THOUGHTS OF A POET IN THE RAIN

It fascinates me how some people come to the conclusion that  because they disagree with someone else then that person must be illiterate, boneheaded, in need of hospitalization in a mental facility, or are just incompetent.

Take the article that was sent to me by a person recently who I believe can be classified as in the “sophomoric class” (explained later). The article was about incompetent people who think they are competent appeared in the New York Times January 18. 2000 in which can be found the following comment:

“There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear he might be one of them.

Dr. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dr. Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities — more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.”

Hmmmm, very interesting, but there is more, especially about humor:

He says, essentially, that impaired joke tellers rate themselves as funny while everyone else knows they are incompetent.

Huh! Well waddya know about that. So, here’s the question are you one of the crowd? someone who has a limit, knows it, and keeps within those boundaries? If not how about an impaired joke teller. I think most of us are in that category and as before, it’s fine. Then we have the last category: Sophomoric.

The sophomoric individual takes the joke of someone else and addresses it with hidden sarcasm. Just enough to feel you’ve been hit with a brick but not hard enough to determine the direction it came from or what the purpose was. So, being incompetent, we wander through life quite content while the sophomoric individual either attacks again or finds another target but all the while is pleased to have determined that you are incompetent. So, to my sophomoric friend, and you know who you are, I say ….enjoy yourself, you are but a mosquito and should have realized the article, my friend, was written more about you than about me.