Worzels World - The Power of Human Stupidity

 

As a child I thought the world a crazy incomprehensible place. Now with age and experience I realise that, as is so often the case, my first impressions were correct.

‘Never underestimate the power of human stupidity’ said author Robert Heinlein. I thought it good advice at the time that I read it. It stuck with me. If you have smart children tell them this, they need to know. If they really are smart they will find out sooner or later anyway but I think it is better understood sooner rather than later.

It is a truism applicable on both the general and individual scale. I have often been told that I am a clever fellow. I have no reason to disbelieve those who have told me this, especially as my mother was one of the first to do so, and as every child is told, ‘mother knows best’. Yet I have been guilty of gross stupidity over the years. I confess to the world that I am not the clever intellectual I appear to be but am rather, as many have suspected all along, a happy moron: Happy is the moron/He doesn't give a damn/I wish I was a moron/My God, perhaps I am.

Likewise in dealing with the world and its inhabitants if you expect stupidity you will seldom be disappointed.

I admitted in a previous column my lack of understanding regards the intricacies of problems besetting the Middle East. What concerns me more is that as a New Zealander, the product of many generations of kiwi heritage, I struggle to come to grips with what is happening here.

We are governed by people who are demonstrable failures, liars and cheats to boot. Somehow right and wrong have become confused with legal and illegal. No longer do the contrived laws passed by our inept politicians align with what is right or what is just.

The emperors, and there are far too many of them, have no clothes and no money to buy any. The kingdom is bankrupt, in thrall to foreign powers, yet our many emperors still pay themselves lavishly at the peasants expense all the while reassuring everybody that all is well. Anyone, even the very stupid, need only take an objective look around to know that all is a long way from well. The majority of us simply shrug it all off and refuse to acknowledge the awful truth.

Our politicians, surely the most stupid and venal of any throughout New Zealand's history, can't run a coal company, can't organise a payroll, bailed out private Investors in South Canterbury Finance to the tune of $16 billion but passed a Validation Bill to burden innocent ratepayers with debt caused by illegal back door dealings and incompetent management, local and national.

Despite such obvious incompetence they are still sufficiently shameless to tell us what a good job they are doing running the country. And incredibly there are still those that believe them. The one thing they have got right is they have not underestimated the power of human stupidity.

I expect if government organised a piss-up in a brewery the beer would be flat and the chiller broken. There would however be a glowing press release telling us what sterling work they are doing addressing our binge drinking culture. They are caught lying to us and employing reprehensible underhand tactics in order to retain political power all at public expense – and

the public the courts and the media say little and do nothing. This is disappointing as I think the spectacle of a dozen or so politicians swinging from a gibbet would greatly improve public morale, increase business confidence, and may even inspire the remaining public servants to actually serve the public who pay their generous salaries. We need only look at the 'smacking bill' and the privatisation of our public assets to see in what regard the will of the public is held.

Has the general public been dumbed down by exposure to successive episodes of Shortland Street? Or is it that even without the muddling influences of modern life that humans have always been stupid but for the most part too proud to admit it? If, as is asserted, we get the government we deserve, then taking an objective view of the government we've got we must resolve again to never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

prof_worzel@hotmail.com


Happy is the moron
He doesn't give a damn
I wish I was a moron
My God, perhaps I am.

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