Confessions of a Practising Fool
Confessions of a Practising Fool
Some of my friends may wonder whether it is wise, or even sensible, for me to write or talk about foolishness. They may ask, with raised eyebrows, “Are you really qualified to write about this?”
To them, I say this: if one needs experience to speak about foolishness, then I am perfectly qualified. In fact, I have years of hands-on practice, and I am more than qualified. In fact, I may already be overqualified.
We throw around words like fool, foolish, and stupid very easily. Often, we use them without fully knowing what they mean. Some people believe everything is foolish. Others believe nothing is. A person who appears intelligent in one room may look foolish the moment he walks into another room where people know just a little more.
Intelligence, it turns out, is highly location-dependent.
There are many kinds of foolishness. Some people are born into it – poor souls, though no fault of their own. Some acquire it slowly over time. And some have foolishness imposed on them by society, like an unwanted label that refuses to come off.
Let me neatly arrange foolishness into three categories.
- Naturally Born Foolishness
These are people born with a limited ability to understand complex things. They are not pretending. They are not lazy. They are what they are. Expecting them to behave like geniuses is as unfair as blaming a coconut tree for not giving apples. They are innocent, essentially harmless, and often happier than the rest of us.
- Acquired Foolishness
This is the most common and the most interesting kind. This is where most of us live.
Acquired foolishness comes from incomplete knowledge, wrong assumptions, or confidently held opinions based on yesterday’s information. For example:
- Once, people laughed at Newton for staring at a falling apple. Apples had been falling forever – what was there to think about? That “foolish curiosity” later explained gravity.
- When someone first noticed steam lifting the lid of a kettle, it looked amusing. Who would have imagined that this seemingly trivial movement would one day power trains, ships, and industries?
- Not very long ago, people said, “Why would anyone need a phone without buttons?”
Or “Who would trust their money to the internet?”
Or “Working from home is not real work.”
Today, saying these things feels… well… foolish.
Yesterday’s brilliance ages badly. Today’s foolishness may quietly prepare tomorrow’s wisdom.
- Imposed Foolishness
This is society’s favourite sport.
Sometimes people are called foolish not because they lack sense, but because they lack familiarity with a system. A foreigner who pays far more than necessary for goods simply because he does not know local prices or customs. The merchant looks clever. The foreigner looks foolish. But who actually lacked understanding?
Similarly, people are often called foolish because of their accent, background, profession, or ideas that are “ahead of their time.” History shows us that society has an excellent track record of mocking people first and apologising later – quietly, of course.
When we look honestly, very few people can claim freedom from foolishness. Everyone sees others as fools while being someone else’s fool. The uncomfortable truth is this:
Great intelligence and great foolishness can comfortably coexist in the same person. Sometimes even on the same afternoon.
No human being acts with complete certainty. If we waited until we were sure before doing anything, nothing would ever happen. Only later – when new knowledge appears – do we look back and say, “How foolish that was.”
Foolishness, then, is not born from bad intentions. It is born from not knowing enough at a particular moment. When knowledge grows, yesterday’s foolish act turns into today’s learning moment. The past did not change – our understanding did.
History is full of leaders who made confident decisions that later ruined nations. Crowds followed them proudly. Later, everyone claimed they had always known it was a bad idea. Who was foolish – the leader or the follower? The honest answer is that cooperation among them was involved.
In truth, the world spins quite smoothly on foolishness. Humans regularly mistake illusion for truth and truth for illusion. Absolute freedom from foolishness would require absolute knowledge – and that luxury seems unavailable to people who forget passwords and misplace glasses while wearing them.
Until such wisdom arrives, there is no sharp line between the wise and the foolish, only a difference of degree, timing, and perspective.
So let us be gentle with fools. We visit their country often.
And if foolishness can slowly guide us toward better understanding, then perhaps it is not such a foolish companion after all.
“Foolishness is not the opposite of wisdom.
It is wisdom – before it grows up.”