Deepening knowledge in the Nous Study Circle
What makes an idiot an idiot.
Gabriel. G. Oliveira
3/13/20266 min read
How to Avoid Being an Idiot
I started teaching around 2024, but in reality, this process began much earlier, even before I could imagine that one day I would be teaching someone. It began at home, in a way that I only came to understand many years later. My father raised me in a way I had never seen done with any other child. It wasn't the kind of education you learn in school, nor the contemporary idea of "letting the child discover everything on their own." It was different. It was practically constant intellectual training.
He enrolled me in courses from a very young age. All kinds of training. Some are possible, others border on the absurd for their age. Computer science, technical subjects, fields completely distinct from each other. However, the most important thing was not the courses themselves. The conversations and the lessons he taught at home were the most important.
This started approximately when I was seven years old.
And it persisted until I turned fourteen.
He passed away two years later, a victim of gastric cancer.
Even so, he kept teaching me until practically the final moments, when he still had strength.
My father had a brilliant mind. It turns out that almost no one knew about it. He had a peculiarity: hiding what he knew. Not out of false modesty, but out of a certain silent disdain for the intellectual environment around him. He used to assert that modernity had created a rather particular type of human. And that this type of human was responsible for most of the intellectual confusions of the contemporary world.
He referred to that individual as an idiot.
It wasn't an arbitrary insult. It's a concept.
According to him, the idiot was the combination of three types of people in one individual. The fool, the arrogant, and the ignorant.
The donkey not as someone incapable of learning, but as someone stubborn. The person who does not change their position even when reality confronts them directly.
Arrogance emerges as the second element from this point onward. The individual possesses no knowledge whatsoever, absolutely none, yet sincerely believes they are capable of judging everything. Frequently, he behaves like a brat around those he is speaking to. He hasn't studied the topic, never delved into it, but believes he can participate in the discussion and make criticisms as if he had intellectual authority.
And then, the third element emerges: ignorance. Speak as if you know the subject, even without having any knowledge about it.
When stubbornness, arrogance, and ignorance combine, it gives rise to what my father called the modern idiot.
And, according to him, it was this type of mind that began to dominate modernity.
He said that the issue with the idiot is not just ignorance. The challenge lies in the belief that one can analyze anything without method, foundation, and intellectual rigor. Since he is obstinate, this lack of foundation does not make him back down. On the contrary. It produces progressively more radical interpretations of reality.
The individual begins the construction of complete systems within their own mind.
And it is in this way, according to my father, that many forms of gnosis arise.
He used to give an example that has stuck with me since childhood. Choose a basic object. An example of this is a book. The precise analysis always begins with the real. A book is a physical object. It has physical characteristics. Has limits. Has content. It has structure. From this point, it is possible to conduct more complex analyzes. Historical, philosophical, symbolic, and metaphysical.
However, all these analyzes must be in contact with the true nature of the object.
Logic precisely fits into this aspect.
He presented logic in a very visual way. He claimed that logic resembles the four legs of a chair. All other types of analysis — political, sociology, theology, metaphysics, psychology, symbology — are above the chair. But if you remove the legs from the chair, everything collapses.
Without logic, none of these analyzes hold up.
And then, he highlighted the issue of some contemporary pedagogical approaches.
An example he used to cite was that of Paulo Freire and the concept presented in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. According to him, the problem lay in the notion that anyone can interpret anything solely based on their own personal experiences. Interpretation becomes a kind of absolute right, detached from knowledge, method, or intellectual foundation.
In other words, the individual experiences a sensation related to the text, reality, or a concept and converts that emotion into a valid interpretation.
My father used to say that this approach completely breaks with the intellectual tradition that taught the subject to first understand the object, then analyze it, and finally make a judgment.
When this process is reversed, imagination takes the place of reality.
And it is precisely at this moment that, according to him, many forms of modern occultism and esoteric interpretations completely disconnected from reality appear. Not because symbolic analysis is invalid, but because many begin the investigation of metaphysics, religion, or theology solely based on their own imaginations.
They abandon the analysis of reality and begin to examine their own fantasies about it.
In this scenario, my father created a representation that he called the idiot triangle.
Think of a triangle.
At each end, there is an element: the fool, the arrogant, and the ignorant.
At the core of this triangle, there is an intellectual black hole that absorbs all thoughts.
Relativism is the black hole.
When everything becomes a personal interpretation, nothing needs to adhere to reality anymore. Each individual constructs their own interpretation of the world and begins to defend it with complete certainty.
And when this way of thinking spreads, contemporary gnoses, extremist ideologies, and worldviews completely disconnected from reality begin to emerge.
My father used to say something that, at the time, I considered exaggerated, but now it makes total sense to me.
He claimed that a large part of society operates exactly that way. That possibly sixty or seventy percent of people function mentally within this triangle. This becomes evident when talking to someone on the street for just a few minutes. The person speaks with conviction about subjects they have never studied, analyzed, or, many times, even seriously considered.
He chose to educate me this way in an attempt to prevent me from becoming that kind of person.
The home lessons took place regularly.
Sometimes, about logic.
Sometimes, about history.
Occasionally, I discuss topics such as religion, politics, culture, and society.
Almost always focusing on the same question: what here represents reality and what here is just a product of the imagination?
He had various personal opinions on these issues. Concepts that were never disclosed. He was never interested in becoming a public writer or a renowned academic. Part of it was disinterest, while the other part was the perception that the contemporary intellectual environment often prioritizes consensus over truth.
Even so, he left me several of those ideas.
Some I preserved exactly as he expressed them.
Others I worked more.
Others I had to develop myself over time.
Many of the current discussions in the Nous Study Circle originated in those past classes.
My father didn't refer to it as the Study Circle. However, the structure already existed.
Examine concepts.
Evaluate arguments.
Submit everything to reason.
Contrast any theory with reality.
Escape the idiot triangle.
Only many years later did I begin to understand that that type of training was not usual. And it was even later that I started teaching.
Around 2024, I started teaching some students.
Some stayed for a year.
Just over two more years.
Many arrived completely raw.
Some had a rather vague idea of what they wanted to do in life. They considered courses, universities, or career paths that, in reality, did not reflect who they truly were. They were just following the direction that their surroundings led them.
During the classes, something interesting happened.
As the discussions progressed and they began to examine their own ideas, their worldview, and their lives with more intellectual rigor, many internal aspects started to reorganize.
Some completely changed their academic path.
Others chose areas that were indeed aligned with what they discovered about themselves.
Not because I told them to do it.
However, when people begin to face reality more clearly, certain illusions simply cease to seem viable.
And perhaps this is the most sincere task an educator can perform.
Do not generate followers.
Don't force ideologies.
However, to help someone see the world with less self-deception.
This happens because, when the truth becomes clearer, many choices that once seemed impossible become simply inevitable.