There can be a great benefit of being someone on the Inferior Based side like we’ve been looking at through the scale:
Inferior Minded (-10) —— Humble (0) —— Superior Minded (+10)
As someone who naturally sees themselves as being less than others, I had this underlying belief other people could fix any problem that I couldn’t. There was good reason for this. For instance, I have a mechanic to fix my car because I don’t have the time or interest to learn how to fix it myself (I also hate the smell of oil). I have a plumber to help plumb when it’s needed (the smells associated to plumbing are also less than ideal). There are even people who created things like deodorant to make people not so gross to be around (BO isn’t much better than the other smells). There’s even a really great TV show, Scorpion, that’s very (very, very, very) loosely based on a real person with an incredibly high IQ who works with a team of specialized geniuses to solve major problems. I know the storylines are exaggerated to completely fictional, but the concept is believable. There are some super geniuses out there who can fix things I can’t.
Being able to believe that there are people out there who can solve the problems I can’t, gives hope. It’s like how a child trusts their parent to be able to solve anything that comes their way or to protect them from any real dangers in the world. For instance, my girls ultimately feel safe because they believe they’ll be protected from any danger, which is mostly true because if anyone tries to hurt them, they can trust in me… to let their mom go mama bear on any real threat. I might be bigger than my wife, but you don’t mess with mama bear.
The problem, however, is if you reach a spot where you realize that, for the most part, the world is full of stupid people (that’ll either make a lot of sense or be offensive). I used to think the world was full of people who were more capable than me with a few exceptions of those who are dumb, but I’ve recently fully embraced the idea that it’s the opposite. The world is full of some really dumb people and those who are smarter and/or more capable than I am are the exception and not the rule. For instance, I love magnolia trees. They are these gorgeous pink trees exploding with blooms for a week and half to two weeks at the beginning of spring. Not only are they magnificent compared to any type of flower in a household garden, they are the first real flower of the season, which makes them standout even more. Magnolia trees are essentially the initial pronouncement and celebration that spring is finally here. I’m very lucky to live in an older neighborhood that has a handful of fully developed magnolia trees. There is one that is probably 40-50 years old near a park I sometimes take my girls to, and while the tree was in magnificent bloom, this owner started hacking away at it. They couldn’t even wait to prune it until it was done flowering. The tree was very healthy, so they weren’t removing dead limbs. It also had a pretty round canopy like a typical magnolia, so it looked great, but the next time I went by, they had ended up mutilating the bottom two thirds of this glorious tree. It broke my heart because you can’t replace a 40–50-year-old tree. I could plant one right now, but it’ll never be that big before I die. How could this person be so dumb? This connects to a greater problem I see. I see more large beautiful trees being cut down or hacked at than I see new trees being planted. The city I live in even has a free tree planting option, but people don’t take advantage of it because, as I was told, they don’t want to have to rake leaves. Trees provide shade for houses in the summer and help make neighborhoods look better than they are, especially since they hide/distract from some of the neglect on the homes. Ultimately, trees give hope to the future while connecting us to the past. Instead of feeling this hope, by not seeing trees being planted, I end up feeling demoralized because people are choosing not to do something to better the community for now or the future, you know, because they’re dumb.
You might be thinking, “What happened to writing about your mechanic and plumber being smarter?” Good point, and why you’re one of the smart people. I value those like my mechanic and plumber, but I’ve learned they’re not “superior” to me. They just have a different skill, and I keep using them because they are actually good at what they do unlike the nine people I had to fire while doing my disastrous addition. The one person I didn’t fire was the architect who was all kinds of dumb. When the framer was building the one section, he had to call the architect because on the drawings he had left a “floating wall” on the second floor. I don’t know about you, but the term “floating wall” sounds bad… because it is. It turned out the engineer (who was incredibly arrogant and rude) missed designing a support for the one wall upstairs, which was then missed by the architect who was supposed to double check things, aaaaannnnndddddd it was missed by the person working for the city who had to inspect the drawing. This inspector found around 100 smaller mistakes the architect had to fix (yes, I was second guessing my choice of architect when I heard he had that many mistakes), but she missed this major problem. That’s two people with a questionable third who aren’t even good at their basic job. As I learned with my addition, don’t trust people. It’s like going to a hospital; you have to self advocate because when you’re like me thinking, “I’m sure this so-called professional knows what they’re doing,” you could be setting yourself up for a catastrophe. People who are good at their jobs are the ones most susceptible to being duped like I was because when you’re good at your job, you assume others are as well. In many cases, however, I find I’m not alone in having an experience where I had to tell the “professional” that there was a better way of doing something or had to point out they made a mistake. How is that possible? Oh, right. People are dumb.
Is dumbness an isolated situation to my neighborhood? I wish. There’s dumbness everywhere even with the company I grew up loving – Disney. I’m still a sucker for wanting to go to a Disney park (the new Frozen land in Paris looks incredible). As a whole, however, the Disney corporation has been making a steady stream of terrible choices like closing The Disney Store, which was a profitable part of the company, and had a natural marketing influence for inspiring families to want to go see their new movies and parks, but for some reason the Disney President at the time didn’t like it. One of their dumbest choices was making their kids movies have controversial elements like in Strange World, which tanked because it angered their family-based audience (naturally). To add to the problems, Disney buying Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar put them in massive debt, and then Netflix’s rise made them want to get into streaming, which had an initial price tag of about three billion dollars just for the technology to start it. Then they went and spent $71 billion to acquire 21st Century Fox productions to include in their library. What? $71 billion? That’s a number to buy something? To make up for the growing debt problems, Disney jacked up their prices at the parks, but then they needed to keep the interest in the parks alive, which meant going billions of dollars in more debt to create new rides and update the parks. They’ve also gone from a park that was meant to be $10 a ticket under Walt to present day $200. They also dropped their extras like free transportation from the airport, which made Disney more appealing for a family wanting to keep things simpler. When Disneyland originally opened, Walt made it alcohol free and now Disney parks heavily rely on the income off their booze sales. The one video told me it costs them $2 to make a drink for which they charge $16 – ouch. Out of the number of videos I’ve watch about the anger at modern Disney, this one video was particularly interesting for describing why Disney is headed down a dangerous path because it’s by a business person and not just a disgruntled Disney fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN5SxaV6waM&t=782s. He explains that Disney is doing what Sears did before its collapse. Sears was originally about the middle class, but it later started to transition to being more for the rich, and once you lose the middle-class support, you can never get it back. Like other people have shared, during covid Disney made people register ahead of time before going to the park, which they’ve continued to do because now they can adjust staff to better address the numbers. This means even though the attendance is down by millions of people a year at Disney World, no matter what day you go, there will be similarly long lines and a sense that the park is full of people because Disney reduces staff in order to push attendees to want to pay for fast passes that Disney used to give away for free. As a whole, Disney is catering to the rich in hopes to bring in more money with less people putting wear and tear on the parks. The problem this business person brings up in his video is this strategy is short sighted. It might work in the present, but it leaves the next generation of kids without any real attachments to Disney. That makes sense because someone like me who fell in love with Disney World as a child will bring my kids, but as it gets too expensive (on top of living expenses being on the rise), how will my kids take their kids? When you cater to the rich, you eventually fall apart.
Fun fact: Christianity was founded on catering to the poor and continues to thrive when love of God and one another is the foundation and not the love of money or paying down debt.
Fortunately, there is a great benefit to seeing that people aren’t superior to me – I don’t feel as Inferior Based, which means I’m now closer to the middle, Humble, position. Seeing people as dumb is a blessing… yet it also has a strong downside – Hope was destroyed. It was like the moment a child realizes his parent doesn’t know everything and can’t fix anything they face. It’s this disillusioning, “What do you mean the WWF isn’t real? I thought Hulk Hogan was the true deal.” It’s like I traded in hope to be less mean to myself.
Fortunately, there is one thing that I can take comfort in that is more important than anything else – the more terrible people and the world looks, the more appealing God can become. As a believer, the world constantly reminds me of how I need God. I can only hope that people who haven’t been blessed with growing up in a Christian household and to have an Inferior Based mindset that encouraged me to grow closer to God will themselves find interest in learning more about Him. After all, this world is temporary. People might let me down. People will ruin beautiful trees. Workers will be bad at their jobs. Disney will one day crumble. But one thing will remain: God’s love and dedication to bringing people back to Him.
This week may you find hope.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)
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