Definition of

Senseless

Lack of good sense

Whoever drinks alcohol while driving is foolish since he carries out an action that is dangerous for himself and other people.

The notion of foolish derives from the Latin word insensātus . The adjective refers to the absence of good sense : that is, good judgment, prudence or wisdom.

For example: “The government presented a foolish project to modify the retirement system,” “You are foolish! “How are you going to light a fire next to a fuel tank?” , “The club is run by fools who keep making mistakes.”

Characteristics of a foolish individual

The foolish subject acts without maturity , reflection or sanity . In this way, he performs actions that are irrational or illogical , sometimes even putting his life or that of other people at risk.

The concept of maturity is perhaps one of the most relevant in this framework, since we must achieve wisdom through experience, tasting foolishness and its consequences more than once until we understand that it is not convenient for us.

Lack of maturity

When a child commits an act that in the case of an adult could be described as foolish, his guardians generally accuse him of being disobedient, referring to the fact that they had already warned him not to "do that" or "not to touch that." , For example.

As the years go by, after all these pranks and the retaliation they entail, the child is expected to mature and learn to judge his actions without the need for adult supervision.

While in early childhood everything we do has the objective of "trying", of "getting to know our environment", in adulthood we tend to anticipate events with a more elaborate goal. You can't ask a child to understand the danger of not locking the door to his house, but if an adult doesn't do it, he is foolish.

Risky

Someone foolish adopts risky behavior.

Example of foolish behavior

Take the case of a man who is unemployed and has difficulty feeding his children. This guy decides to take the little savings he has left and go to the casino : in less than an hour, he loses all the money . Now, in addition to not having a job, he also has no financial reserve to cover the expenses. Although it can be understood as a decision made out of desperation, the individual was foolish since he himself increased the severity of the problem he had.

Whoever decides to have a lion as a pet can also be called foolish . No matter how much you believe that the specimen is domesticated and not aggressive, it is still a wild animal that retains its natural instinct. That is why it constitutes a danger to its caretaker and its neighbors. Captivity also affects the feline itself.

The concept in a parable

On the other hand, a story presented in the Gospel of Saint Luke is known as the Parable of the Rich Fool . It is a reflection on a miserly man who is dedicated to accumulating excess material goods without taking into account that, when the moment of death comes, everything will be left unused and undistributed. That behavior, judging by the Bible , is senseless.

If we think about this parable and the pace of life today, we will notice that materialism has spread considerably in recent decades. While in the past it could have been an attitude towards life for some people, the constant information storm that we are subjected to when we become addicted to the media leads us to want to buy something different every day.

Luke's behavior in the Bible is senseless, as is ours if we hire all the services offered to us on the Internet and accept the abusive policies of certain current markets that sell us their products in small fractions to force us to buy them all if we want to complete them, something that did not happen until the late 90s.