Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his time in prison before his execution. Understand that this letter is circumspect so as not to endanger the recipient and that the language of a shared faith was the means of both talking seriously and safely about deep issues of motives. Understanding at a deeper level what those who manifested the best of the Christian tradition understood as “fear of God”, “faith”, and “grace” helps point out the fundamentally unanswerable question that those who seek to use Bonhoeffer’s insight instrumentally run into.
We finally are thrown back to the areas of interaction about which stupid people are not stupid. The Catch-22 has to do with being patient about the areas in which they are stupid. If all the cultural layering on Christmas Day has one theme, it is about seeing the light. Having trust that the winter will in fact end.
And that shared faith between Bonhoeffer and (likely) Eberhardt Bethge argued that if freedom is a (ontological) fact, you lack the power to change anyone internally no matter what you do to them. Some mysterious interlinking of external and internal states of being transforms their attitude and understanding and they awake disenthralled. It happens or it does not happen.
Merry Christmas!
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 when dealing with a stupid person 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 fonn 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 ora 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 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, Letters and Papers from Prison (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 9-11.
We were taught in Church to fear God. But they said that God is Love. Why should we fear Love? They said “Our Heavenly Father”. Why should we fear our father?
What sick and twisted people these theologians are. Love and sex between two human beings is “dirty”. We should obey God out of fear.
When I fear something, I don’t want to obey it. That’s what beaten and coed slaves do. When I fear something, I want to destroy it!
You paint “theologians” with a broad brush. The two involved in this letter struggled very hard with what exactly all that fine theological training meant when the German (state) church merely saluted and joined the Third Reich. Letters and Papers from Prison is not your preachy religious book, but an inside look at the struggle with a man on in a Nazi prison on charges of treason to come to terms with what exactly in the midst of the Third Reich it meant to be obedient to God.
The reality of the Third Reich cut through a lot of the contradictions that you rationally think exist.
Love and sex are among the most problematic categories for contemporary Christians as a result of the reduction of life issues to moralisms.
If you love your wife, why should you fear her telling you hard truths. If your experience is like mine, you still experience that edge of fear no matter how deep the trust. Maybe it is the truth that the love is transparent to that causes the fear because of self-awareness of what it will cost in our lives.
IMHO, writing off the struggle of figuring it out, regardless of whether the language is religious, the struggle takes place with the help of some ancient wisdom or another, is likely a mistake. But I have no certainty in that one way or the other.
Your mileage may vary.
I have no problem telling my wife the truth about anything except “Does this dress make my butt look big?”
This is probably too heavy for popular consumption, Tarheel.
Bautiful nonetheless.
It makes me want to hop in my car and come visit you.
Maybe someday when I have a couple of slow weeks.
My email is easy to find.
Get in touch.
AG
After the boycott is won, AG. Not before. And you do anything you can to keep the pressure on NC.
Dunno what to do.
Suggest, please.
AG
P.S. I went to a post at (UGH!!!) dKos about the boycott. Out of 32 suggested brands to boycott, I never, ever buy 31. The only one I do buy…sometimes…is Burt’s Bees lip balm. I’ll stop.
Having lots of folks refusing gigs in NC would, of course be useful, but that is something that folks must decide for themselves in light of their own situations.
Not traveling to or through North Carolina, or at least planning trips so as to not patronize NC gas stations, restaurants, or the NC hospitality industry is another.
To the extent that people have not moved money from big TBTF banks into their local banks and credit unions, making those moves is another. Bank of America, Wells-Fargo (which absorbed Wachovia), SunTrust (which absorbed Central Carolina Bank), and BB&T are the majors.
In an economy of global supply chains, it is hard to figure out what personal actions to take that would add to an effective boycott.
I want to say there is a fair amount of hubris in the judgement that some are stupid and some are not.
I think this mindset does much to explain why we lost.
We did not listen. And in fact this view says we do not NEED to listen. We know better about what they should want.
This is not, in the view of this lawyer, a terribly effective way to win an argument.
Ironically, Will and Ariel Durant in their book the lessons of history conclude that liberation is always personal.
This is not an attempt to win an argument. Insights into life often are not arguments, and framing everything as an argument often misses the point.
The observation is that stupidity is more destructive than deliberate evil, that one cannot convince people not to be stupid, and that for people to stop being stupid requires to sort of liberation that Will and Ariel Durant discuss before any sort of liberation structurally occurs in society.
Finally, one cannot whomp up that liberation. For lack of more useful or description terminology, it occurs as a consequence of the grace that was the “good news” for the historic tradition of the Christian church. You can believe the Christian narrative or not, but the fact that one can’t whomp up liberation is a pretty obvious reality for folks who have worked any length of time at all in politics.
It is not a labeling of stupidity, it is a philosophical-theological dissection of what we mean by “stupidity” carried on between two friends in a letter being smuggled out of a Nazi prison.
In fact, in one thing or another, every human being shows up at some time as self-consciously and utterly stupid. Typically it has more or less devastating consequences that liberate that human being from stupidity. But some are persistent, and some others love to cultivate and manipulate stupidity for their own ends.
The Democrats who persisted in the same logic of the past 30 years and allowed people to get forcibly foreclosed as a result of what was really seven levels of bank fraud were equally stupid. Stupidity has been at epidemic proportions during this century so far.
Hannah Arendt comes at the same reality that Bonhoeffer is talking about, one that apparently was not obvious pre-Holocaust, as the banality (everydayness) of evil. It is so easy to blithely continue business as usual without noticing how much it is become corrupted from its former state.
This view says that we need to listen else we do not hear what (in Bonhoeffer’s idiom) a proper fear of God would tell us. It is easy to grasp as an objective (in the mid-20th century understanding of that term) reality and much more difficult to understand as an existential (again in the mid-20th century understanding of that term) reality. (IOW before the post-modern mood and philosophy transformed how we understood truth.)
I think you might have taken too seriously the criticism of liberals as knowing too well what other people want. Unless that is your own shock of recognition. Those making this claim are using at a defense against liberals who point out that minorities want equal opportunity, dignity, and not to be excommunicated from first class citizenship. For some reason, this creates a reaction among a certain minority of white people who in turn are mobilized by conservative politicians. Liberals in fact have not understood what these people want precisely because (1) they have not been told directly and honestly or (2) what these people want is the subjugation of other people. It is fair to warn against using too wide a brush to label people, but it is not the politicians or the media personalities who are stupid; they have gained power, fame, and wealth from their acts.
You can’t even make the argument until you get beyond the block to communications that stupidity puts up. Might explain some of the wisdom in the traditional English conflation of not speaking and stupidity when the not speaking comes from failure to want to speak the truth.
Bonhoeffer is one way to look at what happened to Germany during Nazism. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem are a second and third way. Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945 is another.
It is a shame that we haven’t explored more about how Germany got transformed by Hitler’s Nazism in the 50 years since these books were popular. That interest 50 years ago was sparked by the publication of Eugen Kogon’s The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them. Once it was clear that something had transformed ordinary reasonable and cultured people into a populace that consented to war and atrocity, Americans began asking themselves how they would notice the signs of their own society going off the rails in this way. That was an inquiry and reflection that should have continued, but IMHO it got interrupted by Seymour Hersh’s reporting about My Lai that showed the potential for US militarism to go off the rails as well.
Those who a bit freaked out at the power that Trump will be inheriting from a 70-year-old legacy and also by his personal idiosyncracies and style of behavior and command are just a bit worried that the possibility of America running off the rails are greater than they have been since Nixon.
To voluntarily put someone like that into a position of that sort of power is a stupid act; at a minimum, that would be the people who voted for the Republican ticket. But it would also be those who did not put up an adequate opposition because they were absorbed in their own separate varieties of stupidity–from being strategically too clever by half, from not understanding how the American party system actually works, from years of pursuing halfway policies that backed us into catastrophe–the list of ways of being stupid are long and implicate everyone who suddenly is not satisfied with the historical situation we are in.
We cannot at the present moment pretend that everything will work out for the best. Nor can we pretend that most of us Americans of whatever persuasion will not remain committed to business as usual and continuing stupidity.
The question for the moment is not who is stupid, but who is it that you can trust is awake. Or struggling to wakefulness. And that is bigger than just setting up the conditions to win seat in a legislature or a Congressional seat here or there. That requires a different basis of political discourse that actually engages people as active and not passive partners.
I’ve rambled into the individual threads that were plucked by the Bonhoeffer article way more than I intended. But there is a lot going on the we need to understand with jumping to simple conclusions or continuing to point fingers.
Stupidity is an ontological reality (a state of being) available for every human being to show up in on occasion. Recognizing that you are there inevitably involves others, who seem from within that state of being as metaphorically if not literally the wrath of God arrived.
My parents sent me this quote this morning.
This. The most reprehensible and destructive human activities are always preceded by the collective assent of a group. Witness Trump’s ‘rallies’. Any civilising influence of human behaviour and society can be instantly undone by the nodding of a dozen heads by torchlight. Anyone remember Colonel Sherburn’s speech to the mob come to lynch him from Clemen’s Huckleberry Finn?:
So nothing has changed, has it? Except we seem to be fresh out of Colonel Sherburns.