Idiocy has to be understood in its positivity – as something, not the lack of something, Cicero used to say.
We were not deficient, Cicero used to say.
If only Cicero could have limited her intelligence! If only one of us would subject her to a blow to the head! To be content with so little! But to be really content!
Cicero’s ant-farm. Cicero’s zoo. Cicero’s cabinet of curiosities.
Why these Christmas parties? Did she want to show us off to her friends?
Why did she want to lose favour? To repel people?
Her European allies. Her trained-in-Europe fellow professors. Why did she want to confront them with her idiot crew?
Our great illiterate cries! Our vast gaucheries! Our mispronunciations! The mistakes we didn’t know we were making!
Our assault on the European philosophy canon. Our smash and grab on the jewels of European thought. Our midnight raids. On the European philosophy cookie jar.
It was charming, in its way. Like videos on X of animals being cute.
*Stupidity doesn’t notice, that’s the thing, Cicero said. It’s wayward, stupidity. Carelessly so! Blithely so! Stupidity sings its own song. It’s beautiful, witless song.
Was that why Cicero left us: because she couldn’t bear our coming awakening? Because we were no longer the idiots we were. It time for us to come into our maturity: is that what she thought?
We weren’t raw young street philosophers, not anymore. It wasn’t our perpetual feast of fools.
We’d had time. Time to think. Time to contemplate. Time to look at ourselves in the mirror. Time to realise what we were. Time to learn shame.
We weren’t street rats anymore. We hadn’t just staggered in from the streets.
It was like Adam and Eve, eating of the Tree of Knowledge. Knowing they were naked, and feeling ashamed. We’d been of the Tree of Life, in our stupidity. And now?
Cicero remembered it: our magnificent indifference – to the usual standards. An enviable disregard to the usual things. They didn’t matter to us, the usual concerns. We hadn’t internalised what was expected. We didn’t know – and that ignorance was happiness.
But as we’ve come to know … As we’ve come into awareness … Something’s been lost. We’re not the innocents we were. We’re not the rubes.
We were losing our innocence – and maybe our appeal. We weren’t Cicero’s holy fools anymore.
We weren’t raw. Unformed. Creatures of intensity. We weren’t philosophical howlers at the moon.
Work in Progress 