An idiot is a person who shouts against his own idiocy not realizing that his own idiocy contributed to the emergence of a powerful breed of idiots and to the psychotic system of life which we are bound to.
And, yes, you guessed it, this is not the Webster's definition of the word.
What do I mean with this? Just take this an example: in the moment that I am writing this hundreds of thousands of persons somewhere in our beautiful world are shouting or protesting against something which does not fit them. Take this as an example: after having been idiots enough to put to power an idiot like Mr. Berlusconi the Italians shout against the idiot not realizing that they themselves are the idiots (yes, I am Italian ... ). They are shouting also against Berlusconi's most cherished friend, Mr. Bush - to whom I don't obviously give an esteem higher that that which I give to Berlusconi - and all this comes in the aftermath of the Iraqi situation. Funny, they did not shout at the outset, on the contrary, they jumped head first in "The Coalition Of The Willing", a good percentage of them indeed heartily approved it. Yes, they did not foresee their future stress and fear of terrorism and explosive human ( ? ) beings moving around in their homeland. Nor did they foresee the loss of Italians in Iraq. They sided with the unsurpassed American champion of freedom in what has clearly shown up as a dirty adventure of conquest to promote further conquest. With results which they could not imagine simply because of their preconceived negative ideas against Islam born out of ignorance and maintained and doled out by the Church Catholic - and Christianity in general - since the inception of Islam.
Now they want the chief idiot to arrange a pull-out from Iraq while the chief idiot declared that he will be on the side of the great champion of freedom until the end.
Actually, while with good reasons they might be sensitive to the stand of the Iraqi problem, what they shout for is because they are afraid and this too with good reasons. They are starting to understand that a clash of civilizations is taking shape, they are starting to understand that over one billion Muslims have been insulted - not just the atrocious sufferings inflicted to the Iraqi people is the main problem - and they are starting to understand that the American Crusade, backed by the ignorant statements of their chief idiot and fueled also by some imbeciles like, to mention just one in Italy, the well known writer Ms. Adriana Fallaci has created a state of things that can create havoc in their homeland. They are starting to realize that Islam will most probably achieve the difficult task of setting aside, albeit temporarily, its sectarian differences because only so it may react positively to the current stand of things, to the menace of the American World Domination ( AWD, for those who like acronyms since we do not have enough - let me get a patent on it ! ), the new Western Crusade against Islam.
Yet this is not the theme of this writing but just an introductory note to show how, willingly, we create our own distress and how inaptly we react to it.
The above example is a single contemporary event just to give an hint of how something may evolve and this is just a grain of sand on the beach, what has to be taken into consideration is the global stand of things and we are far too well aware that terrible things, shockingly worse than what above stated, happened and do happen all the time. The heart of the matter is how to react to the current state of things - globally - without recourse to civil disobedience, brainwashing propaganda, violence, disorder, and, in general, social unrest or, in other words, how to go beyond idiocy and become human beings worthy of this epithet "human beings" that we so much exalt while indeed we are, as we stand, at the very lowest step in respect to what lives and thrives on the planet. Nor can anyone with a minimum of self respect, unless he is an idiot, deny the last statement. Yes, it does need a daring heart and strong resolve to try to cure this world's idiocy. Thousands upon thousands throughout history went to the stake, or were crucified or dismembered simply because they tried not to be idiots. Millions of pages have been written about them, mainly in literature relating to religious topics where, in the main, such characters are most prominent.
Apart from religious lives, let me cite just a few great characters still historically near to us who tried to deal more positively with the betterment of the world. Let me name Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King: the practical outcome of their efforts gained them a violent death and not the better world which they had in their visions. Their names rightfully went down in the glorious pages of this world's history and just as it happens here, they, their deeds and their words are oftentimes quoted as an example pointing to better systems of government and social interactions. But this all is to no avail because everyone has to think and act just to satisfy his own selfish ego while, comfortably sitting in his own couch and looking at the scene on his own television of a boy being dismembered with a machete in Darfur or the freshly dug-out skeletons from a mass grave just discovered he feigns horror, sorrow and distress feeling satisfied within that this reality is apparently not touching him in the least.
Yes, apparently, because humankind while made up of so many individual beings is just like an organism where its cells must depend on one another lest a deadly sickness spreads and brings it to naught. And on the right track we are, either we heal ourselves - globally - or we will perish and finally deliver this wonderful planed of this unwelcome burden which is spoiling and degrading it.
In the main there are two strong social currents to be dealt with to cure our idiocy.
One is that clericalism which in the name of someone's God feeds hatred among religions and adhering groups so that we see suffering, persecution and death rampant for the satisfaction of someone's God - or rather, greed of power on abjected masses so that a cure to this stand of things would be to mature spiritually and do away with all the fantasies kept alive by a minority who, in the main, satisfy only their brutish ego though the power of names more or less holy.
The other one would be not so much so as two blame a couple of idiots like those I mentioned in the opening lines and not even to do away with them because we did put them where they stand so that also in this case the cure would be to mature, to bring to ripeness what we call "human traits" and act accordingly. That is more difficult: when we go to the poll we do not think so much about who is who but obviously only to "what can this 'who' do for me" and we give our vote just on this single premise: self-interest. And this is much more evident from the fact that invariably these "who's" are not men or wisdom but men of wealth and power - to hell with wisdom and good governance so long as I am satisfied and my belly is full and my car is better that my neighbor's. To hell with the rest of the world, fate dictates that everyone must have his due even if this means suffering, war, blood and violence. There in nothing that I can do with it, let me be satisfied with mine own good self - a sick cell in the doomed organism.
What is written above of course is nothing new, it is just clothing an old argument in different words and this is being done since time immemorial in one way or another. But it needs be done, we don't know if the seed will fall on fertile soil and if it will get properly watered and bring fort a plant. What we know is what we see around us: thanks to information technology never before did we have a chance to touch with our hands what is going on at the antipodes, never before had we a chance to see suffering and injustice dealt out in real time just about everywhere. Never before have we been so well aware aware of the real danger of impending doom which will not come about because our God is no more happy with us or because it has been predicted by Nostradamus or whom you will but because we, our idiocy, is inviting it.