The Collegiate Laws of Life Essay Contest asked Penn State students to explore ethical values and intercultural issues, and their talent for expressing their views in writing.
Emily Morrison, ’19, aspiring Paterno Fellow in English and Philosophy, won Honorable Mention for her essay, below, responding to this prompt:
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” ~ Albert Einstein
What are the roles of mistakes? Do mistakes hold merit in the molding of one’s character or do men and women fall into the trap of repeated and fruitless wrongdoing under the guise of normalcy?
On Human Stupidity
At some point, it’s happened to all of us. You have that one friend who’s maybe a little too sensitive or had a bad day and you’re just a little too sarcastic and wham — you’ve insulted someone. Maybe it was a poorly timed joke, a reference to something better off forgotten, or some other verbal mishap. When we’ve hurt someone this way, or do something wrong, what do we say about it? We say that we made a mistake. We say that we were wrong. And in terms of either societal standards or accepted facts, we’re usually right in the analysis of our actions. We’ve learned more about what not to say, or maybe how to be a better friend. From this, we think we’ve bettered ourselves, become more intelligent.
But Einstein claims that human stupidity is “infinite,” so it would then be logical to conclude that no matter how many times we err or how many lessons we accumulate, we are still doing no more than collecting grains of sand on a cosmic beach of ignorance. In this life-long battle of balancing our tally of wrongs and rights, the working cliche is that unintelligent people are those who “don’t learn from their mistakes.” According to this philosophy, anyone who puts the microwave on for three minutes instead of thirty seconds or backs into the mailbox more than once is, by definition, unintelligent. These types of actions, though, are just daily reminders of the fallibility of humans in general. Since all humans are prone to error, all humans are stupid creatures that will never improve themselves. And some, like myself, may consider this conclusion rather bleak.
In this instance, Einstein looked at humanity on the universal scale, and when you do, it’s reasonable enough to arrive at a similar conclusion. Using the astronomical scale of the universe, humans take up such a small fraction of space that we cannot even begin to try and represent it numerically, let alone visually. Of course any one thing we may do on some day during a year won’t affect anything other than our own minute infinities. Einstein narrowed his scope, however, in one of his most famous quotes: “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it’s stupid.” On this level, we can hope to have a scale that we can work with — sort of. In reality, this level of humanity is as abstract as the intergalactic one. We have no way to directly measure or define what intelligence and righteousness actually mean. We’ve tried to, but how solid or satisfying are those definitions?
Ultimately, it is up to us as singular persons to determine how our mistakes and actions contribute to our lives as a whole. If the earth is a speck in the universe and a human is a speck on the earth, we have to believe that what we do means something and not let our mistakes devolve into a mediocre “normalcy.” While many mistakes leave us just as idiotic as before and maybe even more so, there are times where that little light in our heads clicks on and we realize that, “hey, I could be a better person if I don’t do that again.” If we stop making jokes at the friend that goes to the gym a lot, check all of the mirrors before backing out of our driveways and garages, or check our answers before clicking “submit,” therein lies potential for us to grow not as specks of the universe, but as human beings that belong to it. It’s a slow process, and people these days tend to despise anything that takes some relatively substantial amount of time. But the importance of the task remains relevant, and while we’re destined to mistakenly add too much creamer to our morning coffees or forget to file important paperwork, it is the potential that gives meaning to our mistakes.
If we let these types of actions drive our daily choices and convert this potential energy into a kinetic one, we increase the likelihood of coming up with our own Algorithm of Merit. Although the variables of right and wrong will vary and occasionally blur, there will still, at times, be the opportunity for the methods we set in place for ourselves to drive us to make more honest, good, or generous choices. We, like Einstein, could narrow our focus from something as broad as the universe to something as narrow as letting human mistakes influence human character. And that, if done successfully, could help make humanity a little bit less stupid.