This is a really interesting article! Teaching Against Idiocy, Phi Delta Kappa, 2005, by Walter C. Parker
Link to MS Word version http://www.shanoglesby.net/ParkerTeachingAgainstIdiocy.doc
He writes, among other things..
Idiocy shares with idiom and idiosyncratic the root idios, which means private, separate, self-centered -- selfish... When a person's behavior became idiotic -- concerned myopically with private things and unmindful of common things -- then the person was believed to be like a rudderless ship, without consequence save for the danger it posed to others. This meaning of idiocy achieves its force when contrasted with polites (citizen) or public. Here we have a powerful opposition: the private individual versus the public citizen...An idiot is one whose self-centeredness undermines his or her citizen identity, causing it to wither or never to take root in the first place. Private gain is the goal, and the community had better not get in the way.
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