I Am Not Crazy or Stupid

A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance. -- Unknown

Here's the thing, if someone gives you some information and asks you to read it and consider it because it might give you a better understanding of the person you are dealing with. Do you read it? Do you take the time to try and understand your partner better or do you dismiss it and return to your standard stance of "It's not me, it's you"?

Because I would tend to lean towards actually wanting to learn how to make things better.

But that's the difference between intellect and ignorance. The intelligent person is keenly aware of how little they really do know whereas the ignorant person holds on to those beliefs like a life preserver without regard to new and contradictory information. The ignorant person has no choice but to stubbornly cling to what "knowledge" they have despite it being incomplete or outright wrong.

There's more to this, of course, there always is. There's a confirmation bias across all strata of intellect, that is, we all tend to think we are smarter than we really are but, as the level of intelligence rises, the margin of thinking we are smarter than we are comes down. Another way, the dumber a person is the more likely they are to overestimate their intelligence. The smarter a person is, the more likely they will be to be able to recognize that they don't know something.

Here's some more reading on the subject if you are so inclined (which is actually a sign that you're on the upper end of the spectrum because intellectual curiosity requires, you know, intellect). Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It.

Is The Foreign Press Correct in Branding Sarah Palin a Traitor?

I read Foreign Press Says What America's Won't: Sarah Palin is a Traitor and am in complete agreement with everything Sarah Jones, the author, writes. Even with such a well-reasoned and well-supported argument I knew there would be an attack by Sarah Palin's defenders. But these people are, by and large (and buying large but that's another post), ignorant, angry and intellectually dishonest. Whenever a point they have tried to make is shot down by the guns of reality, facts and common sense, they change tactics and try another avenue to discredit the article.

The comments, from Sarah and Jason, who runs the site, are strong and reasoned as are the many comments from other readers in the face of often moronic comments by the We Heart Sarah goon squad.

I try not to wade into political discussions because, in reality, they are akin to shouting at a brick wall. I have no illusions that all of the reasoned responses to the Palin trolls had any impact on their worship of her false idol. But I did comment and wanted to repost it here.

Due Diligence by the Unemployed

I may be off base here, I may be just plain crazy but it seems to me that someone who doesn't have a job but has a family to feed, a mortgage to pay and bills stacking up would be interested in exploring every means of providing income. Well, let's qualify that, any legal means. This means someone who's been a manager taking positions far below their usual station and pay. This means someone who's used to a six figure salary sometimes having to settle for making half what they made before, sometimes, oftentimes, much less than that.

In this current economic climate, employers hold all the cards and can make seemingly unreasonable demands of prospective employees. It is, simply, a buyer's market. Unless you strike out on your own and start up your own business. But there are major risks in doing so and the gamble can be too great a risk.

But, if someone you ostensibly know and trust to not be a complete idiot says that they have something worth taking a look at, would it not behoove you to take a look?

Just as the unemployed person almost has a duty to check the Help Wanted ads everyday and apply to any new jobs that reasonably align with their skills and experience, someone without a job should also be open to other opportunities. Now, I'm not talking about donating plasma, sperm or becoming a human guinea pig for science experiments. I'm talking about legitimate opportunities.

In my family's case, this opportunity is network marketing. Which is, as I'm learning, a curse to some people. People see network marketing or multi-level marketing and immediately dismiss it as a pyramid scheme.

But what is a pyramid scheme? One where all the money and power flows upwards to a highly select few at the top. Most corporations are pyramids with CEOs and Boards of Directors making many hundreds of times the incomes of the grunts at the bottom. The military is a pyramid with privates at the bottom and generals at the top.

Any network marketing program worth its salt isn't a pyramid scheme. I could start working at McDonald's and bust my ass for twenty years and there's still almost no chance I'd become one of the company's top earners. In network marketing, this isn't true. In network marketing, it is very possible to reach the upper echelons of power and income through effort.

And yet, some people hear the words network marketing and they sneer because they think they know what it represents. They are almost invariably wrong and have pre-judged the business opportunity based on partial knowledge and bias.

This post might sound like complaining and that we are having trouble getting to where we want to go with our Kyani business. I will admit that overcoming the stigma of network marketing has been more difficult than expected but the underlying reality is that we are moving forward, we are signing customers, we are signing distributors and we are making it happen for us.

This post is more a response to some friends we've known for a very long time who are ignorant of the workings of network marketing, who are unemployed and yet still refuse to even consider network marketing as a possibility, as a solution to their money troubles now and into the future. Because that is what we are doing. We are building a strong structure to bring in money now and down the line. Our efforts build upon themselves and each month we keep with it, we climb higher and higher into the structure.

Salespeople I know have no such structure they build, they start each month at ground zero and have to produce for that month. At the end of the month, the meter resets and they start at ground zero again. Its a grinding cycle without end.

Network marketing is, to me, a way out and a way up. We are going to succeed with or without those friends. It just irks me that someone who should be willing to investigate any and all legitimate means of earning a living would so cavalierly dismiss network marketing without even knowing what it is and how it works.

The proof will be in the pudding and we are definitely planning on showing them the checks we get as our income starts to rise from these efforts. Maybe they'll change their mind when they see some pudding, maybe they won't. Either way, we are going to make this work as I do not plan on going back to work full-time for anyone else ever again.

The opportunity is phenomenal, the products are absolutely the best quality available and the timing is incomparable. It is the perfect storm of opportunity and we just wanted to share it with our friends who were also suffering economically as we have been.

And, even with a mere eight working days left before I am laid off from the school district, I am more optimistic about our future than ever before. Because of network marketing.