How to Distinguish an Idiot from a Fool from a Sage?
Personal Insights with a Generous Shot of Humor for Unprecedented Times: An Essential Survival Guide to the Human Jungle
To my knowledge, there are only three kinds of people on Earth: idiots, fools, and sages. Where you land on this spectrum likely depends on 1) Who raised you (overbearing helicopter parents or free-range anarchists ), 2) Who you married (your soulmate, a soul-sucker, someone who genuinely debates the morality of pineapple on pizza, or someone who thinks crystals are the only form of treatment for psychosis), or 3) Who signs your paychecks (a visionary, the HR-approved version of Lucifer, a tyrant with a PowerPoint addiction, or someone who’s just waiting for AI to replace you).
But how can you tell them apart instantly?
- An idiot rarely laughs and takes everything extremely seriously.
- A fool laughs constantly but couldn’t explain why if their life depended on it.
- A sage laughs a great deal but discreetly — making sure nobody notices because they know they are a minority. Sages don’t laugh to entertain others; they laugh to keep from weeping at the absurdity of human drama.
Human beings typically become “who they are with”. The problem is that idiocy, like foolishness, is highly contagious and has no cure. A while back, Fools Anonymous and Idiots Anonymous were experimented with but it was verified that all addicts relapse in a matter of days, while remaining extremely contagious.
Unfortunately, the sage is not contagious. We don’t quite understand why yet as they seem to carry some kind of immunity — scientists suspect a genetic anomaly. Sadly, their wisdom isn’t catching; at best, long-term exposure might spark mild symptoms of intelligence and awareness in a fool. As for idiots? The sage avoids them on principle, preferring a quiet life over lifeless Sisyphean debates.
Meanwhile, idiots and fools continue galloping about, their numbers swelling like some cosmic prank on the species. There are so many idiots today and they seem to multiply and breed spontaneously, especially during these times. I’m not an expert on idiocy but I don’t imagine for a moment that sex has anything to do with this exponential increase. In this climate, when everyone seems to take everything so personally and so seriously, only the sage knows how to watch the absurd saga of our human comedy and refrain from throwing more gasoline on the blazing fires of righteousness.
Idiots and the Emergence of Profound Idiots
Recent studies have demonstrated that idiots are possessed by Seriosis, an acute disorder in a human, especially one that produces specific symptoms of rigidity, seriousness, and a total absence of perspective.
However, it is important to grasp that a new type or breed is emerging with great momentum: the “profound idiot”. As in poker, the profound idiot has a signature “tell” — very useful to know: they believe themselves enlightened and compulsively preach to others about being “awake” and “responsible.” Blaming and finger-pointing are their preferred methods of moral grandstanding.
Profound idiots have one defining trait: certainty. They keep on battering others with rigid dogmas and absolutes on politics, religion, or morality. To them, questioning oneself is heresy because certitude is a God. It gives them stature, confidence and character. It is remarkable, they seem to know everything and question absolutely nothing. Questioning their logic is a dangerous game — they’ll respond with sanctimonious outrage, which they brandish as if it were a Nobel-worthy argument.
They’re not just wrong; they’re militantly wrong, marching into every conversation armed with their ironclad opinions and absolutely no evidence. They don’t have debates; they hold hostage negotiations with reality itself.
And what do profound idiots fear the most? Laughter. It’s their kryptonite. Try cracking a joke around them — you’ll see the panic in their eyes as they realize humor is the one language their pompous brains cannot possibly process.
Despite their apparent evolution, profound idiots remain squarely within the idiot breed. Regardless of how extremely organized and numerous they are becoming, profound idiots don’t quite make a fourth category or fourth type. I trust they are still evolving through the idiot principle and carry the original idiot’s gene but no actual mutation has occurred — yet.
The Coming Idiot Uprising
But signs point to an imminent leap, where idiocy itself may demand legitimization. Imagine a world where idiocy isn’t just tolerated but celebrated, with profound idiots leading the charge, armed with fresh absurdities and institutionalized nonsense. It will then be a new gene; I am afraid we will in fact all be forced to legitimize idiocy because they will start making more and more idiotic demands and display more and more completely idiotic behaviors. Hence, why you can never fail to spot a profound idiot within seconds.
It is not the idiot principle that makes a profound idiot dangerous, it is the insistence on their rigid dogmas and deep sense of responsibility for the most ridiculous things. Through this incredible idiot pandemic, the doors are closing faster and faster for any chance at courteous debate or intelligent dialogue of any kind. A world where every moronic opinion is treated like gospel, and where freedom itself is a distant memory.
To Recap
Idiots: Nature’s Most Predictable Disaster
Idiots are nature’s way of punishing us for not speaking up against all forms of oppressions and tyranny. Idiots are humorless, joyless and possess the intellectual capacity of a cinder block. And worse — they are breeding. Idiots suffer from a chronic disorder called Seriosis, defined by rigidity and the complete inability to see the forest, the trees, or even the ground they’re stomping on. The original idiot is not the true menace. No, today’s plague is the profound idiot: a self-righteous moron wrapped in a cloak of faux-wisdom and determined to eat you alive with righteousness.
Fools: Delightfully Useless
If idiots are a plague, fools are the confetti. They’re harmless, mostly, except for the trail of chaos they leave in their wake. Fools laugh like hyenas at everything — funny or not — because their brains are essentially on screensaver mode. But fools, at least, have one redeeming quality: they don’t pretend to know anything. They’re blissfully unaware, which is more than you can say for an idiot. In fact, with enough time and exposure to a sage, a fool might actually show some signs of waking up. The odds are slim, but stranger things have happened.
Sages: Humanity’s Reluctant Babysitters
Sages are the cosmic janitors of this mess created by idiots and profound idiots. They observe, they laugh, and — most importantly — they don’t get involved unless necessary. Why? Because sages have long since realized that arguing with idiots is like teaching calculus to a chimp. Sages avoid idiots like the plague they are, preferring the company of fools. Fools, at least, provide entertainment. Idiots just ruin the vibe. You won’t catch a sage wasting their breath on a profound idiot, because nothing is more exhausting than watching someone smugly celebrate their own ignorance. And let’s be honest: sages hate profound idiots. They don’t say it out loud but deep down, they’d rather spend an afternoon locked in a room with a hungry tiger than endure one more self-important lecture about “how things should be.”
Why Should You Care?
Profound idiots are everywhere, and they’re multiplying faster than conspiracy theories on the internet. They’ve infected politics, business, and social media with their insufferable blend of arrogance and stupidity. Here’s the grim truth: fools can evolve, but idiots cannot. Profound idiots, in particular, are beyond salvation. They are so thoroughly consumed by their own self-importance that even introducing the concept of humility risks spontaneous combustion.
As idiocy tightens its grip, freedom — the sage’s greatest treasure — is packing its bags. Civil discourse is already on life support. Meanwhile, sages watch from a safe distance, laughing quietly to themselves. They’ve seen this play before, and they know how it ends: with fools dancing in the ruins while idiots proclaim it was someone else’s fault.
The problem isn’t just their numbers — it’s their confidence. There was a time when idiots knew they were idiots; they stayed quiet in the corner and let the grown-ups talk. But now? Now, profound idiots are proud of their idiocy — they think that some ancient God, who never existed, gave them the rights to be idiots. They demand respect for their nonsense. But the worst part? Idiots are winning. Their demands are becoming laws, their outrage is silencing discourse, and their collective stupidity is being rebranded as “moral conviction.” What to do? This isn’t embellishment— it’s happening right now. Intelligent debate is dead. Critical thinking is on life support. As intolerance sets in, freedom is forced to relocate. By then, we will have institutionalized intolerance as a necessity and idiocy as a virtue.
Eric Stone
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Husband | Coach | Focused on Performance, Leadership, Public Speaking & Business Communication | Visual Artist & Author | Talent Developer
Favorite quote: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”
