How to Cultivate Your Sixth Sense — The Power of Intuition

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“We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.”

W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions

Intuition is one of the most powerful faculties for gaining knowledge about the world. Along with reason, science, and imagination, it is one of the primary means by which we discover truth. The great psychologist William James went so far as to suggest that intuition is “the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition.” (William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience)

In this video, we explore how we can tap into our intuition to answer life’s big questions – questions such as: What is my purpose? How do I find a meaning in my existence? Should I make a major career change? Should I end a relationship?

“Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation …The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.”

Clarissa Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

Intuition is a process that works below the threshold of conscious awareness. Tapping into the innate wisdom of the psyche, the embodied wisdom of the physical self, and a lifetime of experience, our intuition utilizes these sources of knowledge to yield insights that are beyond the reach of conscious thought. How it does this is not well understood, or as Carl Jung wrote:

“I say intuition is a sort of perception which does not go exactly by the senses, but goes via the unconscious, and at that I leave it and say “I don’t know how it works.”

Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 18

While intuition is a mysterious phenomenon, there are steps we can take to help us generate the intuitive insights that can answer life’s big questions.

The first step is to clearly formulate the question. Our question should not be trivial in nature, but transformational. It should be one that if answered will have a lasting impact on the course of our life. This step is simple, but many people never take it. They don’t consciously formulate the big questions of life that beg for answers, and as Bernardo Kastrup writes in More Than Allegory, “For as long as the right questions aren’t asked by the intellect, the ultimate answers of life and reality will remain elusive.”

To put the intuitive mind to work in finding the answers we seek, it is best to get our self-reflective, reasoning mind out of the way after it has done its job of formulating the question. For just as a wise sage spends much time in meditative silence, so too the intuitive mind works best when not interfered with by too much conscious thinking. Or as Kastrup writes:

“The intellect self-reflectively contemplates its circumstances and asks progressively more refined questions, while the [unconscious] mind—nudged along by these questions—reacts intuitively with symbolic answers. As a matter of fact, this is how every creative person ordinarily operates in any area of intellectual activity, from science to business: first, the intellect contemplates the problem and iterates upon the right questions to ask. Then, you must stop thinking, so the questions have a chance to sink into the [unconscious] mind. Once they do, inspiration suddenly strikes, as if out of nowhere.”

Bernardo Kastrup, More Than Allegory

Silencing the mind, however, is the opposite of what many people do when attempting to answer the big questions of life. Due to the misconception that conscious reasoning is our most powerful cognitive tool, many of us endlessly ruminate on these questions and hope that the more we think about them, the more likely we are to discover a solution. Often, however, all we do is spin ourselves in circles of thought and we never arrive at satisfactory answers.

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In her book Extraordinary Knowing, the psychoanalyst Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer suggests that the phenomenon of having something on the tip of the tongue, is a simple example that shows how intuition works best when we stop trying to consciously find an answer to a question or problem. Or as she writes:

“. . .if you think of a time when you tried hard to remember something, you know the more you tried to remember it, the more you pushed it down within you. However, when you relaxed and allowed it to emerge, it bubbled right up. You accomplished that with no effort. That’s how intuition works. Effortlessness. It’s easier than you think.”

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer also emphasized how the wisdom that emanates from the intuitive mind is most forthcoming when we diminish the rumination of the conscious mind. Or as he writes:

“I have familiarized myself with the factual data of a theoretical and practical problem; I do not think about it again, yet often a few days later the answer to the problem will come into my mind from its own accord; the operation which has produced it, however, remains … a mystery to me …”

Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

Quieting the mind can be encouraged through activities such as relaxation techniques, meditation, napping, listening to music, or walking in nature. We just need to do something that distracts us from the problem at hand. The moments just prior to sleep, or just prior to awakening are also well-known to be ripe for intuitive insights as these are times when our conscious thought is at a minimum.

Along with quieting the mind we should strive to connect to the body, for intuitive insights present themselves both as bodily experiences and as conscious thoughts. Our ability to detect intuitions, therefore, is promoted by exercises that ground us in the physical body. Or as Iain McGilchrist writes:

“Even if [intuitive insights] manifest as cognitive, they are embodied, in the sense that they are both informed by and inform the motion of our limbs, our breathing and pulse, the emotion of our heart and gut and mind. . .”

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things

Gut feelings are one of the primary forms of intuitive communication. In his book Intelligence in the Flesh, Guy Claxton notes that “If you are told, ‘The best way to do this task is to go with your gut feeling’, you do better. Just this simple suggestion is enough to redirect your attention from more rational to more intuitive strategies.” (Guy Claxton, Intelligence in the Flesh)

In addition to being integral to our intuitive capacities, the gut also plays a prominent role in our emotional experience, or as McGilchrist writes:

“The gut and the psyche have close connexions. Anxiety, depression, and other disorders have characteristic expressions in gut behaviour – and the associations work both ways: diseases of the gut affect mind and mood.”

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things

Recognizing the role that the gut plays in emotional processing, it will not be surprising to learn that chronically suppressing emotions impedes our intuitive abilities. When we sever our connection to the emotional signals that emanate from the gut, we also sever our connection to an important source of intuitive communication. Or as McGilchrist writes: “lack of awareness of emotions negatively affects intuitive decision-making.” (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Asking questions, quieting the mind, connecting to the body, and being more emotionally aware, are steps we can take to increase the chance of having an intuitive insight that can transform our life.

In her book Extraordinary Knowing, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer interviews many individuals who display remarkable intuitive abilities. One of her interviewees was a woman named Helen Palmer, who as Mayer notes, “has written extensively about intuition and travels all over the world through her school, which teaches people to develop intuitive abilities”. To conclude this video, we will turn to Palmer’s insights for some practical advice on how to strengthen our intuitive capabilities.

“[Intuition] is a very different variety of knowing than the knowing we call rational. It’s different in kind. And you cannot, simply cannot, engage in both kinds of knowing at the same time. This degree of intuitive knowing relies on different, subtler signals than rational knowing. Those signals only become perceptible with a shift in consciousness, a shift out of rational thinking. That’s a jolt for intellectually trained people to realize. But as you learn to shift back and forth, you learn to trust it. And the shift gets easier—quicker and more automatic… Our minds resist intuitive knowing. Once you learn to relax that resistance, you can start to reclaim intuition from its suppression by the rational mind. The more you work with it, the more remarkable your knowing becomes. You free the receptive state from its armoring by the ego. You learn to live closer to receptivity.”

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing

EDITORS NOTE: This Academy of Ideas video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Fentanyl Test to the Rescue

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J.C. Sheppard fights back against a mass-killing drug.

This new Glazov Gang episode features J.C. Sheppard, the founder of ‘The Fentanyl Test’, the world’s first FDA-CLEARED dip-card test, and Harm Reduction test strip, for over-the-counter use. Visit him on TheFentanylTest.com.

J.C. discusses The Fentanyl Test to the Rescue, shedding light on his battle against a mass-killing drug.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

Montana Governor Tells Off Would-Be Banners

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Had enough of bans and mandates?

Check out the masterful veto message Montana Governor Greg Gianforte sent the legislature when they tried to ban Styrofoam cups.

Read Governor Gianforte’s full veto message here.

“The free enterprise system works,” Gianforte wrote. “We should let it work, not have the heavy hand of big government unnecessarily meddle with it.”

Truer words never graced the printed page.

“Like many Montanans, I enjoy hot coffee in a Styrofoam cup, because it keeps it hot. And this bill is a hot mess,” Gianforte said in a video on X.

WATCH: Montana Governor Greg Gianforte Tells Off Would-Be Banners

America has reached peak regulation. Government is too complicated, controls too much, and has grown monstrously large.

The Trump/Musk DOGE effort to reduce government is a vitally needed reform, but it is also a case study in how difficult it is to weed out government waste after it has already taken root.

Better to do as Gianforte did and issue an unmistakable “no” at the outset.

“Ultimately, whether to use Styrofoam for take-out orders, packaging leftovers, or providing pre-packaged foods should be a matter for a restaurant or consumer to decide — not the state.”

Right you are, Governor.

Policymakers, confident in the righteousness of their superior wisdom, are ever eager to impose their judgment on the rest of us.

The people we elect should hold their fire and rarely place us under the control of the bureaucrats.

Millions of people making billions of voluntary choices in a free market is the most powerful economic force known to man.

Don’t mess with it.

AUTHOR

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How Close Are We To Nuclear Breakout In Iran? Is Tehran About To Reset The Table?

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If you have spent time down range or in the field face to face with our nation’s adversaries, you know “the enemy gets a vote”. You can plan all you want. You can predict all you want. Ultimately, the enemy is under no compulsion to behave the way you want him to, or you think he will. He is perfectly free to change the game at any time and reset the board.

The Japanese were supposed to modify their behavior and come to the negotiating table in 1941. They chose instead to bomb Pearl Harbor.

Al-Qaida was supposed to continue to limit itself to attacks in the Middle East in 2001. It decided instead to take the fight onto our soil and kill almost 3000 Americans while we watched in horror.

The Russians were supposed to line their troops up on the Ukrainian border, rattle some sabers, and then accept the status quo. They opted to launch a lightning attack on Ukraine and gamble they could take Kiev before the West could react.

As we try to dig out from the wreckage of the Biden administration, we would do well to remember these lessons. Our enemies, who are legion, do not have to respond to our alternating overtures and threats by agreeing to see reason and talk. They are perfectly free to decide that it is time to jump.

A case in point is Iran.

The Iranians are a great people. They are heirs to one of the world’s great civilizations. I have worked with many Iranian patriots over the years. They were, to a man and a woman, educated, cultured, and yearning to breathe free again.

The men who control Iran today, the mullahs and the leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), exhibit none of these qualities. They subscribe to a dark, twisted form of Islam, and they yearn for Armageddon. They believe absolutely that we are in the end times and that they will emerge victorious from a final battle. For them, the Madhi, a mythical Islamic superman, is absolutely real. His return is imminent. The final victory is at hand.

“As a Shi’a Islamist force the IRGC’s worldview hinges on Mahdism: the return of the 12th divinely ordained Shi’a imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi (or the Hidden Imam), whom Shi’a Muslims believe was withdrawn into a miraculous state of occultation (hiddenness) by God in 874 CE. The concept of Mahdism is rooted in the belief that Imam Mahdi will one day return to rid the world of evil and injustice. His coming will bring about “one final apocalyptic battle” between two armies, in which Shi’as believe that Mahdi and his forces will prevail over evil.”

Middle East Institute

We want to continue nuclear talks with the Iranians. They just announced that the next round of those talks will not take place. It is unclear if this is just a hiccup or if the negotiations are dead.

Meanwhile video on Iranian state TV recently showed Iran unveiling a new ballistic missile. To add emphasis, Iran’s proxies in Yemen, the Houthis, just hit Israel with a ballistic missile of their own. Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh is warning that “If war is initiated by the U.S. or Israel, Iran will strike their interests, bases and forces wherever they are and whenever necessary.”

The new missile, called “Qassem Basir,” is solid-fueled and reportedly includes enhancements in maneuverability and guidance systems, allowing it to evade defenses. Iranian outlets claim it has a range of 1,200 kilometers and can strike targets with pinpoint accuracy without using GPS. The fact that it is intended to be used without the aid of GPS is of note, particularly since there has been voluminous reporting for years regarding Iran’s capacity to interfere with GPS navigation and targeting systems in the Middle East.

This is occurring against the backdrop of the uncertainty concerning the exact status of the Iranian nuclear program. It is worth clarifying, I think, exactly where we stand in that regard:

  • The Iranians have had a nuclear weapons program for many years. They are not trying to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes. They want a nuclear arsenal.
  • They are at most weeks away from having enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to build several nuclear weapons. More to the point, our intelligence collection is not good enough to allow us to refine that estimate. In layman’s terms, that means they could very well already have enough HEU for several weapons, and they may well already have taken the steps necessary to put that HEU into the form necessary for use in a weapon.
  • We know that years ago, the Iranians were working on the engineering aspects of building a device. They may have completed that work. It would be logical and consistent with what we have seen in other programs for the Iranians to have built the actual bombs concurrent with the refinement of uranium.
  • Based on what we know about the Chinese program that resulted in them acquiring nuclear weapons, from the time the HEU is available in its final usable form, assembly of a device probably would take no more than 72 hours.

So, if our entire plan is based on the assumption that the Iranians cannot possibly already have nuclear weapons, it may well turn out to be a bad plan.

We can, of course, add additional layers of bad news to this picture. Once the Iranians have nuclear weapons, they can disperse them to a wide variety of locations. Via their worldwide terror network, they can move them, likely undetected, to locations across the globe, including in this hemisphere. They have, via their unconventional and conventional assets, many different ways to deliver such weapons and dramatically complicate the job of locating them and intercepting them.

Does this mean we have no options or that we are doomed? No, not at all. What it does mean, however, is that if we are assuming that we still have the option of bombing some centrifuges and calling it a day, we may want to revisit our assumptions. We may want to start taking a very hard look at:

  • The state of our intelligence collection. Let’s get down to brass tacks. How good are our “assessments”? What do we really know about deliberations inside the top levels of Iranian leadership? And, once we face up to the fact that we don’t know nearly enough, what are we going to do to improve things?
  • Our ability to intercept any Iranian efforts to move and hide pieces of their nuclear weapons program. Can we do that? How? If not, how do we fix that in a hurry?
  • What exactly is our plan for responding to an Iranian declaration that they have gone nuclear? If they detonate a nuke in the desert tomorrow and announce they have five more dispersed throughout the country and ready to launch, do we have a plan?
  • – And, if it comes down to us having to hit Iran and disarm it, how exactly do we plan to do that? What are we bombing? The goal cannot be just to blow things up. It has to be to remove the threat.

The bottom line has to be this. We cannot just assume that all we have to do is bomb some targets in Iran and call it a day. We have to plan for the day when the Iranians dare to act contrary to our expectations. We have to plan for the day, which may be much closer than we think, when they achieve nuclear breakout and reset the board.

Originally published by AND Magazine.

AUTHOR

Sam Faddis

Senior Fellow.

RELATED ARTICLE: Huckabee: Giving Iran a Nuke Is Like Handing a 16-Year-Old a ‘Lamborghini and a Bottle of Whiskey’

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Conclave Crew #2

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Friends: The Conclave Crew is back! And it’s the Papal Posse you know and love: TCT’s Robert Royal and Fr. Gerald Murray— now on host Raymond Arroyo’s new ‘Arroyo Grande’ podcast. The Crew will be meeting in Rome until a new pope is chosen in the upcoming conclave. Episode #2: The Future of the Church: Papal Candidates’ Visions.

Look for ‘The Conclave Crew’ under EVENTS at thecatholicthing.org and in your email when each new episode is released.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing video is republished with permission. © 2025 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Trump Tells Carney ‘NEVER SAY NEVER’ and ‘WE DO NOT WANT YOUR CARS!’

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During an on-camera Oval Office meeting, Trump doubled down on his suggestion that Canada would benefit from becoming the 51st state even as Carney was adamant it would not happen. “I say ‘never say never.’ I’ve had many, many things that were not doable, and they ended up being doable,”

Trump said. “Canada loves us, and we love Canada. That’s I think the number one thing that’s important. But we’ll see. Over time, we’ll see what happens.”

TOPIC: Trump Tells Carney “NEVER SAY NEVER” and “WE DO NOT WANT YOUR CARS!”

©2025 . All rights reserved.

President Trump Will Donate His Entire $400,000 Annual Presidential Salary and Fund a ‘World-Class’ Ballroom in the White House

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President Trump announced that he will donate his $400,000 annual presidential salary — something he did during his first term as well.

Watch the Democrats find a way to lose their minds over this too.

That will total $3.2 million over two terms. There is no one like him. Juxta that to the scores of elected officials lying, cheating, and plundering their way to wealth using their power of their office.

Additionally, in an exclusive interview with Meet the Press, President Donald Trump walks Kristen Welker through Mar-a-Lago and details his plans to build a ballroom which he says will “cost a lot of money” that he will pay for out of his own pocket.

WATCH: President Trump says he’ll build and self-fund a ‘world-class’ ballroom in the White House

President Trump: “We’re putting up a beautiful, almost 100 foot tall, American flag…they’ve needed flag poles for 200 years.”

WATCH: President Trump on New Flag Poles at White House

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE:  This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Gives the French a Needed Lesson in History!

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked today what is the response to an unnamed politician in France to “return the Statue of Liberty” since, as he says, the Americans are not upholding the values this statue stands for. 

Karoline has a blunt answer: “Absolutely not.”

And then, she added an answer that will go down in history, as she reminded them (the French) that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now.

WOW! That’s telling them, Karoline!

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EDITORS NOTE: This Newsrael News Desk column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Trump Will Start Nominating Federal Judges ‘Rapidly,’ He Says

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President Donald Trump will nominate federal judges “rapidly,” he told The Daily Signal on Sunday night.

“We’re putting them in rapidly and trying to get very good ones, but we need judges that are not going to be demanding trials for every single illegal immigrant,” Trump said on Air Force One. “We have millions of people that have come here illegally, and we can’t have a trial for every single person, that would be millions of trials.”

Trump is off to a slower start in nominating judges than his first term, having only nominated one federal judge, Whitney Hermandorfer, who will serve on the 6th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio.

About 100 days into Trump’s first term, the Senate had already confirmed a new Supreme Court justice, Trump had nominated an appeals court judge, and several other prominent judicial nominees were in the queue to be announced within days.

But according to the president, his slow start to judicial nominations is about to morph into a sprint.

Trump said America needs federal judges who won’t insist on a trial for the deportation of every illegal immigrant.

“The people elected me in a landslide… We won every swing state… by big numbers… not only swing state, but the popular vote by millions of votes… they elected me, this was the number one issue,” Trump said, “and now we have judges that are radicalized, and they’re crazy because … if you believe this, they want us to have a trial for every person that came illegally into our country.”

“So they come into our country illegally, and we’re supposed to take weeks, I guess, and months to have a trial, you want every criminal, and we have murderers that are all over the country,” the president continued. “I don’t think the Supreme Court will stand for that, I can’t believe it, because you know what? If they do, we’re not gonna have a country.”

The Daily Signal asked the president how he will ensure his nominations are different than the judges blocking his agenda, and he said all he can do is his best.

“All you can do is do the best you can,” he said. “You try to appoint the best people to being judges or anything else that you appoint, but so far you know we’re very disappointed with the decisions that come out, mostly from people appointed by others than me.”

“But it’s so hard to believe that you have a murderer, you know we have 11,888 or whatever the number is, we have thousands of murderers in this country, we’re getting them out and they say ‘we don’t want them out, we want them to stay in our country until we have a trial,’” Trump said.

Trials take years, and America doesn’t have that much time to curb illegal immigration, according to the 47th president.

“They take years,” he said. “It’s so crazy. We won’t have a country left. We can’t have that happen.”

AUTHOR

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House Correspondent for “The Daily Signal.” Send her an email. Elizabeth on X: .

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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WATCH: Against All Odds — The Miraculous Rise of Israel in This War

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This Purim holiday, we must not only focus on the miracle that God did for us in saving us from the genocidal plan of the Persian Empire 2,400 years ago. 

We must also focus on the unbelievable miracles that took place from day one of this war until this day, that has positioned israel in the strongest geo-political position since Biblical times.

What a perfect topic to discuss with the Boynton Beach community, as we begin to internalize the happiness of the Purim celebration of our miraculous survival.

As back then, so goes today…

WATCH: Against All Odds — The Miraculous Rise of Israel in This War

EDITORS NOTE: This Avi Abelow, Pulse of Israel video is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

VIDEO: ‘Separated When | The State Takes Your Kids’ | WATCH NOW

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What happens when the state comes for your kids?

What happens when the institutions meant to safeguard America’s children — Child Protective Services, family courts, the foster system — instead tear them away from their loved ones?

In a shocking, three-part docuseries, The Daily Caller Original Series follows families who refused to bend the knee to radical gender ideology — and paid a terrible price.

Separated: When The State Takes Your Kids is out now.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

“Separated” is available exclusively for Patriots subscribers. Catch a first glimpse below.

Follow the story of a son who begins to identify as a girl after going to the hospital, forever taken from his Christian parents. A mother separated from her transgender-identified daughter, despite no evidence of abuse. A foster family almost denied the ability to adopt, purely because of their religious beliefs.

These families are among a growing group of American households torn apart by institutionalized transgender madness. Tragically, it is American children who suffer the greatest consequences.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

The Daily Caller’s documentary productions are made possible by our faithful Patriots members, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without them. To watch “Separated” and to help support future investigative documentaries, please consider subscribing.

AUTHOR

Daily Caller Staff

Contributor.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller exposé is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WATCH: ‘The Tide of Change is Sweeping the Country’

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“The tide of change is sweeping the country. Sunlight is pouring over the entire world, and America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.” –President Donald J. Trump

THIS VIDEO WILL GIVE YOU CHILLS!

WATCH: ‘The Tide of Change is Sweeping the Country’

©2025 . All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump’s First 100 Days: Executive Sprint, Legislative Snooze

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Why Stupid People are Destroying Society — The Laws of Human Stupidity

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“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Hanlon’s Razor

What is responsible for the sickness of modern society? Is it the evil machinations of the power hungry? Is it due to a conspiracy of the ruling class? In this video, relying on the Italian historian Carlo Cipolla’s essay The Basic Law’s of Human Stupidity, we explore how much of what ails society can attributed to the widespread prevalence of human stupidity.

“The stupid are all around us: they are in every place, in every class, ready to cause damage to others and naturally to themselves. The stupid form the most dangerous category of human beings. Woe betide those who underestimate them.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Cipolla believed that most of us are ignorant to the immense destruction caused by human stupidity. We easily recognize the effects of evil, corruption and greed, but we tend to overlook the damage caused by human stupidity. Cipolla wrote his essay to help correct for this blind spot, or as he wrote:

“The following pages are in fact the result of a constructive effort to detect, know and thus possibly neutralize one of the most powerful, dark forces which hinder the growth of human welfare and happiness.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

In his essay Cipolla enumerates five basic laws of human stupidity, the first of which states: “Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.” The philosopher Voltaire echoed the sentiment behind this law when he wrote “Common sense is not so common.” While Einstein, in conversation with the German psychiatrist Frederick S. Perls, reportedly said “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Not only do we tend to underestimate the number of stupid people in society, but we also tend to underestimate the number of stupid people in our social orbit. We like to believe that members of our family, and those we socialize with, are smarter than average and it is only when they do something so incredibly stupid that it dawns on us that this person may in fact belong to the class of the stupid, or as Cipolla writes:

“No matter how high are one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that: a) People whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid. b) Day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

The Second Basic Law of Human Stupidity states that: “The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.” The stupid are spread throughout all classes, ethnic groups, genders and races. They are found as frequently among the rich as the poor, they are found in politics and the business world, in academia and in science – there is, in other words, nowhere to hide from the effects of the stupid, or as Cipolla writes:

“Whether the Second Basic Law is liked or not, however, its implications are frightening: the Law implies that whether you move in distinguished circles or you take refuge among the head-hunters of Polynesia, whether you lock yourself into a monastery or decide to spend the rest of your life in the company of beautiful and lascivious women, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people — which percentage (in accordance with the First Law) will always surpass your expectations.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

While there are more stupid people than most of us can imagine and while they occupy all walks of life, some may wonder how Cipolla defines human stupidity. This is explained by his third law. To understand this law, however, we need to explore a basic way of categorizing people. Firstly, there is the category of the helpless. The helpless person is one whose actions produce a loss for himself, but a gain for someone else. Secondly, is the category of the bandit. The bandit is a person whose actions produce a gain for himself, but a loss for another. The third category is that of the intelligent. An intelligent person behaves in such a way that they produce a gain for themselves as well as a gain for others. And finally, there is the category of the stupid and as the Third Basic Law of Human Stupidity states:

“A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Often our behavior will oscillate between these different categories. Sometimes we act in a helpless way, sometimes like a bandit, while at other times our actions will be characterized by their intelligence. But the stupid are different. The stupid consistently harm other people, while not deriving a gain for themselves. Cipolla even identified a class of the super-stupid, who take their stupidity to another level. Unlike the run of the mill stupid person who hurts another person through their actions while deriving no gain or loss to themselves, the super stupid consistently hurt themselves, and others, through the way they behave.

The stupid and the super-stupid are a menace to society. They are responsible for many of our social problems and in some cases the havoc they wreck can lead to the downfall of a civilization. Most people fail to recognize this and so the Fourth Basic Law of Human Stupidity states:

“Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Cipolla claims that the damage a stupid person causes is determined by two factors. The first factor is their innate stupidity. According to Cipolla, some people are genetically wired to act in profoundly stupid ways and the stupider someone naturally is, the greater the damage they will cause. The second factor determining the damage caused by a stupid person is the amount of power and social influence they possess. A stupid person who occupies a high-level position in government, the military, or in a large corporation, can cause far more damage than a stupid person who is unemployed. But how do the stupid reach such positions of power? Shouldn’t their stupidity prevent them from climbing the heights of social status? Cipolla explains:

“The question that reasonable people often raise is how and why stupid people can reach positions of power and consequence. Class and caste were the social arrangements which favoured the steady supply of stupid people to positions of power in most societies of the pre-industrial world. Religion was another contributing factor. . .But in lieu of class and caste we have political parties and bureaucracy and in lieu of religion we have democracy. Within a democratic system, general elections are a most effective instrument to insure the steady maintenance [of the stupid] among the powerful.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Elections allow the great number of the stupid in the general population to determine which politicians hold office and very often they elect someone stupid like them. And once a stupid person is in office, he or she helps to maintain the proportion of stupid people in bureaucracies and the judicial system by appointing them to positions of power. Thus, democracy ensures that a continual supply of stupid people walk the halls of governmental power.

Another reason that stupid people are such a menace to society is that most of us fail to detect their stupidity and fail to put up defenses against their actions. In Cipolla’s view stupid people are far more dangerous than even bandits as at least with a bandit there is rhyme and reason for how they behave. The bandit wants to obtain a gain for himself, he is just not intelligent, or moral enough, to do it in a way that produces a reciprocal gain for someone else. But the bandit’s actions, even if immoral, are still rational and so somewhat predictable. Not so with the stupid, or as Cipolla explains:

“A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy. Because the stupid person’s actions do not conform to the rules of rationality, it follows that: a) one is generally caught by surprise by the attack; b) even when one becomes aware of the attack, one cannot organize a rational defence, because the attack itself lacks any rational structure.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

And this leads to the Fifth, and final, Basic Law of Human Stupidity, which states “A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.” (Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity)

The stupid impoverish society, ruin lives, including their own, and if they become too influential and occupy positions of great social power, such as a president or prime minister, social ruin is the inevitable result. Cipolla believed that the only way to prevent stupid people from ruining a society is if more people move from the classes of the bandits and the helpless into the class of the intelligent. For while the stupid lack the ability to change categories it is possible for the helpless and the bandits to learn to act in intelligent ways. And if there are enough intelligent people in society then their mutually beneficial actions will outweigh, or neutralize, the damage caused by the stupid.

Sadly, in the modern-day social forces are moving people in the opposite direction, away from the class of the intelligent into the classes of the bandits and the helpless. Paternalistic governments promote helpless behavior by minimizing the consequences for those who act in this manner. On the other hand, we have a social value system that elevates the attainment of wealth and material goods above all else which is creating such an insatiable desire for these things that many people have no problem acting like bandits to enrich themselves. Without enough intelligent people to neutralize the effects of the bandits and the stupid social collapse becomes an ever more likely possibility, or Cipolla writes:

“In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is [relatively constant] however in the remaining population one notices among those in power an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity and among those not in power an equally alarming growth in the number of helpless individuals. Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the [stupid] fraction and makes decline a certainty. And the country goes to Hell.”

Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

EDITORS NOTE: This Academy of Ideas video and column are republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Dangerous Forces Trying To Undermine Trump’s Push For Peace

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President Donald Trump wants a nuclear deal with Iran. There are forces in his own administration, as well as the Israeli government, trying to stop him. If they succeed, we could be in for a world of hurt. On today’s Rebelcast, Quincy Institute Executive Vice President Trita Parsi joins Daily Caller Editor-in-Chief to break it all down.

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Trading Earth Day for ‘People Day’ and is the U.S. Facing a Constitutional Crisis?

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GUESTS AND TOPICS

PAUL DRIESSEN

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of articles and books on energy, environmental and human rights issues.

TOPIC: TRADING EARTH DAY FOR “PEOPLE DAY”

JUDGE PHIL GINN

Judge Phil Ginn was appointed president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in April 2021 after a distinguished career as both a lawyer and a judge. He holds a B.A. from Appalachian State University, a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Doctor of Ministry from Southern Evangelical Seminary. Prior to his appointment as SES president, Judge Ginn served as SES Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

TOPIC: Is the U.S. facing a constitutional crisis?

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