Too Dumb to Live/Oral Tradition

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Bible seems to think that this is true of people in general
    • On occasion, Jesus' apostles. Some people can't understand "I will die, and rise again in three days" or the fact that Jesus can make more food when people are hungry.
      • How many people do you know who can do this? There were still doubts even in His camp about His true nature. After all, just because a person can bring back the dead doesn't neccesarily mean that they can bring themselves back from the dead. Just ask anyone who has played a video game with only one healer in the party!
    • The Benjamites in Judges. Among your people are some Depraved Bisexuals who wanted to rape a guy, who was forced to give up his concubine to save himself. Said concubine gets fatally raped and abused. Said guy tells the rest of Israel about it, and when they go all What the Hell, Hero? on the Benjamites, tell the Benjamites to give up the villains or get their asses kicked... The Benjamites refuse. Then subverted when the Benjamites defeat the rest of the Israelites at least twice before they get finally defeated.
    • Samson is the Ur Example of this trope. (The "Dur" example?) The first time Delilah asks him the secret of his power, he lies to her and says he can be bound with fresh bowstrings. The next night she tries this. When it doesn't work, she asks again, and he lies to her again and says he can be bound with new ropes. The next night she tries this. When that doesn't work, she asks again, and again he lies to her and says he can be bound by weaving his hair together. Once again she tries and fails. So far so good. But the next time she asks? After she's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that she's going to screw him over? He tells her the truth. Did we forget to mention that each of these attempts involve soldiers bursting in on cue to try to take advantage of the situation? Samson must have really been into bondage.
      • Made worse by the fact that Samson is not supposed to be your typical big dumb brute, and is shown in at least a few instances to be rather clever.
      • The Philistines who were trying to kill him easily fall into this trope as well. Samson kills ONE THOUSAND of them with a DONKEY'S JAWBONE. You almost have to admire the last 300 or so who probably had to climb a mountain of their dead buddies just to get close enough to die.
    • Heck, most of mankind in the Book of Revelation is this, generally overlapping with Humans Are the Real Monsters also. When God unleashes cataclysms (like turning the seas into blood, a Colony Drop in the form of a star that poisons the global water supply, and an army of fire-breathing warrior angels) that wipe out more than a quarter of the human population at once, you might want to consider giving up idol worship.
      • Granted, if God does all this stuff, maybe they felt the idols deserved worship.
      • If you buy the theory that John was explaining the prophecy in terms that he could understand, it may be the case that the apocalypse, horrible as it is, won't be so obviously supernatural in it's trappings.
      • Especially the Battle of Armageddon, apparently Earth's armies try to kill Jesus. It gets to the point that HORSES can drown in the amount of blood spilled.
    • The Egyptian army when pursuing Moses. You're pursuing a guy that brought several plagues upon your nation, a column of fire prevents you from pursuing while the sea splits for this guy and his people. So you follow them into the sea bed?
    • Satan. While the Bibles portrayal of God and Satan don't exactly match current understandings (The Book of Job shows Satan and God having a friendly bet), the modern Christian understanding of God is an all-powerful, all-knowing creator of all things. Satan, on the other hand, is an angel who decided to try to take on God. Apparently, Satan thought he could outsmart someone who knew what he was going to do before he did, or out-muscle someone who could do literally anything.
      • Really, if one takes the interpretation of God as all-powerful and all-knowing, this causes anyone who opposes God knowing this about Him to fit squarely in this catagory. Of course, it also makes even the slightest mistake on Gods part look like this as well, as even the smallest failure is inexcusable for someone who knows literally everything.
    • Lots wife. Like the story of Orpheus below, how hard is it to understand the command 'Do not look back'.
  • Surprisingly common in Greek Mythology despite the well-known tendency of the Olympian gods to punish severely any slight real or imaginary. A few of the more prominent ones are: Orpheus goes to the underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice. Hades allows him to leave with her on one condition: that he stay in front of her and not turn around until they reach the upper world. What does Orpheus do? Turn around, of course, just as they were about to reach the surface losing her forever.
  • Let us not forget the story of Theseus and Pirithous. Theseus and his friend Pirithous decide that it would be a great idea to marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen, whilst Pirithous chose Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld. Apparently, the best plan they could come up with for kidnapping Persephone was WALTZING INTO THE UNDERWORLD AND ASKING HER GODLY HUSBAND HADES IF THEY COULD TAKE HER. Long story short, Hades trapped them both and tortured them. Theseus was eventually freed by Heracles. Pirithous never left.
  • Also in Greek Mythology, Jason near the end of the quest for the Golden Fleece. So here he has Medea, the beautiful black sorceress who had fallen so madly in love with him thanks to Cupid's arrow, that she helps him steal her father's most prized possession and kills her own brother to make a diversion so Jason can escape. So everything's going pretty good for a while, and they have two children together. Then what does Jason do? He goes up to Medea and tells her that he's dumping her for some native woman, despite the fact that they have kids, he still owes her, and she has nowhere else to go. Naturally, Medea takes revenge. (You can read the details in Euripides)
    • Jason double so since his patron goddess was Hera, goddess of marriage. Thanks to this action and oaths broken to the other Olympians Jason loses everything and spends the rest of his life as a wandering beggar dying when a piece of his old ship the Argo falls on him when he is sitting under it.
  • Arachne. It's fairly well-known to the people of Greek mythology that the Olympians were extremely jealous when it came to mortals claiming to be their equals or betters. Arachne decides to boast that she's a better weaver than Athena and continues to do so despite several warnings from the goddess herself in disguise. They engage in a weaving contset. So this girl is sitting there, weaving while Athena herself is there and pissed off - and what does she do? She makes the pictures of her tapestry depict scenes of Athena's father Zeus being a womanizing scoundrel. After all of that, of course Athena has had enough and turns her into a spider.
    • In another version of the myth, Arachne really WAS a better weaver than Athena, but the goddess got so jealous she turned Arachne into a spider. Afterword, Athena felt kind of bad and decreed all spiders would share Arachne's name.
  • One thing that nearly all Greek tragic heroes have in common is their tendency to fly in the face of several generations' worth of evidence that whining to oracles is never a good idea. Oracles almost invariably tell people something they don't like, or something that is extremely cryptic, or both. Death almost always ensues. Examples who try to avoid their fate include Acrisius, Oedipus and his father Laius, and Priam and Hecuba when Paris is born.
    • The sole exception is Zeus who forewarned about any sons by Metis or Thetis would be mightier then their father was able to take steps to eliminate the threat. In the former he ate her so she couldn't have any more children and the latter he married off to a mortal.
  • King Midas. There is no way that everything you touch turning to gold could go wrong. No sir, none at all. Oh, look, your daughter wants a hug!
    • Really, it seems to be inherited, since this was some time after Midas gained the golden touch and his daughter has no excuse for forgetting that.
  • King Laomedon of Troy refused to pay the sea god Poseidon for building the walls of Troy. Poseidon sent a sea monster to terrorize the city. Heracles agreed to slay it for payment. Laomedon refused him and Heracles returned years later, sacked Troy, killed Laomedon and nearly his entire family. This chain of events was a major contributing factor in the Trojan War.
  • Ixion was similar to Laomedon. First he murdered his father-in-law instead of paying the bride price. He was cursed with madness and force to live in the wilderness. Zeus himself, in a rare example of exceeding generosity, purified Ixion of his madness and even brought him up to Olympus. Ixion, in violation of Sacred Hospitality, tried to sleep with Hera. Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt and in the underworld has him tied to a burning wheel for all eternity.
  • In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the title character travels for days to find the gods and attain eternal life; after failing the test the gods give him (he isn't able to stay awake for a week), one of them takes pity on him and gives him a plant that grants immortality. It's understandable that Gilgamesh doesn't want to use it right away, since for all he knows it could kill him, and he wants to try it on someone else first. What's not understandable is that Gilgamesh leaves it on the ground to go take a bath, and lets a snake steal it from him. You, sir, are an idiot.
  • Joukahainen in The Kalevala. He challenges Väinämöinen, the greatest sage of the epos, on one-on-one bespelling matchup. Väinämöinen bespells him into marsh. He is saved from death by drowning only by promising his sister to wife for Väinämöinen.
  • A 2009 quip from Church of the SubGenius minister Ivan Stang: "God forgot to make stupidity painful."
  • The Pardoner's Tale is about three drunking buddies who see there friend is dead, and decide to go out and find death so they can kill him. Three guesses as to what happens...
  • A tale about a donkey who died of hunger between two equally big piles of hay.
  • Swedes and Norwegians have a whole genre of anecdotes depicting each other as this.
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