Carlo Cipolla wrote his famous book "The Basic Laws a Human Stupidity" almost 50 years ago but is more relevant now than ever before. Stupidity is not going to be out of fashion any time soon. He also wrote about clocks, guns, depressions, faith, reason, and of course – he being an economist – money. His analysis of stupidity encompasses all those other topics, and perhaps all of human experience.
He did articulate the laws in plain language. They are akin to laws of nature – a seemingly basic characteristic of the universe. Here they are:
1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
3. A stupid person 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.
4. 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.
Stupidity is not low IQ and is not scarcity of information. Likewise sin is not the absence of knowledge or a wrong set of info, but rather a wrong perspective, the right-here-right-now self-gratification while ignoring the outcome.
This is how the Message translation renders Hebrews 11:25-27:
By faith, Moses, when grown... chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff. By an act of faith, he turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king’s blind rage. He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going.
The Egypt social media of his time called him stupid, as well as the royal elite from Pharaoh entourage. But Moses CHOSE a different path, the path of righteousness, having his "eye on the One no eye can see".
Sin is a matter of choice. And the stupid thing a lot of people are fooling with is choosing wrong again and again. Choosing by having their eyes on stuff they can see and turning the blind eye on "the One no eye can see". Which is stupid, plain and simple.
