoyed. MLS also, Gezzah Potts, and several others. Latterly I appreciate Rolling Rock and Eric Blair.
There are a few of us – we just need to speak loud over the storm!
So have you figured out why they perpetrated the covid lock-downs yet? Not the vaccinations, that’s another agenda, just the actual shutting down of half the global economy for an extended period. Once you understand that you can empathize with the top brass. It was a step in the right direction basically. Two steps forward, one step back. Everything else is just a sideshow.
My take on the lockdown without which the whole operation would not have worked:
https://georgemc189059.substack.com/p/bradbury-and-dick-prophets-of-lockdown
I imagined, while reading this, i was Dr Sigmund Freud, listening to you,
lay on his couch – wondering, “Is this Free Association, a Train of Thought –
or maybe, maybe a Defence against Analysis ?
But i’m not Dr Freud. So i’m calculating how much i should charge you for
taking up my time…
Well you didn’t have to read it Les.
And you had so much else to do.
Sometimes you’ve gotta ‘Swerve’
https://thebuttonsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/swerve
A song I wrote back in 2012. (Should’ve been a minute shorter).
Just a bunch of old blokes venting their spleens.
And having fun.
lovely, but don’t assume because you like it anyone else will. In other words, don’t give up your day job.
PS, gave you thumbs up for the effort.