Most Popular ArticlesThe Principles of Applied Stupidity
December 22, 2009
Much of the book draws from Locke’s own, very personal, experiences. “I was always the smart kid,” he says. "I got a 4.0 average through life.” To write a book, he adds, “I had to make myself the dumbest person on the planet.” In what he describes as a “very emotional presentation,” the first eleven principles deal with changing the “smartist” mindset.
Principle #11 encourages readers to break free from a familiar, but devastating, prison. “Once you realize that it doesn’t matter whether or not other people think of you as being smart or dumb, you are free,” he writes.
In writing the book, Locke often turned to his family and friends for advice. He calls his brother Joseph one of the smartest people he knows, and yet Joseph was always told as a child that he was stupid.
Many early advisers told Locke that he simply couldn’t use the word stupid because it conjures too many raw memories, something Locke acknowledges. “I realized I was lancing an emotional boil with this book,” he says. By redefining a word that has for decades locked scores of schoolchildren in a “shame spiral,” Locke attempts to exorcise some academic demons.
“The first principle was originally supposed to be ‘Stupidity is Power.’ But I just had too many people tell me, ‘Justin, you can’t say that,’” Locke says. That principle is “Lack of Thought and Information is Power,” and sets the tone for the rest of the book as sneakily sarcastic, like selling a shot of snake oil with a leadership seminar chaser.
The book could use a little more insight into how some of Locke’s cryptic personal anecdotes explain the theories they’re meant to illustrate, but that didn’t detract from the entertainment value of the story of the truant teen who ended up in a posh private school or the doctor who ignored all the rules and won a competitive fellowship.
Don’t expect to find any statistics or concrete data backing up Locke’s theories. But his observational wisdom can be fascinating.
For example, Locke points out that four out of the five richest people in the United States did not graduate college and that, of the famous composers he played for, only Leonard Bernstein had a college degree – in business, of all things.
Dropping out of college with the goal of inventing the personal computer or conducting to the New York Philharmonic turns out to be a pretty bad bet. According to the US Census Bureau, over the course of his or her life, a college graduate can earn up to $1 million dollars more than someone with a high school education. That figure increases with every level of further study achieved.
But it’s this kind of debate that motivates Locke. “I just took that devil’s advocate point of view, and I would just sit there and say, now, in this situation, what are the advantages of being kind of slow-witted and not knowing anything?” he says. In many cases, Locke advocates a position marked by ignorance, avoidance, and failure.
Eliminating the stigmas associated with those traits, however, is the book’s animating cause. Locke contends that the fear and anxiety associated with performance and perfection will inevitably lead to much greater negative consequences than the simple decision to be simple.
Now on its third printing, The Principles of Applied Stupidity has struck a chord with many audiences. Lecturing around the country, Justin Locke explains how, when faced with a difficult decision, to pick the “stupid” path to success.
It’s worth a shot.
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