Carlo Cipolla - The basic laws of human stupidity
Here you can read online Carlo Cipolla - The basic laws of human stupidity full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2011, publisher: Il Mulino, genre: Romance novel. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:The basic laws of human stupidity
- Author:
- Publisher:Il Mulino
- Genre:
- Year:2011
- Rating:3 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
The basic laws of human stupidity: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The basic laws of human stupidity" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Carlo Cipolla: author's other books
Who wrote The basic laws of human stupidity? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
The basic laws of human stupidity — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The basic laws of human stupidity" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
The stupid are all around us: they are in every place, in every class, ready to cause damage to others and naturally (they are stupid, are they not?) to themselves. The stupid form the most dangerous category of human beings. Woe betide those who underestimate them. The historian Carlo M. Cipolla wrote this essay in a constructive effort to detect, know, and thus possibly neutralize one of the most powerful, dark forces which hinder the growth of human welfare and happiness. And if it then proves impossible to save ourselves from stupidity, at least we can take vengeance by laughing at it.
ISBN 978-88-15-23381-3
ISBN 978-88-15-30718-7
Originally written in English, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity was published for the first time in 1976 in a numbered and private edition bearing the unlikely imprint of Mad Millers.
The author believed that his short essay could only be fully appreciated in the language in which it had been written. He consequently long declined any proposal to have it translated. Only in 1988 did he accept the idea of its publication in an Italian version as part of the volume entitled Allegro ma non troppo , together with the essay Pepper, Wine (and Wool) as the Dynamic Factors of the Social and Economic Development of the Middle Ages , also originally written in English and published privately by Mad Millers for Christmas 1973.
Allegro ma non troppo has been a bestseller both in Italy and in all the countries where translated versions have appeared. Yet, with an irony that the author of these laws would have appreciated, it has never been published in the language in which it was first written.
Thus, almost a quarter of century since publication of Allegro ma non troppo , this in fact is the first edition that makes The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity available in its original version.
The private edition of 1976 was preceded by the following publishers note written by the author himself:
The Mad Millers printed only a limited number of copies of this book which addresses itself not to stupid people but to those who on occasion have to deal with such people. To add that none of those who will receive this book can possibly fall in area S of the basic graph (figure 1) is therefore a work of supererogation. Nevertheless, like most works of supererogation, it is better done that left undone. For, as the Chinese philosopher said: Erudition is the source of universal wisdom: but that does not prevent it from being an occasional cause of misunderstanding between friends.
Human affairs are admittedly in a deplorable state. This, however, is no novelty. As far back as we can see, human affairs have always been in a deplorable state. The heavy load of troubles and miseries that human beings have to bear as individuals as well as members of organized societies is basically a by-product of the most improbable and I would dare say, stupid way in which life was set up at its very inception.
After Darwin we know that we share our origin with the lower members of the animal kingdom, and worms as well as elephants have to bear their daily share of trials, predicaments, and ordeals. Human beings, however, are privileged in so far as they have to bear an extra load an extra dose of tribulations originated daily by a group of people within the human race itself. This group is much more powerful than the Mafia, or the Military Industrial Complex, or International Communism it is an unorganized unchartered group which has no chief, no president, no by-laws and yet manages to operate in perfect unison, as if guided by an invisible hand, in such a way that the activity of each member powerfully contributes to strengthen and amplify the effectiveness of the activity of all other members. The nature, character and behaviour of the members of this group are the subject of the following pages.
Let me point out at this juncture that most emphatically this little book is neither a product of cynicism nor an exercise in defeatism no more than a book on microbiology. The following pages are in fact the result of a constructive effort to detect, know and thus possibly neutralize one of the most powerful, dark forces which hinder the growth of human welfare and happiness.
The First Basic Law of Human Stupidity asserts without ambiguity that
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation[].
At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are ones estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:
a ) People whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.
b ) Day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in ones activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.
The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a population by the symbol .
[] The compilers of the Testament were aware of the First Basic Law and they paraphrased it when they asserted that stultorum infinitus est numerus but they indulged in poetic exaggeration. The number of stupid people cannot be infinite because the number of living people is finite.
Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations that all men are naturally equal and if some are more equal than the others, this is attributable to nurture and not to nature.
I take an exception to this general view. It is my firm conviction, supported by years of observation and experimentation, that men are not equal, that some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Similar books «The basic laws of human stupidity»
Look at similar books to The basic laws of human stupidity. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Discussion, reviews of the book The basic laws of human stupidity and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.