Disdain for Stupidity

“Disdain for stupidity” is a sharp phrase.
I have no intention of defending it, nor of polishing it into something respectable.

But there is one thing I want to make clear—
what I disdain has never been “being slow”.

What I disdain is a state that refuses self-reflection:
cognition frozen in place, yet unaware of itself;
ability not yet reached, yet unwilling to learn;
limited understanding, yet expecting the world to make way for it.

Stupidity itself is not frightening.
What is truly exhausting is having no awareness of one’s own limits, while remaining highly confident.

It is like a dinner gathering,
where someone who has barely ever cooked insists on critiquing every dish,
declares the chef incompetent when the taste does not suit them,
and never considers that their palate might be narrow.

They are often not malicious.
They simply tend to treat bias as conclusion,
emotion as evidence,
and limited experience as universal truth.

When reality deviates from their understanding,
they are more likely to feel hurt
than to feel curious.

So—
explanations sound like arguments,
patience is mistaken for concession,
logic appears cold,
and boundaries are read as distance.

I gradually realized
that what truly drains people is not disagreement itself,
but the repeatedly ineffective communication that follows it.

The feeling is familiar:
like at a dinner table
where you have already explained the ingredients, the heat, the method clearly enough,
yet the other person keeps asking the same questions,
only to prove that their initial dissatisfaction was justified.

It is also like an argument with a colleague.
The issue itself is not complicated—
plans, data, and consequences are all laid out plainly.
But the other person is not genuinely concerned with any of that.
They care about only one thing—
not appearing to be wrong.

So the discussion turns into circles,
facts are repeatedly pulled apart,
conclusions are constantly overturned,
and every response exists only to return to the starting point.

At that moment, it becomes clear
that you are not solving a problem,
but accompanying someone in defending their self-esteem.

The same questions keep reappearing,
the same answers are rejected again and again,
not because they are incomprehensible,
but because no one is willing to pay the cost of understanding.

They would rather have you chew everything up and place it in front of them,
preferably also completing the judgment on their behalf.

When understanding becomes an obligation,
communication turns into a burden,
and relationships quietly begin to deteriorate.

There is another, more concealed state—
not stupidity, but a fear of complexity.

The world is reduced to right and wrong, us and them, good and evil.
This feels safer, and requires less effort.

But complexity, ambiguity, and multiple perspectives
are precisely the normal condition of reality.

Those who reject complexity
are often not firm in their stance,
but rather lack the capacity to carry complexity.

They need a judgment that can immediately stand,
so that their unease can settle as quickly as possible.

The reason I keep my distance from all this
is not because I consider myself intelligent.

On the contrary—
it is precisely because I know I can fall into blind spots as well
that I am more willing to maintain learning, revision, and doubt.

I can accept ignorance,
but I struggle to accept the stubborn preservation of ignorance.

I respect differences,
but I am unwilling to continually yield to laziness, rigidity, and emotional loss of control.

So later, I learned to set certain boundaries:

• Not treating explanation as an obligation
• Not treating empathy as a transaction
• Not repeatedly engaging in conversations without growth
• Not bearing the cost of others’ stagnation

Like leaving a dinner table where the food was never going to suit you,
I choose to excuse myself early.

This is not coldness,
but rather a careful regard for one’s energy.

Disdain for stupidity is not a sense of superiority.
It is closer to a mechanism of self-selection.

Not to stand higher than others,
but to avoid being dragged into the consumption of
low-quality thinking, inefficient communication, and low-density relationships.

The world is already noisy enough.
I simply choose
to reserve my limited time
for those who can truly engage in dialogue.