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by Sangermaine
3172 days ago
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You're leaning very hard into absolute genetic determinism of any and all actions, as if an otherwise intelligent person couldn't just be careless or not be paying attention and be hit by a bus (to use your example). "Mentally handicapped" is generally considered to be where someone's capabilities are hindered to the point that they can't function in a normal autonomous way and perform basic life tasks. "Acting stupid" applies to people who don't have such a level of hindrance but are instead not reasonably utilizing the adequate faculties they do have. So, back to your example: if you lack the capability to cross a street on your own, or to even understand what that means and why it can be dangerous, no one faults you if you are harmed. If you are capable of crossing a street and appreciate the danger but choose not to take proper care when doing so (e.g., you step out onto the street while texting and are struck by a bus), people fault you. You seem to be making unsupported assumptions and conflating all sorts of things when it's really not complicated: was the person capable of understanding the situation and acting on that understanding? |
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For example, smart people frequently describe the lottery as "a tax on stupid people" in a sneering way. When people get taken by an obvious scam, we often place as much if not more blame on the victim as we do on the scammer. Or look at the Darwin Awards for numerous examples of people basically saying that others deserve death for being dumb.
Sure, there are examples where a smart person is negligent, we describe that as "stupid," and we rightfully blame them for the consequences. But there are many more examples where a dumb person doesn't understand that what they're doing won't work, it fails predictably, and we say they deserve it. Lotteries, scams (but I repeat myself), avoiding insurance or banks, and much more tend to fall into this category.
If someone got robbed because they had a bad leg and couldn't run away, we'd sympathize. If they got robbed because they had a bad brain and couldn't detect that this smooth-talking stranger was scamming them, we'd tell them they should stop being so stupid.