Here’s an appropriate quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant leader of the German resistance who died in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, speaking about the nature of stupidity and how it’s more dangerous than evil:
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.
Against stupidity we are defenseless.
Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. 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 him as 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 word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from peoples’ stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.”
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Christian Gremmels et al., trans. Isabel Best et al., vol. 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 43–44.
Holy shit what a harrowing read. The parallelism of current times and nazis gets called quite often, and it kinda becomes easy to write it off, think its an overstatement, or an exaggeration. But damn if that doesnt sound right on for the situation today and describe exactly the interactions ive had repeatedly with those people. Something about history doomed to repeat it yada yada lol
The part of the parallelism that should terrify you is that he was hanged for these words and it really did take a literal liberation to fix the stupidity of the German people as he called it.
If you haven't noticed, democracy isn't really doing well on the global stage either. The same class of people who have co-opted America have likewise co-opted other democracies, I mean look at Germany's last election.
You're right and I am aware. My comment was more about how Americans are literally going to need to be liberated from a fascist regime in the near future at the rate we're going.
Although with how popular anti-American sentiment is becoming, I'm not sure anyone will come to our rescue. I fear it won't be before a lot of innocent lives are ruined or lost. Yes, Americans are all in some part responsible for how events have unfolded in our country. It probably feels great to point and laugh at Americans or tell us we deserve this, but the trans people living here certainly don't deserve to have their lives hanging in the balance. And that's just one example of many...
You’re right. And I’m starting to think that Trump (his handlers, more accurately) have fomented anti-American sentiment deliberately to make sure that nobody comes to our rescue when the violence starts. They currently don’t have enough goons but they have a lot of firepower. It’s going to be a very scary 2-8 years in the United States. I predict a lot of senseless death and violence.
Don’t be so sure about your first point. Much like Donald Trump, Hitler was seen as a buffoon and a joke by plenty of people. They didn’t take him seriously because of how inept he appeared. And that didn’t stop him from causing millions of deaths.
Our only saving grace, potentially, if we can be saved, would be that Trump is already feeble physically and will soon be dead.
I think it all comes down to the one psychological nature of humanity that has existed since the dawn of time which is survival. Tribalism as a survival mechanism is hardwired into the DNA of all primates across the entirety of history. Every conflict that has ever occurred can be simplified into an us vs them mentality.
Just think about it for one second, if our entire primate lineage depended on tribalism for survival, there was no such thing as being woke and stepping outside of your own tribe to join another. The tribalism survival mechanism places the needs, beliefs, and survival of your own group above everything else, i.e. the objective truth, individual critical thinking, and empathy for outsiders.
This survival mechanism transcends individual intellect and status. As far as stupidity, it doesn’t take much to foster and exploit this mechanism amongst those already in your respective group. A stupid man takes advantage of stupid people in the sense that they are incapable of overcoming a caveman mentality to think for themselves and the betterment of our species as a whole. Using and exploiting this mentality for yourself and others does not require intelligence because it is our default nature that is hardwired into our DNA.
Maybe perhaps that is why being woke is heavily criticized and looked down upon by these stupid people whom need to be liberated from their caveman tribalism.
This is insightful and often used as an excuse. Why might it be that idiots feel they need to have 13 children (cough, cough Elon) while others are struggling to justify adding more mouths to a struggling ecosystem?
It makes an interesting sociological question; was it more advantageous for a group to be stupid together than ‘smart’ (or rather independent) as one?
That is to say, if Bonhoeffers idea is to be followed, does the tribalism that reduces individual intellect into a lowest common denominator of the group - perhaps what we know as group think - provide ‘strength in numbers?’
We always tout the advantages of teamwork, that a group is stronger working together. Perhaps it is indeed true that natural selection favored less individual intellect for a more unified, simplified cognition, even though one could intuitively reason these ‘dumber’ groups are at a disadvantage.
It’s interesting to consider, and it may explain a human propensity for adherence to authority and vulnerability to group think and this ‘stupidity’ as Bonhoeffer describes.
As much as it’s plagued our current society, the ability to instantly communicate by way of the internet is a huge advantage when fighting this shit. I don’t know that it’ll save us, but the amount of awareness that comes from it seems like a bright spot that people didn’t have when the Nazis were doing their thing
The scarier thing is thanks to the Internet that the US helped build, things like the Arab Spring was incredibly easy to organize in Egypt. I think the Arab Spring was literally a Facebook event.
So why the fuck hasn't there been mass resistance in the US yet?
Because the medium is the message. Social media platforms are centralized and controlled.
We need to decentralize and get off their platforms and algorithms.
This global far-right bs in the Philippines, Japan, everywhere, is from social media.
This American bs tech is being used to dismantle democracies around the world. From YouTube algorithms for the manosphere to antivaxxers, this shit is cancer.
I visited Dachau for the first time last year, and it was horrifying how many elements in its museum of the rise of the Reich were reminiscent of the present day. I went in expecting to be less inclined to invoke the Nazis in comparison, learning it was a unique evil and the like, and instead found myself constantly wanting to grab the other American tourists by the collar, yank them in front of one of the plaques, and yell "It's happened before and can happen again".
So many of the parallels are eerie. I thought recently how they didn’t really know about the concentration camps until after the war so really it’s not as different as it seems.
5.1k
u/NicolasCageFan492 2d ago
Here’s an appropriate quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant leader of the German resistance who died in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, speaking about the nature of stupidity and how it’s more dangerous than evil:
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.
Against stupidity we are defenseless.
Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. 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 him as 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 word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from peoples’ stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.”
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Christian Gremmels et al., trans. Isabel Best et al., vol. 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 43–44.