The Devil’s Dictionary (8)

To paraphrase Stealers Wheel, it is tempting to think that you are stuck in the middle with idiots on the left and idiots on the right. Ambrose Bierce in his The Devil’s Dictionary, first published in book form in 1912, is trenchant on the subject of the idiot. Such a person, he states, “is a member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. Then idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but pervades and regulates the whole. He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the opinions and fashion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line”.

Or perhaps they are ignorami. Such a person is “unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds of which you know nothing about”. Either way, it is difficult to be impartial; “unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy, or adopting either of two conflicting opinions”. Those we put into those categories we might consider to be incumbents. Take care lest we fall into Bierce’s trap because an incumbent, he says, “is the person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents”.

These days we pay too much regard to income. This, he states, is “the natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial, arbitrary and fallacious. A common way to maximise your income is through some form of success. I once had a boss who attributed his rise up the greasy corporate ladder to the remarkable ability to never be able to make a decision. Most problems, he claimed, resolved themselves without any interference on his part. After all, indecision, as Bierce says, is “the chief element of success”.