Don’t be shy – choose your category

I am reading Foucalt’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. It is a slow walk, as I find my self looking up quotes at the beginning of chapters written in foreign languages, and lots of words that are new to me. For instance, see below, idée fixe, meaning an obsession. I’ll try using that in a sentence later today, and see if it impresses. This morning I came across the following, and am now wondering which of the four listed categories I fall in. Am I a cretin, a fool, a moron or lunatic? I have to be one, as the speaker, Belbo, claims we are all one of them. Or, worse yet, am I a hybrid? Reminds me of the Andy Williams song, What Kind of Fool am I? Honestly, given mistakes I make, and the great certitude I apply, I can only be a maroon, Bugs Bunny’s word for moron.

I transcribed what follows and skipped around, eliminated quotation marks and other punctuation.

There are four kinds of people in this world: Cretins*, fools, morons, and lunatics.

If you take a good look, everybody fits into one of these categories. Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these are four ideal types.

A “genius” uses one component in a dazzling way, fueling it with the others.

Now then: Cretins. Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble. You know, the guy who presses the ice cream against his forehead, or enters a revolving door at the wrong way. Cretins are of no interest to us, so let’s forget about them.

Being a fool is more complicated. It is a form of social behavior. A fool is one who always talks outside his glass. He wants to talk about what’s in the glass, but somehow or other he misses. He’s the guy who puts his foot in his mouth. For example, he says how’s your lovely wife to someone whose wife has just left him.

Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats. Talking outside the glass when someone else blunders helps to change the subject. But fools don’t interest us either. They are never creative, their talent is all secondhand. Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules the conversation, and when they really offend, they are magnificent. It’s a dying breed, the embodiment of all the bourgeois virtues.

Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets too, therefore cats bark. Or that all Athenians are mortal, and all the citizens of Piraeus are mortal, so all citizens of Piraeus are Athenians.

Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason. Plenty of morons’ books are published, because they’re convincing at first glance. An editor is not required to weed out the morons. If the Academy of Sciences doesn’t do it, why should he?

A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. A moron proves his thesis; he has a logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic, on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short-circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the [Knights] Templars.

*Cretan vs cretin: “Cretan” is a citizen of Crete. “Cretin” is someone foolish or unintelligent. It is thought to derive from “Christian.” But that, I think, is a foolish, moronic, looney thing to say.

I enjoy difficult books that I don’t have to worry about moving forward in or finishing. I can read a few pages, and think that there’s lots more to follow, no rush. So no matter how tough the plowing with this book, I will get through it. I also have a yellow marker handy, which bleeds through. So I will have to decide later which side caught my eye, as would a moron.

12 thoughts on “Don’t be shy – choose your category”

  1. A great read. My father gave it to me over 40 years ago. Unfortunately, I was got wifed out, for the second time in my life after 25 years and lost everything. Including my extensive library. Sadly, it’s only available to read and not download at archive.org. Umberto was asked a question. Of all the characters, in all the books he wrote, which was his favorite? His answer is priceless.

    The adjectives, silly.

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  4. If you venture into Eco’s wiki page, plan to be slightly disappointed. A great author, there is no doubt. However, he is a super elitist – he didn’t like social media because the everyman can have as big a voice as a “Nobel Prize winner”. Yeah. I have met a few Nobel prize winners, and yeah they are human, and not a lot smarter than you or I.

    Next he wrote a few childrens books: one on nuclear war, and another on astronauts living on Mars. Question: is it required for the elite to push at least a few hoaxes? I presume Eco most likely would have been a dupe. He was in his prime in the 1980s-early 2000s, when the nuclear hoax was nearly unknown. And he, buried in his research, would not have the time, nor inclination to figure out it was BS.

    Even our heroes are human, all too human. So was he a brilliant moron or a lunatic?

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    1. An example, here is an Eco quote: He returned to semiotics in Kant and the Platypus in 1997, a book which Eco reputedly warned his fans away from, saying, “This a hard-core book. It’s not a page-turner. You have to stay on every page for two weeks with your pencil. In other words, don’t buy it if you are not Einstein.”

      I don’t know how Eco was classify himself, but he’s a common type – smart, but thinks he’s smarter than he actually is. Of course that does not mean he is not worthy of reading, just another example that you need to think for yourself.

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      1. I like a good mystery and a big fat book to plow through. I hope I have the former in Foucault’s Pendulum. It is a fat book, 618 pages. I’m on 71.

        I spent some time the other day gathering photos of the Carter family, just gathering impressions. I kept running across this: Billy’s not there. Did they keep him hidden away? Anyway, Eco is a good way of avoiding that mess. But I will get back to it. I welcome anyone of curious mind to answer the question, Where was Billy?

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    2. “And he, buried in his research, would not have the time, nor inclination to figure out it was BS.”

      Well how hard would it be, if he was “read in” enough to be a big literary name, influencer – then even just glancing at the topic would show him all the “hoax codes”.. plus just knowing that most everything the public knows is a controlled narrative. I mean, assuming he WAS read in.. maybe he was just a talented writer/ intellectual who was naive to narrative control, or something like that. And they were just using him.

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  5. Mark, let us know when you are done with FP. I don’t want to post spoilers. As for Eco, I wonder if he was a hop head. The obsessiveness apparent in his writing suggests an unnaturally enhanced “focus”. I can’t recall, however, if he mentioned the sweet wheat in the books of his I did read. It’s been awhile. I think of a similar writer of detailed fiction, Aldous Huxley, and his fascination with mescaline, et al.

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    1. Tyrone, Go ahead and post away on this book. I won’t be troubled by it. It will be a couple of months before I am through it, as we will be travelling. I have not decided whether to take the book with me or not, as it is a fatty and we are limited in luggage. I don’t do electronic books, as 3m stickers get in the way and yellow highlighter ruins the screen.

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