Stupidity Is Far Worse Than Evil
by: Glenn Hancock
Socrates is our first example of philosophy attempting to nail down exactly what a stupid person is. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, much later, determined there were three aspects of stupidity, and he listed them as follows: 1) Anyone who outsources his critical thinking to someone else. 2) Anyone who is willfully ignorant of something but continues to push it anyway. 3) And the worst of all, the conformist. A person who takes a position simply because everyone else has. While these are categories of what he calls levels of stupidity, I would argue they’re so intertwined that separating them may not be worth the effort; after all, being guilty of the first is the primary cause of the other two. Aristotle described three elements of persuasion: Logos, which is fact-based, logical, and processed through critical thinking. Ethos, which is one’s character and ability to naturally persuade. Pathos, which is one’s feelings and emotions. He suggested that to debate anyone on any subject, you must combine the three to persuade the other side. You must use facts, combined with your personality and feelings, to convince the other side that you are on the right track. Of course, you say, but what does this have to do with the topic at hand? As Bonhoeffer stated, “Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion.” You will always have evil people who do bad things, but they are normally alone or in a very small group. Where stupid people can change the course of a country, and in some circumstances, the world. Instead of using Aristotle’s three tools of rhetoric, stupid people live only in pathos. It is difficult, if not impossible, to get them to listen, no matter the tools you employ. Facts don’t penetrate and are simply ignored. They’ll use your politeness and character against you, and if you dare use your own pathos, they will eat you alive. The world will literally turn upside down, and you will be left wondering how you lost your footing.
My point is that once someone becomes stupid, it is almost impossible to get them to listen. Because our schools and our lives are flooded with things that require no mental capacity to deal with, it is far easier and more convenient to just be stupid. Men have used this fact to organize and take over entire countries. If people don’t have the will to think critically, they will believe anything, and even if they don’t believe you, they will believe their friends and family who repeat what you said. All as if it were factual, with no one asking a single question along the way. This is precisely why stupidity is far worse than evil. And let’s be blunt: we all probably have that one subject no one can discuss with us because we are so convinced we’re right that we don’t listen to anyone else.
Avoiding stupidity takes work, and the best tool is being your own critic. Try to disprove your own thinking on a matter, see whether papers or opinions make good points, and work through them.
If you can’t, then you need to adjust your thinking. Most of all, don’t take a pathos (emotional) position on anything, because it will be much harder to admit you were wrong if you turn out to be. When seen, evil people are put down, but stupidity is much harder to see, because everyone shares the same opinion and no one knows where it came from.
I will leave you with this little parable: “Debating an idiot is like playing chess with a pidgin. It will just climb onto the board, knock all of the pieces over, crap on everything, and fly back to its flock claiming it won.”
If you’d like to get in touch, you can contact me at glennh@fastmail.com. We need to organize before it is too late.