“And the LORD God said,
Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.“
After learning godlike skills – after becoming a conscious human being, that is – man has set his sights on the next target.
Apportioning blame. Finding culprits. The only way forward, right? Bulldoze the obstacles away, lose the dead weight and you’ll get there a lot faster.
Where? Where is that elusive ‘there’? We’ll find out about the place when we’ll get there!
If we’ll get there… If we’ll ever get anywhere with that attitude, for that matter!
Researching for this post, I came across Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity.
First things first.
Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who happened to come of age right when Hitler was confiscating political power in Germany. Even though Bonhoeffer belonged to a church which denounced violence, even in self defense, Bonhoeffer eventually joined a conspiracy trying to assassinate the dictator.
““Here the law is being broken, violated,” he deplored. It might be true that “the commandment is broken out of dire necessity,” but to say he broke the commandment of necessity is still to say he broke the commandment. Rather than pretend this was some positive moral good, Bonhoeffer instead threw himself at God’s feet and begged forgiveness for the sin he could not but commit.“
In his writings, Bonhoeffer was abundantly clear.
“The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
‘Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly.“
The key concept here, as I read Bonhoeffer’s work, is that external liberation must come first. As a precondition for the ‘internal liberation’. For a shackled individual, reaching a peaceful state of mind is almost impossible. And since nobody can exercise their will in a free manner unless their mind is ‘level’….
Further more, in order to learn one needs an open mind. A free, level and open mind. And being able/willing to learn is the only road out of ‘stupid-land’. The only way to overcome the ‘what I already know is plenty’ attitude.
Only a free individual can choose to independently examine the facts. A shackled one will almost always give up. And accept whatever official version is being shoveled down their throat.
And here’s the catch.
“In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.“
Having grown up, and being socialized, under a communist regime – somewhat different but not entirely from the nazism experienced by Bonhoeffer – I understand how it is to live under symbolical duress. Under a constant deluge of lies. Which were meant to effectively shackle us. Not to educate but to condition us.
During that time, I had also noticed the deluge was poured by intellectuals. The very people who were supposed to do the exact opposite. To enlighten us. To elevate the willing people to the ‘next level’. Teachers, writers, artists … and even clergy. Not all the intellectuals were involved in this process but all those used by the dictating party to destroy both our external and internal freedom did belong to the intellectual caste.
Communism and nazism had been somewhat ‘natural’ occurrences.
Ruthless political operators – evil people, in Bonhoeffer’s words – have noticed an opportunity – the existence of economically distressed people – and used their ‘knowledge of words’ to ideologically shackle those people to symbolical totem-posts.
What is currently going on is akin to a suicide of sorts.
We might believe those who had instated communism and fascism had good intentions. Misguided – to say the least, according to the horrible results attained by those regimes, but well intended naive individuals.
Nowadays, after having already experienced those episodes, we should be threading very carefully…
The same level of popular dissatisfaction, the same level of finger-pointing, of frustration… everything stirred up and brought to paroxysm by the same kind of manipulation.
Propaganda spun by the same kind of callous intellectuals as those involved in the advent of communism and fascism. I call them callous because this time they should know better. It is their job to know these things. For it is the intellectuals who are supposed, according to their social role, to “know good and evil”.
This is why I cringe every time I see/hear/read an intellectual who blames the ‘stupid people’ for what’s going on.
Blaming the ‘others’ for things they have done unwittingly is a huge error. For one simple reason.
It’s self defeating. And, hence, treasonous!
We all, both the ‘stupid’ and the rest of us, need to liberate ourselves. From the “slogans, catchwords and the like, that have” been used to shackle us, all of us, into a state of ideological prostration.
We blame them. They blame us. And those who have planned all this cannot believe how successful they have been.
But for the very shortest of times…
Social uniformity begets ‘morass’. Like water, a society needs to flow in order to remain reasonably clean. To remain functional.
Communism, artificial equality, brings everything to a stand-still.
On the other hand, too much social disparity, too much power concentrated in a very small number of hands while the rest are reduced to a state of prostration, begets revolution. Like a body of water perched on a cliff wanting to climb down, a strung up society will, eventually, find ‘relief’. Sometimes explosively.
It is the intellectuals who need to figure this out. For it is them who fare worst under all dictatorial regimes. Regardless of anything a dictator might promise.
“In the 1970s, Carlo Cipolla, a social psychologist, developed FIVE LAWS OF STUPIDITY. The term itself, he said, wasn’t a description of intellectual acuity, but of social responsibility. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person, or to a group of persons, while deriving no gain for himself, and possibly incurring losses. Cases in which someone takes an action by which both parties gained, was deemed intelligent.“
Cipolla’s words are correct. But incomplete.
Even if the individual who causes losses to others people do it for personal gain, their endeavor is still stupid! Because that ‘thing’ is unsustainable! People taking advantage of other people leads the whole party into a dead-end.
Adam Smith was describing ‘the butcher, the brewer and the baker working for their own personal interest and so driving forward the entire market/society’. The entire society!
Indeed! Only those people were working together!
Not each of them against all others! Those who tried to con their business partners were thrown away!That was the essence of Adam Smith’s free market!
The freedom enjoyed by everybody. The freedom from being swindled.
Do you feel free?
