I have finally figured out exactly why I am so misanthropic.

You wouldn't think it would have taken me twenty-nine years to figure this out, but it has. Here is why I hate people:

I cannot stand those who lack intellectual curiosity, and most people do.

This hit me over the head this afternoon while talking to my mother. I bought a laptop with part of my student loan, and right now I am using it wireless. It's not a great connection, though, and I'm about 90% certain it's not ours and the only reason we can get it is that our same-brand router is boosting someone else's signal. (I have tried to get an honest connection up, I really have.) We do have regular cable internet, so if I were to go into the living room & plug my laptop in to RoadRunner via the ethernet cable, we'd have a steady(ish) connection.

While I was heading off to work on Halloween costumes for the girls, my mother asked if she could use my computer. Sure, no problem. But it wasn't online at the time, because I couldn't connect to this wireless network. Happens fairly often. I told her that she could get it to work just fine if she plugged it in. She would, she said, but she didn't know how.

Now. There is only one cord coming out of the router that isn't plugged into something. There is only one port on my computer that this cord will fit into. Anyone familiar with telephones could look at one and then the other and figure out how to do it; it took me about 30 seconds the first time.

But my mother simply has no interest in figuring out how to do this on her own. Or anything else, for that matter. My laptop, hell, every computer I've ever owned or used, my cell phone, my digital camera...All of these I figured out how to use through trial and (some, usually minor) error. It is not rocket science, and to me it doesn't take a lot of brainpower.

What it takes is initiative.

I've known some genuinely stupid people in my time. The mildly retarded, folks with Down Syndrome, and folks who are just "slow." I don't hold it against them. I can slow myself down and explain stuff to people if need be. That doesn't bother me in the slightest.

What frustrates me are those of normal intelligence who refuse to use it. Most folks, it seems, learn just enough to get by and entrust others with the rest of it. This is a scary thing, especially, during an election cycle. Too many folks trust others to make their decisions, or vote for a politician based on some idiotic criterion like whether they'd make a good drinking buddy.

But it's endemic to our society. A lack of initiative and curiosity has saturated every layer of our culture. Oh, it's not complete, but it's pervasive as hell. If ever I question that, all I have to do is listen in before my Ethics class. My teacher is the best in the school, apparently. He's also the hardest. Amazing how many of my classmates equate "best" with "easiest." I actually had to spell that out one day. "Good does not connote easy."

Thank God they all seem to understand why Ethics is a prerequisite for nursing school, at least. Even if several are planning to drop the course and retake it from someone easier.


>>>Lest I forget, I must thank JayG for the link from his blog. Speaking of intellectual curiosity! It's something I think those on my blogroll have in spades.<<<