The Last Revelation About Idiotism
By
Donator
philipp.donat@chello.at
Idiots have this particular problem with common sense, you know?
Idiot might not be accurate enough though, 'cause there are different kinds of idiots. They are all doing and saying things that tend to appear wrong to what I will define as 'non-idiot' people for now. And even though all those variations, forms and subclasses of people displaying idiotism on a regular basis obviously account for the vast majority of the population it's easily explained why: the intelligence on the planet equals a constant, but the population is growing.
We conduct that the amount of idiotism is therefore not only growing, but really following a steep logarithmic curve towards infinity. And the number of phenotypes, we already knew it, does the same. I will now introduce you to the most common, or at least most easily identifiable classes of idiotism I've encountered and classified so far:
First, we have the 'classic' of all idiots, the idiot. He is what evolution targeted to eradicate from the planet, clumsy and stupid, both psychically and physically. In his purest form he isn't capable of surviving on his own. Under normal circumstances he is still permanently injured. He is the one electrocuting himself when changing the light bulb, he is the one destroying everything fragile he touches, he is the one pushing the red button without knowing or asking what will happen. Give him a loaded gun and he's dead in a second. It's just impossible to help him.
Second in the line is the dumb. The biggest difference to the idiot is that he believes everything you tell him, without asking why though. You might come to believe he wouldn't be capable of thinking on his own, and indeed, he isn't. He swallows whatever rubbish he hears, the dumber, the better, therefore his name. When constantly fed with an ideology that is easy to comprehend for him he turns highly dangerous though, for it is then close to impossible to argue with him. This subclass is called the fanatic. He might have common sense, but he shuts it out.
Man number three is the fool. Unlike the dumb he doesn't fanatically believe what you tell him but, just the opposite round, what he's telling himself. He is probably the most intelligent of all, but also the hardest to bear, because he constantly thinks that he is right. Many scientists account for this category, because, as paradox as it may sound, foolishness driven to the extreme is called genius. It is hard to understand, yes, but if the fool ever reaches these dizzying heights of mental disorder, then it has become so unlikely to prove him wrong, everyone just mistakes him for a genius. A common subtypus of the fool is the nerd. The nerd is usually unable to ever be regarded as a genius for lack of social skills, so projects all his time and energy in specialising on one particular field of… of whatsoever. Nerds learn languages five people in total have ever heard of. Nerds are inventors of useless things. Nerds can astound you. There is virtually no limit to what a nerd can invest time in to become the best. Ninety-nine percent of all records are held by nerds.
Which brings us to the crazy. Some regard the crazy as the motor of culture. If he is rich, he is soon called the eccentric. Like the fool, a crazy can be dominated by a fixed idea, and this idea is that he wants to be different from the normal people. That by this he just blends himself even more into the crowd of idiots that surrounds him is a tragic irony he never realizes. He can be extraordinarily creative. He does things nobody before him did, mostly because these things were regarded as crazy until then. He is wearing nontransparent sunglasses. He is setting trends. He can cause masses of idiots to want to be like him. In the end he is doomed to depression, because once he really, really manages to be different, the crowd adapts to him once again.
Before I forget to mention it, I am going to be executed any moment now.
Being a foolish eccentric has brought me into this unfavourable position, before you ask.
Don't ask me why for some reasons the most interesting places are always located in rebel controlled areas or open war zones. Exemples? Cambodgia, Peru, Rwanda... I know what I'm talking about. I wasn't always into grave robbing, you know, until today I put 'photojournalism' into forms where my official 'occupation' is required. First hand material from trouble spots pays extremely well if you sell it to the right people, so I keep it up. Just for not getting rusty.
Personally I always enjoyed working under such extreme conditions. Archaeology might not have been the right choice of profession then, because most of the time you'll spend more time fighting fleas, mosquitoes or contaminated drinking water then real dangers. While digging through large amounts of sand with all too small instruments, self-evidently. But it's never your profession that's responsible for the outcome of your life. It's time and space. And the correlation of both. Where you are, and what people come to meet you by the time.
1991 I expanded both my knowledge of cuneiform writing as well as my collection of Sumerian pottery. In Baghdad. Happy coincidence, I could also visit the burning oil fountains. There was a good opportunity to stock up on ivory carvings and ritual masks in Somalia during the mid-nineties, too. If you think humankind ever passed the stone-ages you still have to see a man being dismembered by a horde of soldiers at an age at which they wouldn't have passed primary school yet if they had been born in the UK.
Kosovo was a disaster that I hadn't expected in the middle of Europe at the turn of the century, I returned with empty hands and a mild dependency on narcotica, causing nasty hallucinations of angels every now and then I am not willing to go into detail with now.
It was 1989... anybody of you remember that year?... when Deng Xiaoping ordered the massacre on the Place of Heavenly Peace and thus ended what little 'democratic tendencies' China had witnessed until then. Battle tanks flattened the tents belonging to the thousands of students camping there, making no discrimination whether they were still sleeping in them or not.
Why I am telling you, now that I am kneeling in the dirt, hands bound on my back with barbed wire, hollow-cheeked, eyes burning from dehydration after drinking my own piss for three days?
Good question. Ask me later.
That at the same time martial law had been declared upon Tibet, a Chinese province now since the 17-point contract had been signed hardly thirty years ago in 1951, wasn't even really recognised by the rest of the world I think, all eyes were fixed upon Beijing from that moment on.
I had been in a strange state of mind at that time, merely twelve months after I had reached Tokakeriby in a physical condition that seems ironically comparable to the one I am in now. Admittedly, I hadn't been beaten and the temperature had been almost forty Celsius degrees below zero, which is considerably hard to experience anywhere in this region, but after two weeks of marching through snow and ice I'd been glad no one forced me to look at myself in a mirror.
Money was getting sparse. Not that my family didn't have it, no, but I had that attitude to spend it first and leave the bills to my father afterwards, which pretty much enraged him every time. It wouldn't have been too big a problem if I had spent a few thousand pounds on fashion or cosmetics, but I just could not explain to him what on earth had caused me to spend entire months in India and Brazil, what I needed trekking gear and a satellite mobile for, not to speak of the accident with the handgun that was found in my suitcase at Tel Aviv Airport. That incident that had led to the first full body cavity search of my life… Needless to say my parents didn't share my enthusiasm.
Daddy held out his unbelievable patience almost a year long, then the shock about the plane accident began to wear off, close season was finally over, he threw me out. I had tried to bribe him with a few hundred thousand United Air qualiflyer-miles, but he must have mistaken it for sarcasm.
I had lost my destiny somewhere in that snow. There were no aims in my life any more, spending my time hunting for a chilly feeling, a creep, a skin tingling rather than money, honour, security, or merely someone to have children with. Two catastrophic car accidents were the results of my lust for velocity, and the local glazier rubbed his hands over my newly developed crush on firearms, but I was determined to find those aims again, at whatever cost. Even if they were different ones now.
The wreck has never been found. No wonder, the mountain tops forming the border between Nepal and Tibet are not exactly a place you can move a caterpillar to easily, nor does anybody care for a pile of scrap at that altitude. Above all, the unstable political situation didn't really induce much zest for action. My own graphic description of the accident had also done it's part, a plane wreck filled with corpses, the fuel burning, my escape stunt when it began sliding down into a chasm... this all in all dampened the most hard necked hopes of salvaging the dead bodies, not even thinking of a miraculous rescue any more.
I find the thought of holding things that had never been found in my hands very stimulating.
Does this make me an idiot? I'll think about it…
All these pictures of Richard Gere meeting the Dalai Lama, tourists walking through the streets of Lhaza, the Potala palace looming in the background had almost convinced me not to come here again, but the desire was stronger. The snow was calling me. I could smell it in the air when I opened the window in the morning. The wreck was calling me all the way to Tibet again.
The university had cancelled both my research funds and my tutorship after I'd beaten a professor in public. A nerd in roman history, but far from ever becoming a genius. I did them a favour, but no one believed me, so I drowned my depression and boredom in extra mellow Scottish whisky, now definitely assured that I had to leave the country for a few months. There I was standing, bags packed, nothing holding me back, and a silly idea to chase after.
If I started the expedition in Pokhara and remained hellish carefully on Nepal's side of the border there was little to fear after all, and even if I ran into any Chinese border patrols they would probably just show me the shortest way out of the country and not bother with harassing a lost mountaineer with more than a kick in the butt, their hands already full with stopping the flood of refugees from fleeing the country or at least attempting to. I'm not sure what kind of expectations I had of the results, although even if I wasted all the investment on a few pictures of beautiful mountain scenes I could still sell them and my story to a twelve o'clock talk show. Wouldn't have been the first time.
Until today I have mixed feelings about aerial transport: a creepy emotion similar to excitement, and the overwhelming desire to bite into a pillow and hyperventilate until I pass out on the other hand.
That day it was different.
The approach on Pokhara would have intimidated much more seasoned travellers, the village being situated at the bottom of the narrowest of valleys even possible. But inside of that antiquated, Russian type aeroplane, crammed full with various kinds of people, mountain climbers and their bulky equipment, stone-faced Indian businessmen, old women in colourful Saris, travelling with animals I had a hard time to identify, the only stewardess sweating from nausea, attempting to calm the people by freely distributing peppermint drops... I had the fun of my life.
This was, of course, celebrated with a flush of said extra mellow Scottish whisky.
My baggage had probably been stolen somewhere at New Delhi airport before even reaching the plane I had been going to board on, which I was kindly informed about after patiently waiting one and a half hour approximately. Indignation for my part remained within borders, after all I'd gotten used to such things meanwhile and carried all important things like passport and money inside of a small bag tied around my waist below the clothes, so much for safety reasons I had already learned, and now I had a vague idea why people around here regarded everything as personal luggage, oblivious to weight or bulkiness. I whistled for a taxi.
Men. Gossip. Idiots. They're talking about how much fun I've been last night. My grasp of colloquial Chinese is limited, but I can understand that much from the expletives. It wasn't too bad though, they're all just children after all, few older than eighteen and I can hardly be angry with them.
Other people might be searching for good hotels, I personally search for extremely good ones. Never having written a will in all my life, I dread the thought of knocking on heavens door with unspent money in my pockets. But then, much to my disdain, the best hotel in the city had running water only three hours per day, between 13 and 16 p.m. Nevertheless you were invited to try a half dozen different brands of synthetic bourbon at the hotel bar. Speak of setting priorities. Especially after you tried a toothbrush with Jack Daniels.
I concluded that I had to go out for myself and melt some snow if I didn't want to die of a liver cirrhosis. Maybe I had rushed my departure, but here I was, I already had the mountains stretching out before me, and I saw the refugees dripping from their icy flanks and gather in a cosy little camp at the bottom of the valley, roughly two or three a day.
I could bore the body fluids out of you with never ending tales about endless hours of wandering across rocky plains, ascending icy slopes and making pictures of the landscape. I won't. I waved to the occasional Chinese military patrol plane passing over my head. Up there for the pilot you are little more than a spot, and the only way to appear suspicious is starting to run from him. Which would be a futile attempt, anyway. Blame it on my imagination, but I think I saw one of them waving back once.
Four days ago I crossed the border to Tibet. GPS had kindly informed me earlier that I wasn't going to find anything and remain legal at the same time. I had expected that much, as the border had changed frequently in recent years. A little victory dance was appropriate though at the spot where GPS suddenly displayed a small PRC for peoples Republic of China instead of NP for Nepal. Being an illegal immigrant always made me feel all tingly. Especially in a land where people disappeared every now and then, both by accident and officially.
I saw the wreck a whole twelve hours before I finally reached it. It had indeed fallen into the chasm, it was charred, twisted and two thirds covered with snow, but otherwise intact. The descent cost me an entire day, my rope was much too short, and it was late evening when I had finally brought the neck-breaking difficult stunt behind me. That alone had made me euphoric.
Another hour passed with me shovelling myself an entry. It was almost pitch black by now, but I was unable to wait any longer. It was worth it. The cockpit, where I had found the flare gun roughly twenty years ago and also the compass which I carry with me as a luckbringer until today, was totally crushed, much to my disdain. But the entire third between the burnt out heck and the crushed cockpit was intact, creating a ghastly feeling of deja vu, because everything still looked like I had left it. Even the corpses were mummified because of the low temperatures. The pictures became beautiful!
I had forgotten to tell you about the moron before: a moron is a type of person, who carries out orders at any cost. He might not even comprehend the reasons behind his orders, or worse, perfectly understands them and knows that they are moronic, but still forces himself to carry them out because, simply, they are orders. You could argue him to be a subclass of the dumb, but I granted him extra space for one simple reason here: this description fits an enormous amount of people. Soldiers.
I had all I wanted, and was on my way home.
By the way, have you ever been to Beijing? You will encounter a strange phenomenon there if you reside in one of the better hotels. There is no work in China that couldn't be divided up to three people. A brilliant idea, think millions of jobs. If a Hotel in London has a guy dressed in red standing at the door to open it for you, wish you a pleasant day and call you a taxi, an equivalent Hotel in Beijing has at least five: one to open the door, one to carry your luggage, one to wish you a pleasant day, one to call your taxi and a last one who can always run and get someone qualified enough if you have other wishes. You already laugh?
The patrol also consisted of five soldiers. One yelled a swearword, while another whacked me in the face. The third one disarmed me and bound my hands, while the fourth searched my backpack and the fifth did something I interpreted as reading my rights to me. Why I just let it happen? Maybe I could have shot one or two. But you try doing the hero thing after a strenuous twelve-hour climb, one pistol against five assault rifles.
After they'd found out I wasn't talking any Chinese and that I probably was a foreigner, judging from the passport none of them recognised, we left the mountain on the shortest way, and that was down the Tibetan side of it.
Something must have gone terribly wrong though. I wasn't handed to the local police station as I had expected, there was no interpreter I could have asked what was going on, neither did I ever see the embassy… I spent a day handcuffed on the loading space of an open military van, then I was put into a labour camp. On the way we'd met a number of prisoners plastering the street we were travelling on, some looking much like the walking dead. That did it, I gradually began to feel thoroughly frightened.
Whatever reason had incited them to treat me like that, I don't know. Maybe the thing with the dagger and the dragon had upset the authorities more then I had expected. Maybe it was paranoia, mistaking me for a spy because I had been armed. Or just the general xenophobia. Who knows.
And here my tale comes to the end, for now. I'd thought I could break out by inciting a riot. Even though a small number of people could indeed escape, among them a Dutch journalist that had been caught taking pictures of camps like this, the attempt was thoroughly unsuccessful on my behalf. Thank goodness they are not holding up themselves with seriously torturing me, I'm just going to be shot in front of all other prisoners as a warning.
The only thing suspicious to me is that I've never seen the man around before that is now standing behind me with a gun in his hand. Executions probably require a special education here. I would laugh at my own sarcasm if I did not fear it would have terrible consequences. Admitted, I'm close to hysteria, even if I force myself to some dignity.
But instead of feeling a pistol at my temple I receive a kick to the small of my back and land in the dirt face down.
"This was the last warning, Miss Lara Croft. You will now be transferred and turned into the custody of the British ambassador. The Peoples Republic of China can do without guests of your kind. Next time you will be shot without asking," he tells me, in fluent, almost accent free English.
Despite having the mouth full of dirt I am grinning. Leo, I only found out later that the name of the Dutch was Leo, had made it to Beijing. Or at least informed someone important that I was hold captured here. And not a damn second early.
…
I later met with him in Lisbon, thanking him as dearly as a girl could by spending a few nights with him. We're still friends, even though we hardly see each other, given that he's tramping around almost as much as I do. Maybe I'll call him tomorrow and arrange a meeting in Afghanistan, although I doubt we'll find a comfortable hotel room still standing.