Is there a limit to stupidity?

Almost all Finns are familiar with the words of Sweden's ancient chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, which he said to his son to encourage him in the peace negotiations of the Thirty Years' War. They were: "My son, if only you knew with how little wisdom the world is governed."

If the rulers of the 17th century were indeed lacking in wisdom, so are many ordinary people of today. This was evidenced by the news stream that caught my eye this morning, which made me doubt whether stupidity has any limits.

The first story that raised my doubts told of how some fool has deliberately spread aquarium fish and plants in about forty ponds in Southwest Finland. Because these species do not belong in Finland's nature and are known to cause problems when they spread into the environment, an entire pond in Paimio has been emptied to get rid of them.

The cost of this operation has so far been around 120,000 euros. If a similar procedure were carried out in all forty ponds at the same cost, the total cost to taxpayers would be nearly five million euros.

It is therefore to be hoped that the person who spread the aquarium fish will be caught and made to pay for the costs he caused.

However, I must say that the price tag of the fool in Southwest Finland does not compare to the idiots of the rest of the world. In Chile, a firefighter was arrested who, for some reason, had become enthusiastic about starting forest fires, which killed 137 people. And of course, it also caused a huge amount of material damage.

It remains to be seen whether the Chilean police have caught the right person who started the fires. However, for the purposes of this writing, it does not matter, because the forest fire that caused the loss of lives was deliberately set in any case. And if the person now detained as a suspect is not the perpetrator, it has nevertheless been some other idiot.

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Of course, this list of two cases could be extended in many ways, but what I've written above already shows that among us are people whose actions are extremely foolish. However, this does not mean that they cannot succeed in intelligence tests, for example. Thus, the issue is something else. It is similar to voters who do not want to understand the connection between immigration from certain groups and gang crime, but deceive themselves by voting for parties whose actions support the strengthening of this connection. Or even the current political leaders of Western countries, who did not want to support Ukraine so strongly at the beginning of the ongoing war that the aggressor would have been defeated when it was at its weakest. That is, right at the start of the war, before Russia had shifted to a wartime economy. As a result of that neglect, stopping Putin now requires a multiple effort, not to mention the human and material costs that have been inflicted on Ukraine and its people during the prolonged war. At the same time, Western slackness regarding Russia has at least led China to increase its aggressiveness towards Taiwan.

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Soon, Finns and other European citizens will face elections to choose politicians who will make decisions for us in Brussels. Therefore, it would be good if every EU citizen took a moment to assess the candidates' soundness of mind before making their voting decision. And to ensure, for their part, that the kinds of foolishness described above do not proliferate in the European Parliament, but that as many sensible decision-makers as possible are elected.

Previous thoughts on the same topic: Most useless organisations of our time Is Gerhard Schoeder of Germany ignorant, troll or stupid? Demonstration of one´s own stupidity is a sign of western values