Fool on the Hill

Fool on the Hill

12 February 2026

Long ago, at a time when there was still a clear distinction between university and higher professional education, I once told my wife that it is difficult for someone standing at the bottom of the stairs to understand what can be seen from the top. From below, you simply cannot see what lies above. Only when you take a step yourself does the perspective change.

She still reminds me of that remark, especially in situations where it proves impossible—or will remain impossible—to make people understand something. Recently, she brought the story up again. That led me to the title Fool on the Hill, which I decided to look up. The title refers to a composition by Paul McCartney from 1976. The people at the foot of the hill see the man at the top as a fool, while over time, he turns out to be wise. That is a different order of meaning, but it touches on a related idea: genius borders on madness.

But what is this really about? And where am I going with it?

In our society, we increasingly place people in top positions who, in terms of development, stand lower on the staircase than those they lead. More troubling still, they lack the capacity to recognize this, let alone deal with it adequately. The outcome is predictable. Instead of raising the level, they pull the level beneath them down. This is not an isolated phenomenon but a systemic one. A meagre consolation is that it does not occur only here; it happens elsewhere as well.

I keep thinking of Newton’s famous remark from 1675: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Progress does not come from denying what already exists, but from recognizing it and building upon it.

So what is the solution?

Not by shouting more loudly about what you see from the top, but by deliberately stepping down a few stairs. Effective communication only emerges when you are willing to stand at the same level and guide the other person, step by step, toward the perspective you have seen from above.

Steve Jobs is said to have remarked: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” But even that insight requires that you yourself have reached a certain level on the staircase. Stepping down to bring others along may be theoretically sound, but it presupposes that you understand where you stand in the first place.

Finally, I am reminded of Socrates. Not because he stood low on the staircase, but precisely because he occupied the highest steps. His wisdom lay in his deliberate choice to stand low. “The only thing I know is that I know nothing” was not a confession of ignorance, but an expression of intellectual discipline. We know how this fool on the hill ultimately fared. He was not only condemned to death, but was also made to drink the poison himself.

I do not know who first coined the phrase, but it presses itself upon me ever more forcefully: stupidity reigns.

Miguel Goede