I just stumbled across a George Carlin quote that made me snort tea through my nose. He said:
Here’s all you need to know about men and women: Women are crazy and men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. It’s not the only reason, but it’s a big one. And by the way, if you don’t think men are stupid, check the newspaper. […] And if you don’t think women are crazy, ask a man. That’s the one thing men aren’t stupid about: they know for sure, way deep down in their hearts, that women are straight-out fucking nuts.
You know you’re dealing with the truth when you start laughing and then slowly realize the joke is on you.
There’s something perfect about Carlin’s ability to take what’s basically a centuries-old war between the sexes and distill it into one infinite feedback loop:
Men act dumb → women go crazy → men panic because women are crazy → do something even dumber → women lose their minds again → repeat until death.
And yet… he’s right. Men are stupid. Not all the time, but cyclically, like the moon. There’s a rhythm to male stupidity — it waxes and wanes. It’s usually triggered by confidence. The moment a man feels too sure of himself, some cosmic switch flips, and out comes a decision that makes everyone else in the room go, “Really?”
Meanwhile, women are over there trying to manage the whole circus and the frustration builds until they cross into what men like to label “crazy”, but which is often just “exhausted by bullshit.”
That’s not to say that women’s craziness is entirely caused by men, nor that their own brand of inherent and unique craziness doesn’t have some influence in men being stupid in the first place, but y’know. There we are.
It’s almost poetic, really. Yin and yang. Stupid and crazy. The grand balance of the universe.
If men ever stopped being stupid, women might stop being crazy — but then who would tell us what to wear, or how to feel, or that we’re “overreacting”?
No one. And then chaos, amirite? So maybe this whole thing keeps the universe from imploding.
Still, I sometimes think if aliens ever land, they’ll take one look at how we flirt, argue, and marry each other anyway, and go, “Nope. These people aren’t ready for interstellar anything.” Then they’ll turn the ship around and file Earth under “volatile species with unresolved mating rituals.”
But I digress.
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David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky. |