People are not stupid.
First, we always say “never underestimate your enemy/opponent” but we’re still so eager to consider that a vast majority of people are dumb? It doesn’t make sense and I always had a hard time to deal with this stereotype. And something is always going to remind me that now.
It was two years ago or so, I was visiting my foster parents in the countryside. One of my foster dad’s friend was coming over. He’s a farmer, he looks like a farmer, smells like a farmer and never drinks water if you know what I mean. I swear you would think he’s straight out of the Middle Age with his tanned face and bad teeth (for the ones still here).
Anyway, he’s having his glass of Pastis 51 (sans water) and we’re chatting briefly, I’m saying that I’m about to go for the first time in the US. He’s looking at me, his iced-blue eyes wide open.
And there, I’m an asshole. I think that I made him dream, I think that he obviously never left the region in more than sixty years, maybe went to Paris.
He’s telling me that he’s been to Chicago once. I’m like, maybe a trip to see a John Deere’s convention. But he’s explaining to me that he went there to bail out a cousin, who had been in jail after some serious problems with these people. So he had to bail him out, drive him back in Chicago, deal with the lawyer…
I know. I was amazed in every way. That he could do that, amazed at how I felt superior and so shitty so rapidly there after.
I was happy. Not just for the slap in my ego’s shitface, but simply because it gives hope and trust that people are capable. People are capable and not dumb. They learn.
After they know, it’s all about persistence.