We all have regrets and I added a major one (another one) to my life recently.
I read a book which would have been extremely helpful to me in my life. If only…
The book is “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” by Carlo M. Cipolla, who died in 2000 at 78. He was an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The book was first published in Italy in 1976. It was a huge hit and recently was translated into English and published in the U.S.
It’s very short — some 40 pages — but, oh, the wisdom which is, incidentally, the opposite of stupidity. It’s short because Cipolla was not stupid and understood you can make your point ignoring academic dictates that you have to write long dissertations that no one understands to prove you are intelligent.
Let’s begin by citing Cipolla’s five basic laws:
* Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. (Boy, is that true, or not?)
* The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. (What insight!)
* A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. (Why do the unvaccinated come to mind?)
* Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake. (A mistake I have made more than I care to remember.)
* A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. (And I thought it would be the intelligent person. Wow!)
Before we go on, I suggest you attach these five to your refrigerator with a magnet. Read them a couple times a week. That would serve you well. Give a copy to your boss — anonymously.
Cipolla maintains that stupidity is not a major characteristic of any race, religion, nationality, or sex. It is present among all humans; even Nobel laureates have an allotment of stupid people, he writes.
(Now, that really made me feel good.)
Here are some of Cipolla’s observations which support his five basic laws:
* A person who is stupid is born that way; it is an act of Providence.
* We are frequently engaged with a person who causes us embarrassment for no explicit reason other than the person in question is stupid.
* It doesn’t matter how large or small the group, the percentage of stupid people is always the same whether the group is composed of blue-collar or white-collar workers or university professors.
* Stupid people are dangerous — the most dangerous in society — because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior.
* It would be a terrible mistake to believe that the number of stupid people in a declining society is greater than in a developing society. A developing society is plagued by the same percentage of stupid people.
* Among bureaucrats, generals, politicians and heads of state one has little difficulty in finding clear examples of basically stupid individuals whose damaging capacity was (or is) alarmingly enhanced by the position of power they occupied (or occupy). (Why does Trump come to mind?) Religious dignitaries should not be overlooked.
* A fraction of the voting population is stupid and elections offer all of them at once a magnificent opportunity to harm everyone else without gaining anything for their action
* Stupid people cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own account. Thus, the society as a whole is impoverished.
* A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places.
* …Whether you lock yourself into a monastery or decide to spend the rest of your life in the company of beautiful and lascivious women, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people — a percentage that will always surpass your expectations.
The book is illustrated with graphs which, I must admit, I am too stupid to understand.
Now, don’t you feel better, more informed after reading this? Don’t you understand your life’s experiences a little more comprehensively — why certain things happened to you?
True, you cannot do anything about the past. But you can memorize the five basic laws and be on the lookout for stupid people and avoid engaging with them in the future.
As Cipolla implies, given their numbers, they shouldn’t be hard to spot. But that same number won’t make it easy to sidestep them.
Berl Falbaum, a veteran West Bloomfield author/journalist, is the author of 11 books, including “Not One Normal Day, Trumpedia: A Tome of Lies, Scandal, Corruption and Much More.”
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