AN ENGINE THAT WOULD GO BY ITSELF

It's Stupidity, Stupid: You Can Look It Up (EMILY EAKIN, July 5, 2003, NY Times)

Today imbecility seems to be making a comeback, and the success of the "Dumb and Dumber" movies isn't the only evidence. Consider a 46-year-old lapsed academic named Matthijs van Boxsel who has been campaigning full time on imbecility's behalf in the Netherlands for the last five years. In 1999 he published "The Encyclopedia of Stupidity." The book was an unexpected success. Mr. van Boxsel became a sought-after figure on the local lecture circuit, and avid fans went on to found stupidity clubs in Amsterdam and Groningen, where, he says, members "give accounts of their own stupidity and try to outwit each other."

Now American readers can see what the fuss is about: "The Encyclopedia of Stupidity" has been translated into English and has just been published by Reaktion Books. An illustrated hodgepodge of ruminations, anecdotes, aphorisms and esoterica, the book attacks its subject obliquely, spinning a theory of stupidity while cataloging its sightings. [...]

But Mr. van Boxsel is hardly mocking such lethal haplessness. "On the one hand, stupidity poses a daily threat to civilization," he writes. "On the other it constitutes the mystical foundation of our existence. For if man was not to fall victim to his own stupidity, he had to develop his intelligence." Or as he put it in a telephone interview from his home in Amsterdam, "Stupidity is the engine that drives our society."

We just find it odd that there's no entry for "gullible" in the dictionary. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 5, 2003 8:06 AM