6
votes
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla
Link information
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- Authors
- Carlo M. Cipolla, ☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣, Eleni, Mochama Nyamwega, Ryan Boissonneault, JohnnyBear, The Lazy Reader, Alexa, Sine, Prakriti, France, Kusaimamekirai, Michael Richards, Udit Nair, Isabel, thisisnotlin, Abhi, Ned Frederick, Sandro Mancuso, Alis, Brian Richards, Milan, Pep Bonet, Steve Ellerhoff, Ilarja, G.M. Burrow, Steven, Ana, Fruzsina, Cody Kaufmann, Jude
- Word count
- 63 words
Has anyone read this book/article/pamphlet? I saw an episode The Voluntary Life about some of the ideas Cipolla presents and how people underestimate the prevalence and danger that stupid people present to society (for a special, perhaps unintuitive, definition of "stupid").
I've not read the book or listened to that episode, so I'd love to know: what's this "special, perhaps unintuitive, definition of 'stupid'?" Do we really gain anything by using an ableist term over being more specific about what's actually meant by that word in this context?
Paraphrased, it sounds like the author's definition of a stupid person is someone who intentionally does things which harm/degrade others, while gaining no benefit for (and possibly even harming) themself in the process.
Also, the book is satirical, so the word choice seems appropriate. As one commenter put it,
"It's so tongue-in-cheek (and, ahem, true) that I can't find it in myself to be politically correct enough to get offended at the language or blunt phrasing."
Watch the YouTube video I linked to get an idea, but the premise of this theory is that it has to do with how people interact socially and economically. Under this definition "stupid" people are differentiated from "bandits", "helpless", and "intelligent" people based on two dimensions: benefit to themselves and benefit to others.
I don't think there is any more appropriate English word that captures the actual concept here. One could maybe call this concept "social stupidity" or maybe "socioeconomic stupidity"? In any case, I think you're missing the point about Cipolla's ideas if you're focusing on the terminology rather than the idea per se. I also don't think, historically nor in common contemporary usage, that the term "stupid" is ableist, but if you can explain how the terminology is offensive I'm open to changing my view on that.
I agree, I think this is best expressed as "incompetent assholes" or "incompetent jerks"; that is, they are not "competent jerks", or "bandits", who take advantage of others for personal gain; they are not "incompetent patricians", or "helpless", who fail to do good only because of execution, not intent; and they are not "competent patricians", who do good successfully.
I don't see that the concept of general intelligence has much to do with this at all. Some very "intelligent" people are incompetent in doing good, because they don't understand the social system in which they operate (Bill Gates, for example), and some very competent people (such as many artisans and laborers, or specifically in the context of doing good, many people who volunteer at non-profits) are judged as "unintelligent" in many ways. General intelligence is not a useful concept here.
I call this framing ableist because it conflates intellect with morality. It implies that "stupid" people - that is, people with intellectual disabilities - are also uncaring, or even evil. I call the term ableist because it's a slur; it is a negative term which singles out a generally oppressed group of people.
Yeah, the specific framing of “stupid” and “intelligent” here is using completely independent dimensions from inherent qualities like the colloquial senses of stupid/intelligent which have to do with intrapersonal capabilities or qualities. So, I don’t think this is ableist. Someone who is disabled could be perfectly intelligent according to this framework.
So why use words which are, in their colloquial meaning, definitely tied to ability?
I can’t speak to the motivations of the author on that. I don’t know. Just because people use words in a nonstandard way isn’t necessarily a justification for rejecting their ideas out of hand, in my opinion. I find this socioeconomic concept interesting even if I don’t think “stupid” and “intelligent” are ideal terms to refer to it.
Absolutely! But I do think it's worth noting, because it speaks to the disregard the author - and many people - have for the intellectually disabled. One could not, say, use the word "tranny" in one's work, then say it was being used in a "nonstandard way" without expecting some pushback for that decision.
There are a lot of words we use every day in many different contexts that have some rather off-putting origins. If we start cutting out words based on their original contexts and connotations, we would be throwing out a lot more words than many people realize. Cutting out words from vocabulary based on their origins can be like chopping down a healthy tree because one late branch is dead.
At some point, it's better to reframe and recontextualize existing words into new meanings and meanings while stripping away the chaff ones that cannot be so easily exorcised. Reclaiming language has been pretty successful, and some words have even had their meanings fundamentally flipped by coincidence.
Sure. I'm with you in principle - but where do we draw the line? Obviously we draw it somewhere; there are plenty of words that most people - and especially institutions - would not consider it acceptable to reframe in this way. For instance, "fuck", most racial slurs, "faggot", and so forth.
So, I'd like to interrogate why many people don't feel that words like "stupid" (and "cripple", per a discussion I had on Tildes ages ago) fall into that bucket. What makes them different?
That's the thing. You can't really draw a clean line, especially in English which is a bastardization of many other languages crammed together.
Instead of looking at all those words which are clearcut examples, here's one that has a ton of baggage that many people don't even know about: vagina. Its etymology and recontextualization is so much more misogynistic than many people realize and yet that is the actual medical term for the female sexual organ. Its origins come from a Roman comedic metaphor but then, when appropriated into English, it became a clinical term with an extra element of misogyny since it went from a blue joke in a much older culture to the definitive medical term in contemporary English. How do we even begin stripping that word away from the English language, especially after it's been a such a clinical term for most of its modern life that all of its baggage was lost in transit?
I suppose that a rough litmus test can be drawn up regarding the intended use of words and the trends that they have been following over the last 10+ years. Slurs and derogatory terms are easy fails because they would not be slurs or derogatory if they weren't used with highly negative connotations purposefully. But if words are not often used with certain baggage in any purposeful sense and instead the links to the negative historical connotations need to be exposed after the fact, that may fall on the other side of this litmus test.
I think this is a great analysis! This is, of course, a story that has repeated many times; there's some evidence that even the simple "bad" is etymologically descended from "baeddel", a slur against effeminate men (likely gay men and transgender women).
The difference is that these are words - "vagina" and "bad" - have already gone through this process of recontextualization. The colloquial use is the non-slur definition.
In this case, we're talking about taking a word which is explicitly a slur against the intellectually disabled, and discussing whether we should begin, now, to use it differently - in a way contrary to the colloquial usage, and thus in a way that we will have to explain every time. I'll return to my original question: what do we gain by doing so? Why not say "incompetent jerks" or something similar? That expresses the idea better, and doesn't bring the whole legacy and baggage of intelligence and ableism into the equation at all.