"Stupidity Is a More Dangerous Enemy of the Good Than Wickedness" - Granite Grok

“Stupidity Is a More Dangerous Enemy of the Good Than Wickedness”

Sheep herd

This is worth reading, sharing, and saving, from Dr. Peter Mucullough’s Substack.  Written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1943), it explores how “the German people—in spite of their vast education, culture, and intellectual achievements—had fallen so far from reason and morality.” Sound familiar?

Bonhoeffer engaged in an intellectual search for understanding on the question of how these people could allow that guy (Hitler) to rise to power. Fair question. He concluded that it was stupidity. Otherwise, good and well-meaning people with capable intellects mislead. Useful idiots, if you prefer the “something so stupid only a smart person would fall for it” sort of thing.

We’ve seen and heard a lot of stupid in the past few years, most of it linked to the pandemic, but there is no shortage of a wide range of topics in Modern America that coincidentally lead otherwise intelligent people to accept the sort of authoritarian rule that Bonhoeffer was trying to explain.

Give Dr. McCullough the clicks for the full read here, but I wanted to whet your appetite with a few pull quotes.

 

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than wickedness. Evil can be protested against, exposed, and, if necessary, it can be prevented by force. Evil always harbors the germ of self-destruction by inducing at least some uneasiness in people. We are defenseless against stupidity. Nothing can be done to oppose it, neither with protests nor with violence. Reasons cannot prevail. …

 

In contrast to evil, the stupid person is completely satisfied with himself. When irritated, he becomes dangerous and may even go on the attack. More caution is therefore required when dealing with the stupid than with the wicked. Never try to convince the stupid with reasons; it’s pointless and dangerous. …

 

One gets the impression that stupidity is often not an innate defect, but one that emerges under certain circumstances in which people are made stupid or allow themselves to be made stupid. …

 

A closer look reveals that the strong exertion of external power, be it political or religious, strikes a large part of the people with stupidity. Yes, it seems as if this is a sociological-psychological law. The power of some requires the stupidity of others. Under this influence, human abilities suddenly wither or fail, robbing people of their inner independence, which they—more or less unconsciously —renounce to adapt their behavior to the prevailing situation. …

Having become an instrument without an independent will, the fool will also be capable of all evil, and at the same time, unable to recognize it as evil. Here lies the danger of diabolical abuse. Through this, a people can be ruined forever.

 

Powerful stuff from 70 years ago that shines a bit of light on (again) a number of current trends, the pandemic response not the least of them. A symptom of the larger disease fed by fear and delivered by the same people who swear they are our saviors—a warning whose remedy is neither simple nor easy.

 

But it is also quite clear here that it is not an act of instruction but only an act of liberation that can overcome stupidity. In doing so, one will have to accept the fact that, in most cases, real inner liberation is only possible after outer liberation has taken place.

 

They may not see the light until well after the light of much-needed chaos has cracked the once impenetrable darkness. It might be a vaccine death (COVID) or rolling blackouts (Climate Cult), unmitigated crime (gun control), systemic poverty (urban education/welfare), the crush of illegals (border policy), hyperinflation (monetary policy), attacks on US soil (foreign policy), empty shelves (economic policy), or any number or combination of things.

Whatever the catalyst, it needs to have a measurable personal impact – a lived experience – on the individual or group to break them out of the trance of whatever mass formation psychosis has trapped their otherwise capable mind—the classic road to Damascus moment.

Elsewise, they remain stupid.

 

 

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