Well, there are idiots and idiots.

I was very pleased to read Bart’s post “On Ignorant Critics...” since it’s a question that somehow embraces us all. (1)
Are Christians so blithely ignorant of themselves and lacking in introspection?
How come? I’m completely shocked.
After all the word “Cretin” is commonly thought to come from the Swiss-French dialectical term “crestin.” In standard French, Christian and “crestin” are very close: cretin for “cretin,” and chretien for “Christian.”
But I won’t use the word “ignorant” since we’re all ignorant of something, even though we are not all ignorant of the same things. Other words come up to my mind: stupid, idiotic, cretinous, foolish, and so on.
But not all those words have the same meaning.

Stupidity is very hard to define. It’s more likely of two kinds, the first being the countryside honest and dull behavior, the second -the most dangerous- the intellectual stupidity, the failure of reasoning, the fake cultural innuendo, the liberal neutrality.
In the latter, culture has a prevalence, so the stupid is necessarily very acculturated, the more educated the marrier.
The first one is not so terrible, she (see, I am already also using inclusive language) is the typical village idiot. Her innocence is culturally neutral.
The other one is omnipresent since she’s not anymore who violates taboos but the taboo itself. Therefore, stupidity is everywhere.

The idiot is more complex. It is like the pessimist that ask always the other half of the glass when he’s at the bar. If you meet him at the party he will ask about your wife and you have recently divorced!
The idiot is always in great demand, usually at parties, academic meetings, and museum exhibition openings. He would embarrass everyone, but then offers opportunities for remarks. In his positive form, he becomes a politician.

The imbecile and the idiot share the same faith.
“The imbecile is Gioacchino Murat who reviews his officers and sees one, very decorated, from Martinique. ‘Vous êtes nègres?” he asks. “Oui mon général!”. And Murat: “Bravò, bravò, continuez!” (2)

Another category is the fool, which borders with the mad man. It’s a sacred category. Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh explains that a fool is someone with endless trust. “His trust is so pure nobody can corrupt it.” Being a fool “in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense” means to let experiences happen to you, move on, and focus on the here and now rather than live in the past or fear for the future.

In his post, Bart concludes: “When we disagree, we should at least have an idea of what we’re talking about.”
And Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher, and researcher at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts, would reply:
“Liberals always say about totalitarians that they like humanity, as such, but they have no empathy for concrete people, no? OK, that fits me perfectly. Humanity? Yes, it’s OK – some great talks, some great arts. Concrete people? No, 99% are boring idiots.” (3)

(1) ** you do not have permission to see this link **
(2) Umberto Eco – Le Pendule de Foucault – Jean-Noël Schifano (Traduction)
(3) ** you do not have permission to see this link **