Idiots, they can kill you

Idiocy is a social disease. You cannot cure it with medication, a healthy diet or regular exercise. You just have to learn to cope.

DURING a recent trash-talking session among friends, I was asked for the one thing I would remove from the human race if I had the power to do so.

Things like certificates of entitlement, sexually transmitted diseases, home-made bombs, anti-homosexuality uproars and even radio-DJs-with-pseudo-American-accents had already made the rounds. I was stuck.

'Idiocy,' I volunteered. Hey, it's a problem.

On Aug 1, the Weekly World News (WWN) - a sensational, over-the-top American tabloid not unlike The National Enquirer - reported how dim-witted co-workers can be just as unhealthy, if not more so, as cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food.

The report was based on a study conducted by Sweden's Lindbergh University Medical Centre. The author of the study, Dr Dagmar Andersson, used a data pool of 500 heart attack patients.

Of these patients, her team found that 62 per cent of them had relatively few of the physical risk factors, such as old age, heredity, obesity, high blood cholesterol or pressure, commonly blamed for heart attacks.

After in-depth questioning by the study team on these patients' lifestyles, it was revealed that their heart attacks came within 12 hours of a major confrontation with a stupid colleague.

Stupidity, the report implied, can be murder.

While the WWN may not be the epitome of sophisticated medical journalism, the report raises a valid question: Are stupid people raising stress levels at the office to unhealthy levels?

Don't get me wrong. The idiots I'm referring to are not the ones who shred documents instead of copying them.

I'm talking about people who have dreadfully low emotional quotient and usually insist they're right all the time. They don't work with a complete set of tools, and they are everywhere.

In the health and safety employee handbook of a multi-national IT company, employees are told to 'blink your eyelids periodically to lubricate your eyes'.

Then again, we're all guilty at some point in our lives. That's why a copy of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix has become a paperweight for me.

A 1999 report by Australian consortium Creative Management Consultants - a group of corporate management psychologists and human resource specialists - states that idiots are primarily 'two-thought screamers'.

These people are defined as 'individuals who draw an impetuous conclusion after considering only a single idea'. Their very first thought is followed automatically by a loud, emotive conclusion.

Hence the old saying, 'shallow brooks are noisy'.

These people cannot conceive of the possibility of being wrong. Leaping at value judgments and self-righteous conclusions without proper investigation is much easier, as anything else would require too much thinking.

They are so steeped in personal bias, they do not recognise or respect the reality of other people's frame of reference.

An acquaintance of mine who works in public relations, called Casey, is what I'll term a 'must-debator' - someone who abuses his position of legitimate authority and power to emotionally damage the minions who are dependent on him for guidance and support. He is a bigot and he knows it.

He confesses gleefully: 'It's self-preservation. I have to kick up a fuss so that people will overlook my inadequacy. Someone else must take the fall. It's them or me. The best defence is always a good offence.' What a walking cliche.

Fans of Scott Adam's popular but true-to-life comic strip, Dilbert, will also vouch that idiocy can double or even triple the workload in the office. More work has to be done to compensate for the culprit's inefficiency.

Even documentary-maker Michael Moore, who gave us the clever anti-gun expose Bowling For Columbine, has acknowledged the idiocy problem in a book he wrote last year called Stupid White Men.

In a chapter called Idiot Nation, he scoffs at the person in charge of the free world, President George W. Bush, saying: 'Our Idiot-In-Chief does nothing to hide his ignorance - he even brags about it. During his commencement address to the Yale class of 2001, George W. Bush spoke proudly of having been a mediocre student at Yale, 'And to the C students, I say, you too, can be President of the United States!' '

Idiocy is a chronic social disease. You cannot cure it with medication, a healthy diet or regular exercise. And it's not going away anytime soon.

If you want to survive, you will have to learn to cope with it.

Depressingly, Dr Andersson also says in the WWN report: 'Most people have very poor coping skills when it comes to stupidity - they feel there's nothing they can do about it, so they just internalise their frustration until they finally explode.'

I've decided that since I'm alive and well and have real friends, I've got loads to be grateful about. I'll just beaver away in my corner of the world, keep my sanity intact and sleep well at night.

After all, idiots may have their opinion, but it doesn't have to be part of my reality.