Very strong insight indeed. After 15 years in higher ed, I know that professors practice and teach this principle of stupidity: conformity, complicity, and to censure heterodox thinkers and questioners of The Message (any one of the Social Justice sects).
At Virginia Tech in 2020, my department’s dean pulled in a non-tenure linguistics professor, told her remove tech affiliation from her personal Facebook page or be fired (she had posted conservative views about Covid - the horror). Then, the same dept. chair praises the same professor when Russia attacks Ukraine (the linguistics professor is from Ukraine). Bandwagon thinking. That Ukrainian prof. had enough duplicity and resigned. In fall 2020, I was forced to state my name and pronouns in 3 PhD classes (I’d already willingly used colleague pronouns at work in CA for years, but to be compelled to?). My refusal to conform earned me a poor reputation with faculty from then until I completed my PhD this June. I was expected to confess I was a CRT believer here and in my 2nd MA at cal state in 2018, for my ‘original group sin’ (as they called it) of being white and male. 2 cal state professors refused to recommend me to my PhD because I didn’t accept their definition of white and male (group category and culpability equals individual identity to them).
Herd mentality (hide, blend in, save your job, don’t stand out, group think, etc.) is alive and well in the humanities. The fear of ostracization is real, dogma in orthodoxy is too, but I didn’t enroll in higher ed programs to become accepted but to become helpful and skilled for my writing students, and to refine my knowledge, assumptions, and priors through research. Cannot confidently say the same of my programs and professors.
Alas, you and your hastily-generalized online certainty may never know. I might have even agreed. But my 1400 in-person, open-minded ESL, TESOL, and writing students over 10yrs on the other hand…
Diversity is inclusive of everyone and your mention of “priors” leads me to believe you’ve studied Bayesian thinking.
My favorite phrase to those who are different is the verbal assurance, “You be You”, and that opens our dialogue to respectful, honest conversation. Shared perspectives are enlightening and individual choice is Liberty.
I appreciate your comment. I studied Bayesian thinking on my own because none of my 3 grad programs taught it or the flaws/limitations of statistical inference and the implications on scientific work. Humanities abound in pet theories with no assessment of their validity. Partly why we’re in our current partisan academic mess. I very much appreciate ‘you be you’ because I promote “Be critical. Be generous. Be you” to my students.
Fundamentalist religion literally teaches you to check your brain at the church/synagogue/Mosque door and blindly believe and follow what the leaders tell you. So no - he is not throwing another stone — he is stating facts.
No, he is stating his OPINION, not fact…his opinion isn’t even reasoned, it’s just a flippant comment indicting hundreds of millions of Christians, never mind he hasn’t the wherewithal to read peoples’ minds.
After 15 years in higher ed, I know that professors practice and teach this principle of stupidity: conformity, complicity, to censure heterodox thinkers and questioners of The Message (any one of the Social Justice sects).
At Virginia Tech in 2020, my department’s dean pulled in a non-tenure linguistics professor, told her remove tech affiliation from her personal Facebook page or be fired (she had posted conservative views about Covid - the horror). Then, the same dept. chair praises the same professor when Russia attacks Ukraine (the linguistics professor is from Ukraine). Bandwagon thinking. In fall 2020, I was forced to state my name and pronouns in 3 PhD classes (I’d already willingly used colleague pronouns at work in CA for years, but to be compelled to?). My refusal to conform earned me a poor reputation with faculty from then until I completed my PhD this June. I was expected to confess I was a CRT believer here and in my 2nd MA at cal state in 2018, for my ‘original group sin’ (as they called it) of being white and male.
Herd mentality (hide, blend in, save your job, don’t stand out, group think, etc.) are alive and well in the humanities. The fear of ostracization is real, dogma in orthodoxy is too, but I didn’t enroll in programs to become accepted but to become helpful, skilled, and to refine my knowledge, assumptions, and priors. Cannot fully say the same of my programs and professors.
I also refuse to state my pronouns. You figure out what you want to call me. The left has gotten very very militant about DEI which is why we are having a backlash right now. I'd argue the left wasn't like this until Trump's first term. The left became militant because they felt the need to not give him and his ideology a platform. And as such, there is no nuisance as MAGA don't deal with nuisance either.
The only thing I am very militant about is vaccines. They save countless lives and that shouldn't be fucked with.
I agree, the Left became more militant politically and culturally to refuse any airtime to his platform once he won in 16. But the left’s militancy in academia predates Trump 1.0. He drew their ire because liberals over last 15 years or more (depending on the discipline) had already caved to the progressives and no one else dared to or remained to stand up to them, no conservatives or libertarians effectively existed in academia. His very presence constituted a rude backlash to their already-stringent orthodoxy in university courses and policies. They taught and researched unopposed for 3 decades (or 4) until now. But many social justice theories explicitly argue we must not question or criticize theories until we implement them to see their effects. To do the honest academic work of testing a hypothesis and questioning validity of a theory is to be racist, sexist, oppressive, colonizing, you name it, etc. Now everyone in society (scholars and average American) has had a chance to evaluate the theories, and mostly the Left’s best response is to label questioning and criticism some kind of -ism rather than engage arguments on their logic, evidence, reality, and rhetoric.
Wokism and CRT in CA go back at least to 1996 if not earlier. Many academics warned of this ideology. Trump and populism is a response to Woke. (It needs to be checked as well.) Anyone versed in Chinese history recognizes the crossover of Woke with Red Guard.
There are a billion Catholics worldwide. American TV evangelists and megachurches have captured the “brand” of Christian though in the U.S.A. They never wear a cross with the crucified body of Jesus, an innocent man who spoke out for the poor and vulnerable.
Indeed, Pope Leo has been a force to combat the lies and hate from those who have misappropriated “woke” and the very essence of Christianity which is love, empathy, kindness, caring for those less fortunate, etc. At least that is the Christianity I was brought up with in the Episcopal church.
Not only self righteousness but absolute obedience. To pastors, parents, anyone in authority. Religious communities brainwash their congregants. It’s no wonder so many of them think Trump is god’s chosen one.
Imagine the conditions of your "eye-sight", and your moral courage, if you felt like singling out one of the successful organizations in this world, out of the many of them.
Congratulations still, for choosing the safest (hence most fashionable) targets.
Instead of thinking critically, you castigate every Christian who belongs to a Church, accusing every one of them of being self-righteous. You might want to think before you post.
“Credo ut intelligam.” St. Augustine, 4th century African Bishop of Hippo would disagree.”I believe so I understand.” Note he uses Credo which is from the Latin “core do”, what I give my heart to. It is not an intellectual assent to doctrines first it would seem but helps illuminate them, open them up. He wrote s few himself! Interesting guy!
So-called enlightened atheism and other secular philosophies gave us the Soviet Union's gulags and other forms of collectivism which have killed over 100 million people in a single century.
How does this concept of the malice of stupidity relate to the constant flow of media that lulls us into the normalization of blatant cruelty? Aren't we at risk of passively accepting the tsunami of evil?
The media is the constant in the formation of the blank face of conformity and the normalization of hate, racism or “the other” that makes people look at each other with fear. The media is the dispenser of mis and disinformation and the most pervasive propagandist of all.
Sadly, this will remain the case as long as there is a profit to be made from the normalization of hate (as you so aptly put it). And so we have devolved into two tribes of monkeys gleefully flinging their poo at each other.
Yes. Good question. There's certainly a tsunami of news.
If you want to destroy the ability to think for yourself you dumb down the education system and cut funding for universities. You fund in such a way that a cash-strapped university has to put more resources into business studies and economics and less into humanities and those encouraging critical thinking.
You make high school education largely vocational except for the elite.
You defund early childhood education. These are the ways to create sheep and unquestioning followers.
That doesn't answer normalisation of cruelty though. Is it ever normalised? If depends on what you know about the world (see above) and your morality.
Like flying planes into buildings? He didn’t “pay with his life”, his life was taken from him by stupid people who could not accept being challenged, who stood firm in their faith that fascism should not be questioned.
Pay with his life meaning paying the cost of holding tight to his convictions to the point of being killed for them. Sure, stupid people did take his life and he could have played it safe and would have lived if he had, but he like most decent people tried to put a stop to it and didn’t succeed in saving himself. It’s a tragedy really.
An absolute tragedy. And yes, he could have kept his mouth shut, but IMHO that’s different than “faith” or holding to convictions. He was trying to save ppl from being killed, not killed bc he was challenged about his beliefs. To me these are different issues.
True enough, faith and beliefs are entirely different topics outside the scope of motivation to save others from their own stupidity. In my lifetime that has rarely worked out, but I admire those who still try.
I was going to comment but I just read a number of comments that are so arrogant that I’ll pass. When you are so sure you see more clearly, it is time to step back and see where you are being blindsided.
It would be amazing to hear you speak as to what you thought was arrogance and believe is blindsiding rather than quickly passing judgement without putting your own thoughts on the line. It could be interpreted as arrogance not to bother speaking outside of offering a critique and we could all benefit from being shown a different if not better thought process… so please take time to share your own ideas as people are more than interested in hearing them, but without preventing what is precisely meant by using your own words rather than quotes.
I am not loquacious but found the whole discussion of IQ and college degrees without merit. College degrees have long been available to the wealthy but not always to those without wealth. Historical fact. That does not equate intelligence for the wealthy and stupidity for the poor. I bow out.
Agreed! I’m wary of defining people by IQ or education. Several brilliant minds didn’t have money or access to education. In turn, nobody offered me a scholarship or saved for my college education probably because they thought I was stupid when it was actually undiagnosed ASD making thought difficult. I had to work part time to earn an education, but this made me appreciate it all the more and become more inclined to put it to use. My experience has been with people who were handed college educations who in turn did nothing with them. One might argue that they were stupid, but then again it could be simply lazy. It seems that the harder we try or work for anything makes us productive, but I never discount anyone’s ability. If I could, so can they is my premise, IQ not being a deciding factor. I won’t even get into the contrived nature of it.
I personally witnessed an overabundance of stupidity during the pandemic. People just blindly swallowed the narrative they were given, without questioning it's relevance. Fear and panic are powerful weapons, that's when reason should prevail.
Well, I have no faith to speak of. And I admire those whose faith compels them to great sacrifice - Bonhoeffer, the Black Baptist church, the Dalai Lama - all help me see that there is some worth in being a "person of god".
I’d be a lot more impressed with the Dalai Lama if he’d do something more than spout meaningless platitudes and offer a single useful statement condemning the greatest criminals since Hitler.
“We are all one” just isn’t really cutting it as a countervailing philosophy when Nazis are making the rules.
My reading and studying of Bonhoeffer’s life and works has set me on a path, not only enlightenment, but the double edge sword of faith. How it can be used for good and how it can be used for evil. When things are inverted, so also is the way one fights evil. Lies become necessary, betrayal becomes relevant. It takes a person with deep and strong moral character to understand which is which and when an inversion of moral decency becomes a spiritual weapon for good.
The other thing I will add is that in my experience, for example at a Trump rally, you see very few people who would be considered intelligent. These are mostly lesser-educated and ignorant people. These are the stupid people mentioned. There are a few highly educated people who are Trump supporters, and they are smart because they know the advantages that Trump will give them over lesser moneyed people. Both groups would support an American Hitler.
God if I read one more quote about Hitler in the Nazis. It's not as if there's no record and documentaries or books of what happened in that period, it was pure devastation, millions died. It's a joke people like you run around on your keyboards living in the 1% land of the world and whining about the end of the world.
I wondered how long it would take for this to devolve into a political rant and here we are like all the other anger posting about the last election. It makes me embarrassed for us as a nation that people want to insult or hate their own countrymen over a single election. I’ve voted and my chosen candidates lost many times but I didn’t go around trash talking people who did their civic duty just because my own vote was different or that I felt mine was more right than theirs. Then again I was raised during a more polite era where it was considered impolite but today the gloves are off and everyone has become a target of mean spirited opinions. If any one behavior made our lives less enjoyable, this is for me among the worst.
FFS, if you can’t see the political ramifications in what Bonhoeffer wrote, you’re not paying attention. The man developed his philosophies during the Nazi regime. The parallels are so obvious, both in current life and in Bonhoeffer’s words, that if you miss them you’re being willfully ignorant.
If you cannot see that this was about an entirely different topic then you are the near sighted one and your insults are not welcome. I don’t have to tolerate verbal abuse from you or anybody Bill the retired IT Geek, but that is expected from IT people as far as I’m concerned, a topic I know all too well. Goodbye.
People have told me they voted for for trump because they have always voted republican. Well that's one less thing to have to worry about right whom to vote for? Oh dont get me started. People when you vote do your homework first.
Sounds like the self-hypnotically stupid way we all become more conscious of the nature of language than the nature of Reality? In that "knowledge is the only Good, ignorance the only Evil" diagnosis of the human condition, favoured by people like Socrates. And Jesus famous diagnosis of the socially normal: "they seeing see not, hearing hear not, and neither do they understand." Arguably, the subconsciously synchronous nature of human behavior, and our species-specific form of experiential blindness?
The actual quote is from the Old Testament, Isaiah 6:9-10 : "He replied, 'Go and tell this people: Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the hearts of this people calloused; deafen their ears and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.'" The passage highlights the prophetic declaration of Israel's spiritual blindness, a judgment for their persistent disobedience and idolatry.
A conceptually similar New Testament saying by Jesus may be found in John 9:39-41 : "Then Jesus declared, 'For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind.' Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this, and they asked Him, 'Are we blind too?' 'If you were blind,' Jesus replied, 'you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains.'" Jesus uses the healing of a physically blind man to illustrate spiritual blindness among the Pharisees, who, despite their religious knowledge, fail to recognize Him as the Messiah.
(I'm not a Bible scholar; just handy with a search engine)
A book is coming to articulate my understanding of the self-hypnotic stupidity of foolishly ‘imagining’ that language doesn’t just describe reality, it defines it. Having spent decades trying to transcend the lip-service sense of my own reality, defined by the reality-labeling words, David Bates.
You are of course correct. "This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand." It seems this is a theme that runs repeatedly through both the Old and New Testaments.
Actually not at all I don’t think. That whole Chapter is exactly what I think is going on with Bonhoeffer’s assessment of Stupidity and the idea that people participate in it not so much out of malice or evil intent but laziness and the wish to avoid personal reflection, thought and ultimately responsibility
The light of God, as the Solar-System reality of the Sun? And the role our heart plays in energizing the electro-chemical substance of our thoughts, within the place of a Skull? And the whole-self reality of our Nervous-System? While many say that when it comes to discerning truths and falsehoods, context is everything within the mind’s processing of energy and information.
I hadn’t come across Bonhoeffer’s “theory of stupidity” before, so thank you for introducing it here. What really landed for me is his point that it isn’t about intellect but about surrender — giving up one’s inner independence to group pressure.
It made me think about how easily that can happen when our mental bandwidth is low. Stress, fear, and exhaustion narrow the space we have for reflection, which makes conformity and “cheap certainty” feel easier.
One thing I’ve found helpful is using little forms of scaffolding to keep bandwidth open:
Pausing long enough to ask a question instead of reacting.
Writing down what I believe before I hear what “the group” believes.
Seeking out one unfamiliar source, even briefly, before settling on a view.
Checking in on bandwidth — both my own and the other person’s — before deciding how to respond.
None of these fix the deeper social forces Bonhoeffer warned about, but they do create a bit of extra breathing room. And sometimes that’s enough to resist the pull of conformity.
Really appreciate you opening this door — I’ll be sitting with his words for a while.
This is 100% spot on. The only thing I take issue with is calling it “stupidity,” which is a value judgment. Judgments create defensiveness, which inspires people to cling tighter rather than encouraging them to let go a little and actually think critically.
If we want people to engage in dialogue and consider other perspectives, it would be wise to refrain from using critical value judgments.
Your point is exactly what I thought when reading this. "Stupidity" carries a lot of baggage that doesn't help here. It may make us feel better to call the other "stupid," but it sure is a bad way to start a dialogue.
The fear of not belonging because you asked too many questions is the root of fundy evangelical churches. Too many questions =too little faith, in their view, and too little faith makes you suspect in their eyes. If you want to belong, you go along. Explains why so many of them are MAGA.
“evil doesn’t always wear a mask of malice. Sometimes, it wears a blank, unseeing face of the conformist, the unthinking follower.”
Your post has very strong insight.
Very strong insight indeed. After 15 years in higher ed, I know that professors practice and teach this principle of stupidity: conformity, complicity, and to censure heterodox thinkers and questioners of The Message (any one of the Social Justice sects).
At Virginia Tech in 2020, my department’s dean pulled in a non-tenure linguistics professor, told her remove tech affiliation from her personal Facebook page or be fired (she had posted conservative views about Covid - the horror). Then, the same dept. chair praises the same professor when Russia attacks Ukraine (the linguistics professor is from Ukraine). Bandwagon thinking. That Ukrainian prof. had enough duplicity and resigned. In fall 2020, I was forced to state my name and pronouns in 3 PhD classes (I’d already willingly used colleague pronouns at work in CA for years, but to be compelled to?). My refusal to conform earned me a poor reputation with faculty from then until I completed my PhD this June. I was expected to confess I was a CRT believer here and in my 2nd MA at cal state in 2018, for my ‘original group sin’ (as they called it) of being white and male. 2 cal state professors refused to recommend me to my PhD because I didn’t accept their definition of white and male (group category and culpability equals individual identity to them).
Herd mentality (hide, blend in, save your job, don’t stand out, group think, etc.) is alive and well in the humanities. The fear of ostracization is real, dogma in orthodoxy is too, but I didn’t enroll in higher ed programs to become accepted but to become helpful and skilled for my writing students, and to refine my knowledge, assumptions, and priors through research. Cannot confidently say the same of my programs and professors.
Dear God you must be absolutely draining in person 🙄
😂🤣 why do you default to this position. He’s just demonstrating live thinking.
Alas, you and your hastily-generalized online certainty may never know. I might have even agreed. But my 1400 in-person, open-minded ESL, TESOL, and writing students over 10yrs on the other hand…
Diversity is inclusive of everyone and your mention of “priors” leads me to believe you’ve studied Bayesian thinking.
My favorite phrase to those who are different is the verbal assurance, “You be You”, and that opens our dialogue to respectful, honest conversation. Shared perspectives are enlightening and individual choice is Liberty.
I appreciate your comment. I studied Bayesian thinking on my own because none of my 3 grad programs taught it or the flaws/limitations of statistical inference and the implications on scientific work. Humanities abound in pet theories with no assessment of their validity. Partly why we’re in our current partisan academic mess. I very much appreciate ‘you be you’ because I promote “Be critical. Be generous. Be you” to my students.
The Organized Christian Church has many blinded themselves in their Sickness of Self Righteouaness
It is important to examine and see yourself, to engage yourself, not just to throw another stone.
Fundamentalist religion literally teaches you to check your brain at the church/synagogue/Mosque door and blindly believe and follow what the leaders tell you. So no - he is not throwing another stone — he is stating facts.
No, he is stating his OPINION, not fact…his opinion isn’t even reasoned, it’s just a flippant comment indicting hundreds of millions of Christians, never mind he hasn’t the wherewithal to read peoples’ minds.
The Reformation and the understanding that we are all equal before God is what finally brought freedom to Europe.
Looks like hundreds of years of Christian propaganda has done its job 👍🏻
After 15 years in higher ed, I know that professors practice and teach this principle of stupidity: conformity, complicity, to censure heterodox thinkers and questioners of The Message (any one of the Social Justice sects).
At Virginia Tech in 2020, my department’s dean pulled in a non-tenure linguistics professor, told her remove tech affiliation from her personal Facebook page or be fired (she had posted conservative views about Covid - the horror). Then, the same dept. chair praises the same professor when Russia attacks Ukraine (the linguistics professor is from Ukraine). Bandwagon thinking. In fall 2020, I was forced to state my name and pronouns in 3 PhD classes (I’d already willingly used colleague pronouns at work in CA for years, but to be compelled to?). My refusal to conform earned me a poor reputation with faculty from then until I completed my PhD this June. I was expected to confess I was a CRT believer here and in my 2nd MA at cal state in 2018, for my ‘original group sin’ (as they called it) of being white and male.
Herd mentality (hide, blend in, save your job, don’t stand out, group think, etc.) are alive and well in the humanities. The fear of ostracization is real, dogma in orthodoxy is too, but I didn’t enroll in programs to become accepted but to become helpful, skilled, and to refine my knowledge, assumptions, and priors. Cannot fully say the same of my programs and professors.
I also refuse to state my pronouns. You figure out what you want to call me. The left has gotten very very militant about DEI which is why we are having a backlash right now. I'd argue the left wasn't like this until Trump's first term. The left became militant because they felt the need to not give him and his ideology a platform. And as such, there is no nuisance as MAGA don't deal with nuisance either.
The only thing I am very militant about is vaccines. They save countless lives and that shouldn't be fucked with.
I agree, the Left became more militant politically and culturally to refuse any airtime to his platform once he won in 16. But the left’s militancy in academia predates Trump 1.0. He drew their ire because liberals over last 15 years or more (depending on the discipline) had already caved to the progressives and no one else dared to or remained to stand up to them, no conservatives or libertarians effectively existed in academia. His very presence constituted a rude backlash to their already-stringent orthodoxy in university courses and policies. They taught and researched unopposed for 3 decades (or 4) until now. But many social justice theories explicitly argue we must not question or criticize theories until we implement them to see their effects. To do the honest academic work of testing a hypothesis and questioning validity of a theory is to be racist, sexist, oppressive, colonizing, you name it, etc. Now everyone in society (scholars and average American) has had a chance to evaluate the theories, and mostly the Left’s best response is to label questioning and criticism some kind of -ism rather than engage arguments on their logic, evidence, reality, and rhetoric.
Wokism and CRT in CA go back at least to 1996 if not earlier. Many academics warned of this ideology. Trump and populism is a response to Woke. (It needs to be checked as well.) Anyone versed in Chinese history recognizes the crossover of Woke with Red Guard.
Organized church, yes. The local church members and leaders, in my local area, are really forward thinking and helping the community.
That’s great to hear, but statistically speaking fundamentalists are the majority.
There are a billion Catholics worldwide. American TV evangelists and megachurches have captured the “brand” of Christian though in the U.S.A. They never wear a cross with the crucified body of Jesus, an innocent man who spoke out for the poor and vulnerable.
Indeed, Pope Leo has been a force to combat the lies and hate from those who have misappropriated “woke” and the very essence of Christianity which is love, empathy, kindness, caring for those less fortunate, etc. At least that is the Christianity I was brought up with in the Episcopal church.
Not only self righteousness but absolute obedience. To pastors, parents, anyone in authority. Religious communities brainwash their congregants. It’s no wonder so many of them think Trump is god’s chosen one.
Opposites but the same ? The Church and the Academy? I'll stick w Church! Lol
Imagine the conditions of your "eye-sight", and your moral courage, if you felt like singling out one of the successful organizations in this world, out of the many of them.
Congratulations still, for choosing the safest (hence most fashionable) targets.
Huh?
Indeed. The sliver/log of the eye situation. Quick to find fault everywhere but in the mirror.
Instead of thinking critically, you castigate every Christian who belongs to a Church, accusing every one of them of being self-righteous. You might want to think before you post.
You might want to think before you believe...
I think…I reason…I believe…I have faith. Believe it or not, Stephen, many thinking people are also believers. What, exactly, do you believe in?
“Credo ut intelligam.” St. Augustine, 4th century African Bishop of Hippo would disagree.”I believe so I understand.” Note he uses Credo which is from the Latin “core do”, what I give my heart to. It is not an intellectual assent to doctrines first it would seem but helps illuminate them, open them up. He wrote s few himself! Interesting guy!
Absolutely I see these faces at the rallies I counter act and not wanting to critical think when I counter their claims
Mostly the Evangelicals
Religion is the root of all stupidity.
So-called enlightened atheism and other secular philosophies gave us the Soviet Union's gulags and other forms of collectivism which have killed over 100 million people in a single century.
How does this concept of the malice of stupidity relate to the constant flow of media that lulls us into the normalization of blatant cruelty? Aren't we at risk of passively accepting the tsunami of evil?
The media is the constant in the formation of the blank face of conformity and the normalization of hate, racism or “the other” that makes people look at each other with fear. The media is the dispenser of mis and disinformation and the most pervasive propagandist of all.
Sadly, this will remain the case as long as there is a profit to be made from the normalization of hate (as you so aptly put it). And so we have devolved into two tribes of monkeys gleefully flinging their poo at each other.
Yes. Good question. There's certainly a tsunami of news.
If you want to destroy the ability to think for yourself you dumb down the education system and cut funding for universities. You fund in such a way that a cash-strapped university has to put more resources into business studies and economics and less into humanities and those encouraging critical thinking.
You make high school education largely vocational except for the elite.
You defund early childhood education. These are the ways to create sheep and unquestioning followers.
That doesn't answer normalisation of cruelty though. Is it ever normalised? If depends on what you know about the world (see above) and your morality.
Been quoting him for years. He was right. It cost him his life.
Like flying planes into buildings? He didn’t “pay with his life”, his life was taken from him by stupid people who could not accept being challenged, who stood firm in their faith that fascism should not be questioned.
Pay with his life meaning paying the cost of holding tight to his convictions to the point of being killed for them. Sure, stupid people did take his life and he could have played it safe and would have lived if he had, but he like most decent people tried to put a stop to it and didn’t succeed in saving himself. It’s a tragedy really.
An absolute tragedy. And yes, he could have kept his mouth shut, but IMHO that’s different than “faith” or holding to convictions. He was trying to save ppl from being killed, not killed bc he was challenged about his beliefs. To me these are different issues.
True enough, faith and beliefs are entirely different topics outside the scope of motivation to save others from their own stupidity. In my lifetime that has rarely worked out, but I admire those who still try.
Self-belief as well as "faith", perhaps?
I was going to comment but I just read a number of comments that are so arrogant that I’ll pass. When you are so sure you see more clearly, it is time to step back and see where you are being blindsided.
It would be amazing to hear you speak as to what you thought was arrogance and believe is blindsiding rather than quickly passing judgement without putting your own thoughts on the line. It could be interpreted as arrogance not to bother speaking outside of offering a critique and we could all benefit from being shown a different if not better thought process… so please take time to share your own ideas as people are more than interested in hearing them, but without preventing what is precisely meant by using your own words rather than quotes.
I am not loquacious but found the whole discussion of IQ and college degrees without merit. College degrees have long been available to the wealthy but not always to those without wealth. Historical fact. That does not equate intelligence for the wealthy and stupidity for the poor. I bow out.
Agreed! I’m wary of defining people by IQ or education. Several brilliant minds didn’t have money or access to education. In turn, nobody offered me a scholarship or saved for my college education probably because they thought I was stupid when it was actually undiagnosed ASD making thought difficult. I had to work part time to earn an education, but this made me appreciate it all the more and become more inclined to put it to use. My experience has been with people who were handed college educations who in turn did nothing with them. One might argue that they were stupid, but then again it could be simply lazy. It seems that the harder we try or work for anything makes us productive, but I never discount anyone’s ability. If I could, so can they is my premise, IQ not being a deciding factor. I won’t even get into the contrived nature of it.
I was as well. You beat me to it.
I personally witnessed an overabundance of stupidity during the pandemic. People just blindly swallowed the narrative they were given, without questioning it's relevance. Fear and panic are powerful weapons, that's when reason should prevail.
See also: Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil.
Luckily, the Nazis didn't kill her. And she continued to workon great questions her entire life.
I came here to say exactly this!
Well, I have no faith to speak of. And I admire those whose faith compels them to great sacrifice - Bonhoeffer, the Black Baptist church, the Dalai Lama - all help me see that there is some worth in being a "person of god".
I’d be a lot more impressed with the Dalai Lama if he’d do something more than spout meaningless platitudes and offer a single useful statement condemning the greatest criminals since Hitler.
“We are all one” just isn’t really cutting it as a countervailing philosophy when Nazis are making the rules.
My reading and studying of Bonhoeffer’s life and works has set me on a path, not only enlightenment, but the double edge sword of faith. How it can be used for good and how it can be used for evil. When things are inverted, so also is the way one fights evil. Lies become necessary, betrayal becomes relevant. It takes a person with deep and strong moral character to understand which is which and when an inversion of moral decency becomes a spiritual weapon for good.
The other thing I will add is that in my experience, for example at a Trump rally, you see very few people who would be considered intelligent. These are mostly lesser-educated and ignorant people. These are the stupid people mentioned. There are a few highly educated people who are Trump supporters, and they are smart because they know the advantages that Trump will give them over lesser moneyed people. Both groups would support an American Hitler.
God if I read one more quote about Hitler in the Nazis. It's not as if there's no record and documentaries or books of what happened in that period, it was pure devastation, millions died. It's a joke people like you run around on your keyboards living in the 1% land of the world and whining about the end of the world.
He said explicitly that he "loves the poorly educated," and apparently that works for them.
I wondered how long it would take for this to devolve into a political rant and here we are like all the other anger posting about the last election. It makes me embarrassed for us as a nation that people want to insult or hate their own countrymen over a single election. I’ve voted and my chosen candidates lost many times but I didn’t go around trash talking people who did their civic duty just because my own vote was different or that I felt mine was more right than theirs. Then again I was raised during a more polite era where it was considered impolite but today the gloves are off and everyone has become a target of mean spirited opinions. If any one behavior made our lives less enjoyable, this is for me among the worst.
FFS, if you can’t see the political ramifications in what Bonhoeffer wrote, you’re not paying attention. The man developed his philosophies during the Nazi regime. The parallels are so obvious, both in current life and in Bonhoeffer’s words, that if you miss them you’re being willfully ignorant.
Or stupid, as Bonhoeffer wrote.
If you cannot see that this was about an entirely different topic then you are the near sighted one and your insults are not welcome. I don’t have to tolerate verbal abuse from you or anybody Bill the retired IT Geek, but that is expected from IT people as far as I’m concerned, a topic I know all too well. Goodbye.
People have told me they voted for for trump because they have always voted republican. Well that's one less thing to have to worry about right whom to vote for? Oh dont get me started. People when you vote do your homework first.
Sounds like the self-hypnotically stupid way we all become more conscious of the nature of language than the nature of Reality? In that "knowledge is the only Good, ignorance the only Evil" diagnosis of the human condition, favoured by people like Socrates. And Jesus famous diagnosis of the socially normal: "they seeing see not, hearing hear not, and neither do they understand." Arguably, the subconsciously synchronous nature of human behavior, and our species-specific form of experiential blindness?
Could you please give us chapter & verse.
The actual quote is from the Old Testament, Isaiah 6:9-10 : "He replied, 'Go and tell this people: Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the hearts of this people calloused; deafen their ears and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.'" The passage highlights the prophetic declaration of Israel's spiritual blindness, a judgment for their persistent disobedience and idolatry.
A conceptually similar New Testament saying by Jesus may be found in John 9:39-41 : "Then Jesus declared, 'For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind.' Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this, and they asked Him, 'Are we blind too?' 'If you were blind,' Jesus replied, 'you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains.'" Jesus uses the healing of a physically blind man to illustrate spiritual blindness among the Pharisees, who, despite their religious knowledge, fail to recognize Him as the Messiah.
(I'm not a Bible scholar; just handy with a search engine)
A book is coming to articulate my understanding of the self-hypnotic stupidity of foolishly ‘imagining’ that language doesn’t just describe reality, it defines it. Having spent decades trying to transcend the lip-service sense of my own reality, defined by the reality-labeling words, David Bates.
Matthew 13:13
You are of course correct. "This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand." It seems this is a theme that runs repeatedly through both the Old and New Testaments.
Thank you.
But the quote is taken out of context, don't you think?
Actually not at all I don’t think. That whole Chapter is exactly what I think is going on with Bonhoeffer’s assessment of Stupidity and the idea that people participate in it not so much out of malice or evil intent but laziness and the wish to avoid personal reflection, thought and ultimately responsibility
OMG, so much this. Yes, sometimes we are stupid, and sometimes we are just lazy. 😕
The light of God, as the Solar-System reality of the Sun? And the role our heart plays in energizing the electro-chemical substance of our thoughts, within the place of a Skull? And the whole-self reality of our Nervous-System? While many say that when it comes to discerning truths and falsehoods, context is everything within the mind’s processing of energy and information.
Thank you for this piece, translated in French here : https://zanzibar.substack.com/p/la-theorie-terrifiante-de-dietrich
I hadn’t come across Bonhoeffer’s “theory of stupidity” before, so thank you for introducing it here. What really landed for me is his point that it isn’t about intellect but about surrender — giving up one’s inner independence to group pressure.
It made me think about how easily that can happen when our mental bandwidth is low. Stress, fear, and exhaustion narrow the space we have for reflection, which makes conformity and “cheap certainty” feel easier.
One thing I’ve found helpful is using little forms of scaffolding to keep bandwidth open:
Pausing long enough to ask a question instead of reacting.
Writing down what I believe before I hear what “the group” believes.
Seeking out one unfamiliar source, even briefly, before settling on a view.
Checking in on bandwidth — both my own and the other person’s — before deciding how to respond.
None of these fix the deeper social forces Bonhoeffer warned about, but they do create a bit of extra breathing room. And sometimes that’s enough to resist the pull of conformity.
Really appreciate you opening this door — I’ll be sitting with his words for a while.
Sharing, following, thank you.
This is 100% spot on. The only thing I take issue with is calling it “stupidity,” which is a value judgment. Judgments create defensiveness, which inspires people to cling tighter rather than encouraging them to let go a little and actually think critically.
If we want people to engage in dialogue and consider other perspectives, it would be wise to refrain from using critical value judgments.
Your point is exactly what I thought when reading this. "Stupidity" carries a lot of baggage that doesn't help here. It may make us feel better to call the other "stupid," but it sure is a bad way to start a dialogue.
That’s real wisdom, Chris, I appreciate your sharing your perspective.
The fear of not belonging because you asked too many questions is the root of fundy evangelical churches. Too many questions =too little faith, in their view, and too little faith makes you suspect in their eyes. If you want to belong, you go along. Explains why so many of them are MAGA.