Stateside with Rosalea: Fathers Day, 2009

Today is Fathers Day in the US, and my gift to Dads everywhere is a book: The Power of Stupidity, by Giancarlo Livraghi. Of course, neither gender has a monopoly on stupidity, but the English edition was published late last month, so it’s simply a matter of timing that I’m writing about it now.

By definition it’s stupid of me to let my predisposition towards liking this book overwhelm any criticism I might have. But really, my only criticism is that there is a lot of cross-referencing between chapters. and a lot of external referencing to websites. However, the entire book will eventually be available online, and the external links will become more immediately useful. The internal ones are there to aid readers who prefer to read by dipping into chapters that interest them.

I first wrote about Livraghi’s online articles at Christmastime last year, and in passing mentioned that I couldn’t always connect with his website’s server. He contacted me about the problem—which was at my end, not his—and offered to send me a copy of his book once it was published. It arrived a couple of weeks ago and I have been dog-earing it ever since.

My own father, were he alive today, would have much appreciated The Power of Stupidity. Both my parents raised me to think of actions as stupid, not people. So the fact that I once decided to check if the bar heater I’d just turned on was working by touching the bare electric wires wrapped around the bars to see if they were getting hot didn’t make me stupid per se; my parents just hoped it might have shocked a little sense into me.

No harm done, except perhaps to my ego. After all, I actually knew better than to touch bare wires with electric current running through them, and “knowing better” was a significant pillar of my self-esteem. (Quite frankly, my ego can always benefit from a dent or two.)

One of the central themes of The Power of Stupidity is that, while little harm usually comes of the moments of stupidity we all have as individuals—unless as individuals we have power over others, either directly or indirectly (as when we’re behind the steering wheel, texting)—stupidity en masse is an extremely destructive force. The cover illustration by Alberto Maderna is of Kali, a ferocious form of the Hindu “Divine Mother” and the weapons in her many hands, along with her necklace of skulls, reinforces that theme.

Although the book need not be read cover to cover, instead being dipped into at the chapters that capture the reader’s interest, I chose to read it that way. The first few chapters serve as an introduction and roundup of other writers’ thoughts on stupidity, and on why “stupidity” isn’t studied in the same way that “intelligence” is.

Livraghi then presents his Stupidology Graph, and his Three Corollaries, which are:

1. In each of us there is a factor of stupidity, which is always larger than we suppose.
2. When the stupidity of one person combines with the stupidity of others, the impact grows geometrically—i.e. by multiplication not by addition, of the individual stupidity factors.
3. The combination of intelligence in different people is more difficult than the combination of stupidity.

I like this way of looking at stupidity as a “factor”. It changes it from something to be mocked, or exploited, or feared—all of which Livraghi writes about in different chapters—into something that can be recognized and taken into account. Recognizing our own individual potential for stupidity goes a long way towards recognizing that we’re open to exploitation and manipulation simply by our natural inclination to find comfort and resonance in group stupidity.

In a recent context, Livraghi’s Second Corollary, applies equally to the people who thought they could buy a home with no down-payment and an interest-only mortgage that would reset to much higher rates later; to the mortgage brokers and lending institutions that were encouraging those loans; to the brokerages that were handling the slice-and-dice securities that were then created; to the regulators that turned a blind eye; and to the successive Congresses and Presidents who let the stupidity continue.

One chapter I will be dipping into again and again is Chapter 30 – Antidotes and Prevention. Curiosity, intuition, creativity, experience, simplicity, humor and irony, doubt and yet more doubt, generosity, listening, passion, and the ability to learn from our mistakes are all listed there and briefly expounded upon.

As the publisher, Andrea Monti, says in his preface:

The Power of Stupidity is not a how-to, or a mere collection of anecdotes about idiots or mind-impaired representatives of power, business, or politics. Should I summarize in one sentence the content of this book, I would say: food for thought and call for action.

There is currently no US distributor, but it can be ordered—and shipped free of charge worldwide—from the publisher’s website. Eventually, it may be available in full online—the 2008 Italian version is on Google Books here. Some chapters from the English version are online at the author’s website http://gandalf.it/stupid/book.htm.

Happy Fathers Day!

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE—

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