Posts Tagged → idiots

On Idiots (III)

All idiots are actively and enthusiastically idiots.

Imbecility is, among other things, a profession de foi.  Especially for the educated ones. They all live with the illusion of depth and omnipotence. So they talk loud and a lot. For the most part, they talk sports, nutrition trends, entertainment and sexist subtleties. They also love to exchange inconsistent arguments and re-launch clichés about life, health, and politics.

Commonly, they are vocal and critical about everything and everybody.

When they have to confront someone who is very different from them, they remain perplexed.

For a moment, the change of perspective is the end of the world. A conversation with someone who is inexplicably uninterested in their views comes as a shock. „The Otherness” leaves them in a short, but tragic state of frustrated speechlessness.

But once they overcome the initial difficulties, they have a new goal in life: to nullify that enigmatic difference between them and The Other!

For this grand purpose, they show some teeth and muscles. They laugh, bark, sniff, fawn, drool, snarl, yelp, bite. They’ll do literally everything that’s humanly and doggingly possible to affirm their status as qualified holders of  power and knowledge.

Once they start to make threats, there is no way you can escape their violence. Because one is not stupid enough if not malevolent enough.

Active, enthusiastic vileness makes a dummy grow into a fully stupid man, into someone who aggressively plucks you out of yourself and puts you in the shoes of his victim.

But how do they do it? After all, they are idiots.

All educated idiots have developed sly manners of getting what they want.

For instance, they insistently ask you the wrong questions until you end up playing a part that has never been yours. They instinctively RE-organize YOU in a manner that suits THEIR goals. They turn you into an „erroneous something”, into a kaleidoscopic monstrosity with indistinct opinions and weak arguments, into someone saying „no” when meaning „yes”, and „yes” when meaning „no”, into someone who has no longer access to one’s essential concerns, into someone who can safely be called a bleeding, pitiful prey.

They enslaved you with their vileness. And so there’s no other victim worthier of pity than the victim of an idiot.

Trust me with this.

(Foto: taurusarmed.net)

On Idiots (Part II)

One of the most serious challenges a writer encounters is that of creating a credibly stupid character.

Curiously, it takes less talent and less wit to make a character act, talk and look smart.

Just to think how difficult it is to place a comma or to write a good dialogue! Everything you lay on your piece of paper is so miserably hard that it borders on the impossible.

Under such terrible circumstances, when everything stands or falls with whether or not this comma or that word should really be there, plausibly depicting an idiot borders on geniality. A genius writer has to master those hundreds of little nuances that would tell nothing by themselves, but eventually would show the reader a genuine idiot, in full bloom.

Indeed, there is nothing naive or shaky about the process of making a fictional idiot talk and act like a real one.

Every delusional writer can write witty sophisms and lovely essays about life, death, love, or sex. But digging right in the middle of the „crater”, where the most tragic human mystery lies like a sleeping monster waking up starved every time you try to get close to him, that is hard. That takes some serious narrative voice.

Besides, the more you explain stupidity, the less you’ll illustrate it. And the more you let it „talk” by itself, the less you’ll have it noticed by your readers.

It is hard to create (and nurture) an alliance with your readers when you intend to depict an idiot. Most of them do not feel like giving extra-thoughts to anything involving idiots and idiocy; some of them are afraid of not ending up identifying themselves with someone’s stupid behaviour, so they purposely fail to engage in deep analysis of certain fictional scenes.

If this was the case in regard to good literature, something extraordinary happens in mediocre literature: everyone acts, talks and looks smart – from sparkling quick comments made by some main male character to the dumb depth of some professional blonde, everything transpires epistemology.

The mediocre fictional world is poisoned with wittiness, just like the Hollywood movies are poisoned with beauty. As expected, both are fakes.

The mediocre writer shows his readers a world free of idiots. Building one, is beyond his mastery. Needing one, is beyond his reasoning and belief. That is why the alliance between the mediocre writer and his readers functions perfectly. Between beautiful minds, there are no misunderstandings.

All in all, I think there are two conclusions to be drawn from this Sunday’s text:

  1. The smart guy of a mediocre novel makes the perfect idiot for a respectable novel.
  2. Much like in real life, if you want to earn a reputation as a reliable idiot, you really should be looking for a reliable audience.

Do you see what I mean?

(Foto: yellowrosesgarden.com)

On Idiots (part I)

I have this extravagant need to document idiocy and people who suffer from this “condition”. Actually, to tell you the truth, I have quite a few notebooks. You never know when they come in handy.
We should all reserve our right to talk about imbecility, to challenge it, to exorcise it, or complain about it. It is neither arrogant nor masochistic, it is simply hygienic.
If each of us would listen to our hearts and sincerely approach one or two sorts of stupidity every day, then we shall live in a better world.

Today I want to talk about “base” players.

There is an enigmatic connection between stupidity and immorality. You knew it, right? And if you did not know it, you must have felt it.
Yes, stupidity often borders on evilness. I am not talking about Myshkin or windmills. I am not talking about those subtle ways of turning morality into a wonderful – yet absolutely necessary – paradox. For more of these, just read Cervantes, Dostoevsky, or the Bible. Or watch Derek on Netflix.

Today I am only talking about that feeble-minded man next door who lacks perspective. And obviously, he has no idea that he lacks it.

So he cheats on his wife over and over again without really intending to harm her; he lies for his own good over and over again without really intending to be dishonest; he is not sophisticatedly evil, but plainly lousy; he cannot place his deeds nowhere in the intricate chain of causes and effects; his notion of „consequence” is distorted, vague, or inexistent.

The imbecile ignores or violates the rules out of imbecility (one may delicately call it unawareness), but also out of disinterest and lack of comprehensiveness. He has what one might call “a simple mind” and so he simply cannot see the point in doing things that contradicts or diminishes his immediate wellbeing.

His non-programmatic approach of life makes him weak as an ant, stupid as a turkey, and abject as a despot. He’s not a “sacred fool” unable to adjust to the versatile rules of society, but a „base player” who plays the way he wants it to play, regardless of how horrific his music sounds. After all, he has no sense of music, just an instinct for rhythm.

We cannot make much of this world without a properly exercised comprehensiveness. And so it happens that kindness is comprehensive, dynamic, and very much aware of itself.

The dialectics of morality is more complicated than astrophysics. And it is not for the feeble-minded. It is an abyssal affair we often get lost in; which only goes to show that we have not quite fallen out of grace.

I will not let the „base” player rule your Sunday. I’m giving you The Bass Player: Ronnie Lane.

(Foto: cnet.com)