By Alex Byanyik
In his article titled, “Undiluted Truth,” published on the Leadership newspaper of November 1, 2020, Wole Olaoye made an interesting reference to ‘Carlo Cipolla’s “Five Laws of Stupidity,” which you can ignore only at your peril.’
I would encourage you to read his piece, which I found intellectually stimulating, even though I am not in total agreement with the issues raised about the U.S. President, Donald Trump. So, I won’t bother talking about the issues he raised here.
However, his article, along with the recent happenings in Nigeria, especially the fall-out of the #EndSARS protests, inspired me to write about something that has been on my mind for far too long.
I’d written short messages on it on my Facebook page severally in the past.
Stupidity is an interesting weakness, because most people suffering from it hardly know that they’re stupid.
They believe that everyone else is stupid but them. That’s one of the reasons we have a society that takes one step forward and then takes, at least, 10 steps backward – we shall soon leave this behind, as a nation.
We see this glaring weakness mostly among arrogant people. Those who think that they are the smartest fellow around town, those who think that their airs and graces are unreachable by any other person, those who think that if it’s not their way, everyone else, in the words of the Nigerian rap star, M.I, can go hug transformer.
As young people, we’re mostly full of energy and stupidity.
However, as we age and get some education, along with life dealing us some punches, we should begin to walk out of that stupidity.
But alas, how painful it has been to see some really stupid people irrespective of age and educational qualification.
They are all around us, as stated in one of the citations by Olaoye.
I am not a psychologist or anything like that, but I have studied a little bit of it to know that all the world’s stupidity rests predominantly on one thing, arrogance.
Arrogance, to me, is the most dangerous of all human weaknesses. No wonder even God hates it. 1 Samuel 2:3, Romans 12: 3, Isaiah 13: 11 and there are many others like this in the Bible for Christians.
In this world of information, it is also easy to research from places that would have been a tall other to do so.
‘And walk not on the earth with conceit and arrogance [al-Isra’ 17: 37].’ I believe there are many more verses in the Quran for Muslims concerning this too. The question is, how come the world is plagued by this thing called arrogance, the mother and father of stupidity?
How come it manifests its ugly face in almost every aspects of our lives?
A politician who thinks that he can do anything, anyhow he likes just because he happens to be in power is simply arrogant – he acts as though such political office belongs to his ancestors that will not be occupied by anyone else.
A pastor or imam who thinks he can talk to people as though he were God himself is simply arrogant – for this, sometimes, instead of spiritually enriching the people, he leads them astray.
A teacher who thinks that his students cannot learn a thing on their own is simply arrogant – a time comes when the student can evaluate what he was being taught by the teacher.
A parent who thinks that he has to make every decision for his children, even when they are grown up, is simply arrogant – a time comes when your child has to judge between good and bad for himself.
These and many more are the fruits of arrogance, stupidity that has been driving the world crazy.
When we lie to people, we are arrogant and assume that they are stupid, so they would accept our lies as the truth.
But time easily gives us out for our stupidity, because lies can’t stand the taste of time.
When we are arrogant, we feel intellectually superior to others, or assume we are more intelligent than they are, so most time we fall into the temptation of trying to manipulate others, thinking that they are stupid.
Some of them just look at us and smile and guess who’s truly stupid?
When we make mistakes, as arrogant people, we hate to be seen as fallen people. We think that by admitting our mistakes, we would look stupid before others.
But real stupidity comes in arrogantly defending our stupidity. We only miss on the opportunity to improve our capacities when we try to put a bold face on our stupidity.
This single word, arrogance, can be treated in millions of volumes of books. I simply can’t exhaust it here. But I believe the little I have been able to point out here can inspire someone to see how arrogance manifests in stupidity, and how it has stunted our growth and development as a people.
May we have the humility to give ourselves the chance to identify our own stupidity, and possibly have the courage to accept it in order for us to overcome it.
Our families, our democracy, our governance will grow and develop effectively for the benefit of all.
I would like to end this piece by quoting the late Dr. Myles Munroe, “In marriage, if one is losing, both are losing.” Please have the liberty to interpret ‘marriage’ here as the various systems and, or institutions of our society.
A deliberate thought about this can give a kiss of death to our burden of stupidity.
.Byanyiko, a script writer, filmmaker and cinematographer writes from Abuja.