Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog
Created April 10, 2026
In honor of the recent April Fool’s Day, some thoughts here about the idea of being a fool.
The word has had more than one meaning since it came into the English language in around the 13th Century. It comes from the Latin word for “bellows or inflated ball”, figuratively meaning an airhead. It came to English through French, where its connotations at one time were “the King’s jester” and at other times “insane” or even “a prostitute”. Even in English today, it has multiple meanings. It can mean someone who acts with poor judgment, a know-nothing, or someone who is gullible and can be easily taken in by a trickster.
In my opinion, each of us has a certain probability of doing something foolish at one point or another. We can be a fool for a moment or a day and then come out of it.
In today’s environment, in which the internet and AI enable scammers to trick even the smartest of us, we can be made fools of, possibly with greater frequency than in the past, if we are not cautious and patient enough. Acceleritis tends to cause us to always be rushing, and that leads to being a fool more often than we’d like.
It can make us feel really bad when we realize we have just now acted like a fool. We tend to quickly lose all confidence in ourselves. This is an overreaction and a dangerous one. Take it in stride; it’s part of life, it happens to all of us.
The most dangerous thing of all is to be stubbornly resistant to admitting that one has been played for a fool. Everyone in your life may be completely aware that you have been played like a violin and that you are in permanent and rigid denial. That makes others really lose respect for you. Much more than if you admitted your mistake.
Admitting that you can make mistakes, that you can be fooled, gains you respect from every person.
We all know how hard it is to admit our mistakes. When a person has the guts to do this difficult thing, everyone knows what reservoirs of integrity and strength undergird such actions.
Confucius said, “Someone who will not admit he made a mistake is making another one.”
Admitting mistakes is good because you can then learn from them. As you probably know, my cosmic philosophy is that we are here to learn, and that means making mistakes, for without mistakes, there cannot be much learning. And without admitting mistakes, there cannot be much learning.
There is a specific mental/emotional function which causes the refusal to admit mistakes. It’s called the ego.
Freud theorized that the ego was not the original self we are born with, but a mediator with the outside world, which forms as a functional center the first time our needs are thwarted. I agree with this theory; it jibes with my own personal science project of studying the way my own mind works for my entire life. Not that I remember the event of my ego coming into existence, but I can discern impulses coming from an egoistic source within myself from impulses arising from a different source within myself which is not so hung up on what happens to this particular body I’ve been assigned to this time around.
The two sources are not equally competent at making good decisions. I define good decisions as those whose outcomes are beneficial to all concerned. The ego is terrible at making such decisions. Its bias toward its own owner blinds it to opportunities to gain much more for that owner by making things come out all right for everyone involved in the situation.
The ego is an inferior part of the mind which makes decisions that end in our unhappiness and regret.
Unfortunately, not only do we live in a culture which feeds the dominance of the ego, the culture also creates a competitive race which has led to uncontrollable Acceleritis – inhuman amounts of information overload as a distraction. We are born in a relatively angelic state and are turned into egoists operating largely in Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP). This causes us to mess things up on a grand scale, which condition is the one part of my narrative that is now universally recognized to be the unvarnished truth.
The Bible made the connection between “fool” and “ego” in Proverbs without using the word “ego” but by describing many of the main traits of egoistic behavior:
“In the Book of Proverbs, a fool is not merely someone lacking intelligence, but a person characterized by moral deficiency, arrogance, and a stubborn rejection of wisdom, discipline, and godly instruction. They are self-sufficient, quick-tempered, and prone to reckless speech that leads to ruin.
Usage Examples of “Fool” in Proverbs:
- Rejection of Wisdom: “Fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).
- Arrogance: “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 12:15).
- Uncontrollable Anger/Speech: “A fool gives full vent to his spirit” (Proverbs 29:11) and “A fool’s mouth is his ruin” (Proverbs 18:7).
- Repeating Mistakes:
“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly” (Proverbs 26:11).
- Quarrelsome: “It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling” (Proverbs 20:3).
Synonyms and Types of Fools in Proverbs:
- Simple/Simpleton: Gullible, naive, and easily led astray.
- Scoffers/Scorner: Proud, mocking, and hostile toward correction.
- Sluggard: Lazy and reckless with their responsibilities.
- Babbling Fool: One whose speech is chaotic and foolish (Proverbs 10:8).
Common traits include being quick to anger, untrainable, and unteachable, often needing drastic, painful lessons to learn, as noted in Proverbs 27:22.”
– (Source: Google AI)
People who do not vote have been fooled. They think their votes don’t matter. They think they are powerless. They think the world is all screwed up far beyond anything they can do to make it better. It’s not true. In the 2024 election, 89 million eligible voters did not vote in the presidential election. That’s more people than voted for either candidate.
Some people who did vote know on some level that they have been fooled, but only some of them are willing to admit it.
We have all been fooled into getting into this polarized two-party headspace. We are all Americans, we are all citizens of the Earth, citizens of the universe, and in my estimation, we are all avatars of the One Consciousness that is the universe.
We have all been fooled into thinking that we are entirely separate from one another.
It’s not the end of the world to be fooled, nor to admit we were wrong about something.
We’re all fools to some degree, but we can gain back our self-respect and dignity by admitting our mistakes and moving on.
Happy belated April Fool’s Day! Happy glorious Spring!
May we all spring forward in all our inward and outward endeavors!
Love to all,
My new book POWERFUL MIND is now available in e-book and print format at
“A compelling, optimistic, and original approach to mental focus, Powerful Mind is an innovative tool for self-discovery and creative liberation. Succinctly outlined and intuitively structured, this book is replete with rational advice, using a radical but commonsense approach. It takes a rare and adroit thinker to incorporate myriad worldviews and welcome diverse readers, regardless of ideological allegiance, but Harvey shows himself to be precisely that. The book is a masterfully structured, intellectually affirming, and potentially paradigm-shifting read.”
~ Self-Publishing Review, ★★★★