It is not that I am feeling ungenerous today, it’s because I’m feeling tired. I’m tired of much of humanity’s stupidity. Yet this tiredness is in itself stupid, because, as the German poet Schiller wrote in his The Maid of Orleans, “against stupidity, the gods themselves battle in vain”. But since this is the silly season, I hope I will be forgiven if I indulge in venting my pent-up frustration on human stupidity.

Although even somebody like Einstein put in his tuppence worth (“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former”), it is my firm opinion that the number-one world-class expert on stupidity is Carlo Cipolla (1922-2000), an Italian professor of history of economics who wrote the classic treatise on the subject called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. You can download it, in PDF and for free, from the internet.

I think Cipolla’s definition of a stupid person is particularly useful: “A stupid person,” he writes, “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.”

Keeping this definition in mind, one can look around and identify the people who belong to this category. One wouldn’t do this out of meanness of spirit, but out of a need for self-preservation and to try and enlighten others.

The first basic law states that “always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation”. That does not mean that the stupid belong to only one sector of society. Education or social class have nothing to do with stupidity. Indeed, the second basic law tells us that “the probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person”. You can find the same percentage of stupid people in all human groupings, from a cohort of blue-collar workers to a gang of Nobel laureates. Stupidity “is not affected by time, space, race, class or any other socio-cultural or historical variable,” writes Cipolla.

Now the problem is that those among us who are not stupid find themselves at a huge disadvantage when having to deal with stupid people. Another basic law states: “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.” Admittedly, this seems to imply that, as a matter of fact, all of us are slaves to stupidity. But since this is the silly season, let’s continue with the suspension of our disbelief.

The attack made by the stupid person is so stupid and irrational that the non-stupid person is “generally caught by surprise by the attack”, and “even when one becomes aware of the attack, one cannot organize a rational defence, because the attack itself lacks any rational structure”.

Make no mistake. The fifth and last basic law of human stupidity warns us that “a stupid person is the most dangerous type of person”. Why is this? Cipolla explains: “A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit. The result of the action of a perfect bandit is purely and simply a transfer of wealth and/or welfare. After the action of a perfect bandit, the bandit has a plus on his account which plus is exactly equivalent to the minus he has caused to another person. Society as a whole is neither better nor worse off. If all members of a society were perfect bandits, that society would remain stagnant but there would be no major disaster. The whole business would amount to massive transfers of wealth and welfare in favour of those who would take action. If all members of society would take action in regular turns, not only society as a whole but also individuals would find themselves in a perfectly steady state of no change. When stupid people are at work, the story is very different. Stupid people cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own account. Thus society as a whole is impoverished.”

Human groupings can be subdivided into four categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandits, and the stupid. Have a look at the figure here. It explains the consequences of the actions of different types of people, whether they accrue benefits for themselves and/or others, or whether they wreak damage to themselves and/or others. The ideal behaviour, needless to say, is that of the intelligent person whose actions are of benefit to themselves and to others. But ideals are ideals, and the real world is full of bandits, helpless people, and the most dreaded category of all: the stupid...

Now let us consider some examples of stupidity. The most offensive one that comes to mind right now is the stupidity which led to the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy. It seems that this was a foretold disaster. A number of intelligent people – engineers and businessmen among others – had been insisting for years that it was obvious the bridge would not last and that Genoa needed to build a bypass to divert the heavy traffic. Twenty-five million vehicles crossed over that bridge every year, including mastodontic trucks pulling containers coming from France: the collapse was bound to happen because of the particular characteristics of the bridge. But stupid politicians pandering to the stupidity of certain voters repeatedly blocked the bypass plan... and now at least 41 people have paid for that stupidity with their lives. (All of a sudden, it stops being the silly season, doesn’t it?)

Let’s consider more stupidity connected with roads and driving. There seems to be a movement in Malta in favour of legalising the recreational use of drugs. This is, to my mind, the nec plus ultra of stupidity. According to cannabissupport.com.au, driving under the influence of cannabis increases the chances of having a car crash by ... 300 per cent! Only the stupid ones can delude themselves that people would not drive under the influence (of cannabis). We already have to deal with those who drink and drive; why be stupid and add more headaches.

The current urge to widen or build more roads, to uproot mature trees, to destroy the natural and urban environment is another candidate for the Stupidity Academy Award. Only stupid people do not understand that ruining the environment means killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. I’m referring not only to tourism, but also to the healthy psychological, and therefore economic, benefits of a beautiful environment.

The barbaric destruction of traditional buildings to have them replaced by soulless brutalist or other raw “modernist” architecture is not only insane but also extraordinarily stupid. The nonchalance with which our urban architectural heritage is treated (keep in mind that, at the moment, the Barriera outside Valletta and Fort Ricasoli are literally collapsing into the sea) is so stupid, you feel that there are no words to express your dismay, distress, and disbelief.

Cipolla’s treatise is an eye-opener. “In a society which performs poorly,” he writes, “the stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members to become more active and take more actions.

“Whether one considers classical, or medieval, or modern or contemporary times one is impressed by the fact that any country moving uphill has its unavoidable fraction of stupid people. However, the country moving uphill also has an unusually high fraction of intelligent people who manage to keep the fraction of stupid people at bay and at the same time produce enough gains for themselves and the other members of the community to make progress a certainty. In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is still constant; however in the remaining population one notices among those in power an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity and among those not in power an equally alarming growth in the number of helpless individuals. Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the stupid fraction and makes decline a certainty. And the country goes to Hell.”

 

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The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity appeared in a book called Allegro ma non troppo (1988). There is another essay in that book dealing with the role of spices (and pepper in particular) in the economic development of the Middle Ages. Like The Basic Laws, the tone of this other essay too is allegro, ma non troppo. Cipolla describes how medieval Genoese and Venetian merchants made a fortune by importing spices from the Orient. But, he adds, the role of these merchants in the rise of capitalism is underrated by historians, because these merchants were Catholic whereas the dominant attitude is to give more weight to the Weberian narrative of the importance of the Protestant ethic for the spirit of capitalism. Was Cipolla referring to the sense of superiority expressed by the Germanic, Protestant North toward, the Latin, Catholic South? Could Matteo Salvini be right when he says that the fiscal austerity rules imposed by the North on the South are to blame for the Genoa tragedy?

Tellingly, Marx compared the problems faced by English capitalists of his day to the problems faced by the Genoese and Venetians at the time of their decline.