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Dr. Herb Ruhs & grandson
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On the dominance of the clever
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by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
January 16, 2008
As most of us know if we think about it, the opposite of smart is
not actually dumb. It is clever. Clever thinks it is best to be
sneaky, aggressive, dishonest and duplicitous in order to get ahead.
Clever hates smart. Clever conspires in secret to overcome smart and
in the process causes disaster. Clever loves narrow competition
because of the opportunity to cheat.
In systems like ours that incorporate ruthless, narrow competition
to order society, clever people inevitably take control and make a
terrible mess. In the long run the clever
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people in control
end up destroying themselves and everyone around them. After this
destructive process runs its course, actual smart people, who
understand the importance of honesty and decent values, finally have a
chance to clean up the mess and communicate to their fellows the
folly of setting rules on the basis of ruthless competition.
Another way of stating this is the common folk aphorism, shit
floats. Time has come to flush, wipe and get on with sensible living.
If we would repair this situation before catastrophe, we will need to
invent another way to order authority and responsibility in our
society. We will need to wipe the slate clean and retire virtually
the entire management class who by this time is so saturated with
clever people that they have brought us to an inevitable catastrophe.
Electoral politics is the area of life that is most saturated with
clever people. To hope for electoral politics to rescue us is just
silly and pathetic. People of at least normal emotional as well as
intellectual development understand, deep down, that we need to
decentralize power to the most local level possible. The country may
be toast but our neighborhoods may yet survive if we shake off the
rule of the clever people in favor of decent folks.
Basically, we have a chance -- if we get together locally and speak frankly with each
other about problems and solutions. For instance,
neighborhoods could help themselves in the midst of the so called
"mortgage crisis" (really a national crime spree by the financial
markets) by pulling together and salvaging local homes from
foreclosure by joint action. Everyone's property values would be
protected and families would not end up out on the street and turning
to petty crime to survive.
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This country began in an atmosphere of mistrust of authority, an unwillingness to bend the knee to one's "betters," and a collective commitment to preventing destructive concentrations of power.
But now, our obedience to authority has gotten us to this spot.
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This country began in an atmosphere of mistrust of authority, an
unwillingness to bend the knee to one's "betters," and a collective
commitment to preventing destructive concentrations of power. But now, our obedience to authority has gotten us to this spot.
It's time to turn away from clever "leaders" and toward the sort of
localism, egalitarianism and love for popular sovereignty that
nurtured our nation's beginning. This still might not work, at least in the
short run, to ameliorate the deluge of suffering our "clever winners"
have engineered for us, but in the long run it is the only way to do
things smartly.
© by the author.
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