How To Remain Calm When Idiots Ruin Everything

Ask a Stoic takes on Idiocy

“Jessica” Asks:

I’m surrounded by idiots. At work. In my extended family. That idiot on the HOA board. Managing idiots is half my life. 

I need to work on this because it’s making me miserable. I’m a good little Stoic girl, so I know I need to become ok with them being idiots and making life worse for everyone. But it’s one thing to say that and another to calmly watch them destroy good things.

You want examples? I’ve got examples:

• My sister and her husband make bank. Lots more than us. But they consistently live beyond their means and have credit card debt. They have so many expensive toys. Vacations all the time. Now they’ve asked me for a loan, and I know if I say no they’ll hit up my parents who can’t afford to help but will be guilted into doing it. 

• My boss doesn’t know how to manage people, and it makes us inefficient and miserable. He’s perfected an idiot’s brew of indecision on the important stuff and intolerable micromanagement of minutiae. We waste our days in endless meetings that keep us from important work. How can he possibly be so bad at his job?

• I’m trying to do something good in my city and instead of helping, the idiots just throw up red tape and complain. The most opinionated people are those who know the least about the subject! 

Help meeeeeee not hate them!

Andrew’s Answer:

Humanity is stupid like the weather is bad. Intermittently, but inevitably. 

Sometimes it’s summer in humanville and we’re fooled into thinking competent people abound. Then winter comes and we see that even brilliant minds can be full of foolish notions.

This is not my unique pessimistic take, but a precept as old as time. 

It’s in the Bible: “Stultorum infinitus est numerus,” or, “The number of stupid people is infinite (Ecclesiastes 1:15).”

Shakespeare remarked on it: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” he has Puck proclaim in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Being mad about stupid, ignorant, self-centered people is like being mad at clouds. Yes, sunny weather would be nice, but sometimes it rains. What use will it do you to bemoan the fact?

But if this consolation was enough you wouldn’t have written. So let’s explore stupidity a bit.

What Is Stupidity? 

In his short book “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity,” economist and philosopher Carlo M. Cipolla says that, “a stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and possibly incurring losses.”

So stupid actions are lose/lose propositions. Slightly better are zero-sum win/lose actions, like the thief who steals to the detriment of a victim. The only truly wise actions are win/win. 

With this frame, we see that the stupid are worthy of pity. They sow chaos and work against their own interests at the same time. They’re like the drowning man who overpowers his rescuer and sinks them both. 

The Opposite of Stupidity

Cipolla implies that the opposite of stupidity is intelligence, but I’m not sure. He notes that we’re as likely to meet a stupid doctor or lawyer as we are a stupid janitor or fast food worker; stupid people are often capable of impressive cognitive feats.

So I suspect the opposite of stupidity is wisdom, not intelligence. Wisdom lets us cast aside prejudice and bias to see ourselves, the world, and all its people with clear eyes.

We’re all at least intermittently stupid because we suffer from bias and distorted thinking. The wise are simply better at seeing through bullshit — their own and the world’s. My guess is you can think of more than a few stupid things you’ve said and done. 

Yet many people become wiser as they age; usually because they’re open to growth. Often they have a patient teacher who endures their stupidity while demonstrating a better way. 

“Men exist for the sake of one another,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself in his journal, Meditations. “Teach them then or bear with them.”

It’s good advice, and a way to focus your attention away from the infuriating stupidity and toward finding a way to help. We can improve the world, but also our fellow humans.

Kindness is invincible, and it can be wielded against stupidity as well as maliciousness. 

Your sister’s spendthrift ways aren’t wise, but does she know how to budget in a way that will let he pay down her debt? Could you volunteer to teach her how it’s done without being condescending? Could you be like a Socratic AI? Would you try to be a bit utopian?

Setting The Right Expectations:

I suspect you and Marcus Aurelius would get along. 

You’re both under the impression that you’re drowning in stupidity and ignorance. Undoubtedly there’s an element of truth to this. 

But I suggest you make Meditations your new best friend, because Marcus is up to something impressive in that book. It’s full of him using spiritual exercises to reframe the actions of the selfish, small-minded, stupid people he has to deal with into wiser, more palatable hot takes. 

Have Meditations by your bedside. Have it on your desk to flip through at work when your boss is in peak stupidity mode. 

When you wake up in the morning, read from it: 

“Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother…Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1