Drawing upon the insights of historian Carlo M. Cipolla, Harry Hopkins delves into the five basic laws of human stupidity in TCW, revealing their prevalence and the harm they have caused in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil,” said the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged in Flossenbürg concentration camp in April 1945. His words reflected the bloody experience of a man dedicated to resisting Nazi tyranny.
What prompted me to write about stupidity has been my Covid experience of the last three years. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that people could behave in such a way as to leave me completely baffled. I’m sure you feel the same and it is still not over. While Covid may be on the back burner, we are facing the attempted Great Reset. I wanted to try to understand what drives people to behave in such an inhuman way, and how do those in power get so many on board with their diabolical plans?
Stupidity is a complex and fascinating topic. One of the acknowledged experts is Carlo M Cipolla, an Italian economic historian who died in 2000 at the age of 78. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He wrote a book entitled The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, published in 1976 and now recognised as a milestone. He lists five basic laws:
1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
If you doubt this, think about all the people you had judged intelligent before you realised that they were behaving stupidly, idiotically and dangerously over the Covid narrative. Following its directives to the letter although it appeared incomprehensible to a sizeable minority must rank as the biggest example of mass stupidity in recent times. The fact that so many fell in line with this proves the first basic law.
2. The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
This is a fascinating observation and one that explains a lot. Like other human characteristics, stupidity is distributed roughly equally across all human beings regardless of their level of education.This goes some way to explain why, when subjected to the same levels of propaganda and nudge messaging, some individuals automatically recognised the falsehoods inherent in their government’s behaviours and others did not; why the most highly educated could fall for it, whilst the apparently less educated realised right off that it was nonsense.
3. A stupid person is one who causes losses to another person or a group of people while they gain nothing or may even suffer losses themselves.
This is the most important law and should be branded on the soul of those who try to understand stupidity. It is not a matter of IQ, but rather a lack of interpersonal relationship skills. Cipolla believes it is possible to classify people based on their behaviour. It seems to be self-evident that stupid people harm others and often themselves, whilst the behaviour of truly intelligent people is aimed not only at helping themselves but also helping others. Covid has seen a glaring example of narrative adherents behaving in a self-centred and ultimately self-destructive way by going along completely with what they were told and in so doing have seen their businesses, their jobs, their health, their relationships and in some cases their own lives destroyed in the process. Cipolla summed this up neatly when he said: “There are people who, by their illogic actions, not only cause harm to other people, but also to themselves. Such people belong to the genus of the super stupids.”
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that in any time and place and circumstance dealing and/ or hanging out with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
When the ‘three weeks to flatten the curve’ was introduced in March 2020, non-stupid people, although not buying into the Covid madness from the start, probably thought naively that this would see an end to it. They had not reckoned on the destructive and deadly dangerous nature that those who were super stupid possessed. They did not imagine this because rank stupidity at this level was beyond their understanding and comprehension and besides, stupid people’s attacks always catch intelligent folk by surprise. Stupidity is a characteristic of a person just like hair colour and is therefore not open to rational argument and persuasion. As if to bolster this truth, how many of you have tried to argue the anti-Covid case with logic, facts and common sense only to be met with derision and ridicule? Illogical actions cannot be understood using logic, which of course comes as a big disappointment when attempted by sensible, intelligent people.
5. Stupid people are the most dangerous type.
Intelligent people, however much they may disagree with you and however hostile they may be, are generally predictable. In contrast stupid people are entirely unpredictable. Which makes stupid people far more dangerous than intelligent people.
Worth reading in full.
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It must be reacting to the increase in wind turbines and Teslas.
Don’t forget Lockdowns, my sceptical friend. We have Lockdowns to thank. A much needed climate reset. There’ll be another one when all our badness requires it.
You’re both wrong! It was the masks, stopping our deadly CO2 from escaping!
By Jove, jeepy, I do believe you’ve got it!
When I first read that I thought it said “baldness” and I was (not) about to complain to the editor about being persecuted.
I considered baddity
Me too
They want to steal our money and tell us how to live to “save the planet.”
People are so gullible they disserve what they get I suppose.
And while reading this, the BBC news has an item on measuring CO2 emissions from “nodding donkey oil facilities – minor in the extreme, but hey, it keeps them all scared.
Find me a weather forecaster who will put his house on it raining or not raining a week on Tuesday.
An article from 2013.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/09/12/remember-all-those-breathy-predictions-about-an-ice-free-arctic-by-2015-nevermind/?sh=7a1822f9aa19
Embedded in there: Catastrophical ice-free summer in the artic will have happened by 2016. Tipping point! Loads of frozen methane going to be released!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice
Turns out we’re dead, Jim! Why haven’t we noticed?
Is it time to re-run the 1960s scare stories about us all freezing to death? It would be fun if someone more IT literate than me couyld research and put up a series of images and recordings of those times. Ho ho ho for Christmas!
Indeed. Search for “1963 winter freeze” in YouTube; no shortage of footage there. It was only my fourth winter, and can’r remember much about it – perhaps it did not seem unusual then!
It was unusual enough to allow a friend and I to ride our bikes across the frozen River Thames at Hampton Court!
Try Tony Heller’s realclimatescience.com
https://realclimatescience.com/1970s-global-cooling-scare/
I heard earlier on the radio news that we have to declare the Great Barrier Reef as an ecological red zone due to the desperate state of everything around the area.
But don’t I remember hearing about how the reef has bounced back from bleaching as part of its natural cycle? It’s all good, so how come we’re being told it’s a catastrophe?
Just like the Corona pandemic, climate change is a series of localized events freely jumping all around the globe in order to exploit whatever look as it could be exploited. As soon as a geographical area ceases to be useful for the narrative, it silently vanishes again.
The Pseudo Scientific Fraud, that demands compliance. But we do not live in a scientific dictatorship. Science is not decided by a show of hands form a bunch of government funded data adjusters that progressives like to call “climate scientists”. If something cannot be falsified, then it is NOT science. If a theory does not fit with observations then it is WRONG, and that is what we see. Rising levels of CO2 but not much in the way of warming. Fortunately for the pretend to save the planet people they can still pull the wool over most eyes because most people are busy with work and family life and have no time to investigate every issue. They depend on investigative journalists for that, but there are very few of those left and most News is simply activism ———But if there is one issue they should investigate it is this one, as it is about to steal all freedoms and prosperity for political purposes masquerading as science and “saving the planet”
Antarctica 80% or so of the world’s ice by volume – increasing, above the 20 year average (cue Attenfraud et al to drop charges in crevices, remote detonate them to get the ‘calving’ money shot for the sheeple on the BBC).
Arctic 1% world ice volume by weight, way above past yearly means, but was to disappear in 2014, 2016, 2020, now 2030….don’t forget that in 1972-4 US ‘scientists’ wrote furious letters to Dick Nixon to carpet bomb the Arctic with ash or nuke parts of it and save us from the coming ice age.
Greenland, roughly 15% of world’s ice volume by mass, also increasing, contrary to the doom reports issued during every single summer when there is indeed some melting ice faithfully reported by the Fake News. I guess melting ice in a summer season due to many factors including wave and current motion is deemed ‘the science’.
Fail, fail, fail. Climate bullshit and Pharma. The only $2 Trillion plus industries where you can lie, kill, deceive, and be applauded for saving the world and hang plaques and prizes on your wall.
“It’s a mystery. Why has Arctic sea ice cover roared back so quickly over the last few years?”. Isn’t one answer: as climate is essentially cyclic in nature, why wouldn’t it? The mystery would surely be if it didn’t.