Banditry, stupidity to blame

When human banditry is upstaged by stupidity the outcome is not difficult to fathom, given our collective tremendously diverse and outrageous experiences with their nefariousness.

Such a tragedy has been witnessed in the pseudo-religious cult that is accused of being behind the outrageous ‘Shakahola massacre’ where adherents were made to fast to death to make it to ‘Heaven’. We have also heard about the illegal release of previously seized and condemned consignment of contaminated sugar into the market in heartless contravention of public health and safety considerations. 

After reading the brief masterful book The Five Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by economic historian Carlo Cipolla, I am more persuaded that much of our tragedies can be somewhat traced to the combined effects of banditry and stupidity.

Prof Cipolla groups human beings into four dominant categories depending on their ability to create gain or loss for themselves and others: Helpless (one who is taken advantage of), a bandit (one who takes advantage of others in a win-lose way), intelligent (pursuer of win-win) and stupid (pursuer of loss-loss).

He also shares a frequency distribution which suggests that, except for stupid people, the rest of human beings “do not act consistently”. That explains why, for example, a bandit could exhibit some intelligence on top of their overall weighted average of stupidity and unleash a loss that is equal to their gain whereas another bandit subdued with stupidity would unleash losses that greatly transcend their gain—even though both versions of banditry still remain unjustified criminal acts.

With bandits in almost all economic sectors, even political, business and religious arenas, we need more seriousness to tame their bearing, especially when their banditry more damagingly intermixes with stupidity and greed to produce losses for others that comparatively exceed their private gains. 

Mr Mohamed is a communication specialist. [email protected].