Our World is Run by Brilliant Idiots
We need to learn the wisdom of Holy Fools
Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
~Matthew 10:16–20
The Holy Fool & the Brilliant Idiot
Last week, I wrote about Thomas More, the wise foolishman. Or Holy Fool.
The Holy Fool is a common figure in Eastern Christianity, though not so much in the West. From Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot to Holy Fools Karp and Foma in Eugene Vodolazkin’s amazing 2012 novel Laurus, you can get a good sense for who Holy Fools are by reading Russian literature.
Holy Fools are simple, innocent, naive, uncalculating. They seem extremely strange and extremely intuitive. They don’t set goals or calculate utility. They live entirely on principle, though it often leads them to severe poverty, ridicule & scorn, or even death—as was the case for More himself, who, in true Holy Fool style, joked with his executioner as he was led onto the scaffold. Holy Fools grasp the beauty of being. The wonder of creation. They’re content to contemplate nature, & without feeling the need to extract resources from it.
In short, they embody the beatitudes.
I think the holy fool has an opposite figure: the Brilliant Idiot.
Where Holy Fools are simple, kind, innocent, naive, and uncalculating, Brilliant Idiots are the inverse: obsessed with calculation, narcissistic, cruel.
Holy Fools love individual people; Brilliant Idiots love “humanity.” Holy Fools are indifferent to wealth; Brilliant Idiots think it’s the only true marker of success. Holy Fools think the reality of death gives life meaning; Brilliant Idiots think death is just another disease to be conquered. Holy Fools think children are gifts, often wiser & better than adults; Brilliant Idiots think children just aren’t really worth the sacrifice. Holy Fools know the most important things in life can’t be measured; Brilliant Idiots doubt something exists unless it can be measured.
Unfortunately for us, Brilliant Idiots rule our world.
In a world that worships scale, Brilliant Idiots are happy to “move fast and break things” in order to inflict their vision on everyone.
In a media landscape where only the loudest voices get heard & nuance is despised, Brilliant Idiots shout their opinions from the rooftops of their sleek glass penthouses.
In an education system devoted to measuring every outcome, Brilliant Idiots have incredible “book smarts” and a million credentials, but think reading is a waste of time and can’t change a light bulb.
In a country torn apart by extreme partisanship, Brilliant Idiots remain proudly partisan, convinced that the Other Side is solely responsible for all that ails us. They celebrate the scapegoating of their political opponents.
In a creation overflowing with incredible beauty, Brilliant Idiots can’t be bothered to notice—they’re too busy extracting or doomscrolling. After all, beauty’s only an evolutionary adaptation of the senses to the value we can get from nature.
This isn’t about any one person, party, or program. It’s the air we breathe. Our techno-media-entertainment-education complex creates Brilliant Idiots, who strengthen the complex that produced them. And, frankly, we can all probably recognize elements of ourselves in both the Brilliant Idiot and the Holy Fool. None of us is wholly one or the other; assuming we are is just another instance of black-and-white brilliant idiocy. Nevertheless, as the work of
most comprehensively documents, we’ve witnessed an explosion of Brilliant Idiocy in nearly every segment of our society in recent decades.(If you’d like to explore McGilchrst’s work but don’t want to commit to either of his long books just yet, start here:)
In this passage from Matthew, Jesus teaches us how to respond to the Brilliant Idiots: become a Holy Fool. Reject their world entirely. The Brilliant Idiots will come for you—with the full force of their spreadsheets, social-scientific dissertations, legal loopholes, & savvy cozying up to power. Don’t resist these things. You’ll lose the arguments, because the Brilliant Idiots built the systems within which we argue. You’ll be proven guilty, because the Brilliant Idiots own & intimidate the decision-makers who decide your case. You can only win by losing.
Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles.
When they do, you probably won’t prevail against the full force of clever rhetoric, cryptic argumentation, & all-knowing algorithms. But your refusal to participate in their ridiculous systems of power-manipulation is the one thing they simply can’t tolerate. So by simply refusing to play along, (& absorbing the rage that follows), you bear witness to the fact that other ways of life are possible:
When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
Perhaps that Spirit will give you words. Or perhaps that Spirit will guide you like Jesus—toward absolute silence in the face of foolish authority. After all, Jesus’s silence was so loud it has echoed around the world for two thousand years.
Besides, this world could use a few more Holy Fools.
I love this perspective on the interesting times in which we find ourselves. Though brilliant idiocy is not new-I suspect each generation experiences it differently. Ours is just so loud, immediate, and pervasive. It is good food for thought-how do we actually make a living, raise families, etc in a world run by brilliant fools, without succumbing too much to the foolishness?
Love this: “But your refusal to participate in their ridiculous systems of power-manipulation is the one thing they simply can’t tolerate. So by simply refusing to play along, (& absorbing the rage that follows), you bear witness to the fact that other ways of life are possible.”