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Stereotypes about Polish people being stupid? [281]
Back to the thread topic, it seems to me that stupidity vs. intelligence is again largely culture based, indeed a learned phenomenon. As Poland, compared, say, with Germany, England, France, or the United States, industrialized more slowly (owing to among other factors her severe losses during various wars, therefore a considerable financial deficit in her national coffers!), the perception abroad had often been that Poland aka Poles were a backwater lot, sluggish, lazy, loutish and drunken, lacking the native intelligence to perfect an infrastructure as in the above countries heretofore mentioned.
Interestingly, many Western Europeans in particular had frequently voiced the same observations concerning Africa, as a primitive continent which could never prosper, e.g. according to European standards.
Poland developed an inferiority complex, since the common shibboleth was that the only way she could progress would necessarily be through outside help, as he was allegedly incapable of providing for herself.
Well, Copernicus, Łobaczewski, Madame Curie, Kazimir Funk and a host of other talented scientists proved the naysayers dead wrong!!
