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Bonhoeffer: Stupidity is more dangerous than malice

Bonhoeffer: Stupidity is more dangerous than malice

For the good, stupidity is a more dangerous enemy than malice.

You can resist malice, you can unmask it, or you can prevent it with strength. Malice always contains the seeds of its own destruction, for it is always uncomfortable, if not worse.

However, in the face of stupidity, there is no way to defend. To oppose stupidity, resistance and strength are useless, and stupidity is not subordinate to reason at all. If the facts are contrary to one's own prejudices, then there is no need to believe the facts, and if those facts cannot be denied, then they can be simply ignored as exceptions. So compared to villains, stupid people are always complacent. And he can easily become dangerous, because it is easy to make him throw a punch. So, rather than malice, stupidity requires being dealt with with twice as carefully. Let's stop trying to reason with stupid people, because that's useless and dangerous.

To deal properly with stupidity, it is essential to recognize it as it is. It is quite certain that stupidity is a moral defect, not an intellectual defect. There are people who are intellectually superior but stupid, and there are people who are mentally inferior but by no means stupid, and we are surprised to find this situation as a product of certain circumstances.

We get the impression that stupidity is cultivated, not innate; that stupidity is cultivated in environments where people make themselves stupid, or allow others to make themselves stupid. We further note that stupidity is much more prevalent among individuals or groups who are inclined or destined to live in groups or associates than those who are not sociable or lonely.

From this point of view, stupidity is a sociological problem, not a psychological one. It is a special form of the role of the historical environment on man, a psychological by-product of specific external factors.

Bonhoeffer: Stupidity is more dangerous than malice

A closer look reveals that any violent revolution, whether political or religious, seems to have caused a stupid outburst among large numbers of people. In fact, this has almost become a law of psychology and sociology. The strength of one side requires the stupidity of the other. It is not that some innate human ability, such as intellectual ability, has been hindered or destroyed. On the contrary, it is the rise of power that has become so terrible that it deprives man of his independent judgment, and he abandons (more or less unconsciously) his own effort to evaluate new events.

A fool may often be very stubborn, but we must not mistake him for independence. One feels, more or less, especially in conversation with a fool, that it is simply impossible to talk to him personally, to have a sympathetic conversation with him. When you talk to him, you don't come across him personally, but a series of slogans and things like that have the power to control him. He has been deceived by others, his eyes have been blinded, his humanity has been exploited and ruined. Once he surrenders his will and becomes a mere instrument, there is no longer any limit of sin that a fool cannot reach, but he still cannot ever understand that it is sin. Here there is a danger of demonically distorting human nature, which will cause irreparable damage to man.

Yet it is in this respect that we realize that stupid people cannot be saved by education. All he needed was salvation and nothing else. So far, attempts to persuade him by rational argument have been of little use. In this state of affairs, we can fully understand why it is futile to try to discover what stupid people are really thinking about, and why this question is completely superfluous to those who think and act responsibly.

However, there is also a little comfort in these reflections on the stupidity of man. We don't have any reason to think that most people are stupid in all circumstances. What has long played a big role is that we want to get more out of people's stupidity, not from people's independent judgment and sharp minds.

How to live your life the way you like

If you don't know what you want, don't know what you should do, read those good books, communicate with those great souls and the wisdom of the sages, and give yourself a good foundation to cultivate your own concentration in the world.

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