Stupidity

Trying to understand the Stupidity of the US collective, imperial culture, that has followed a pattern for 20 generations. Biden and Blinken, and the entire governmental apparatus, fit the pattern perfectly, to the detriment of all of us, and the world, and the ecosystem. The word "stupid" is derived from Latin "stupere" - to be stunned, numb or astonished, act insensibly, and is related to stupor, a state of near unconsciousness, numbness, mental suspension of sensibility.

One of the "letters" in German Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Letters and Papers From Prison" was entitled "On Stupidity". In prison for secretly planning an assassination attempt on Hitler, he wrote many letters and essays until his execution in 1945, at age 39. He attributed much of Hitler's success to the stupidity of the depressed and anxious, but very intelligent, German people who sought relief in a savior to whom they could obey as mindless tools in a centralized "democratic" regime rallying against a demonized enemy. They deprived themselves of their inner independence, and more or less consciously, gave up establishing an autonomous position in relationship to the realities. They relied on slogans, and catchwords that have the effect of mesmerizing people under a spell or trance. "Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice", said Bonhoeffer, because the latter can be exposed and forcefully prevented. But "against stupidity we are defenseless" as "reasons fall on deaf ears". Thoughtlessness is dangerous.

Psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel (1897-1946), known for his study of neuroses, articulated a thesis that supported Bonhoeffer's notions, describing how people become stupid ad hoc when they do not want to understand, where understanding would cause anxiety, or guilt feelings, or would endanger an existing neurotic equilibrium.

British novelist Doris Lessing concluded there is no fool like an intellectual...a kind of clever stupidity, bred out of a line of logic in the head, nothing related to experience. In the US we have been living in our heads for more than 200 years with a false narrative quite divorced from visceral and factual reality.

British economist, E. F. Schumacher, a severe critic of modern market economics and unlimited growth on a finite planet, argued that the continued and systematic cultivation of greed and envy dims and collapses intelligence, resulting in irrationality and stupidity, and that when whole societies become infected by these vices, and though astonishing things have been achieved, but at the severe cost of increasing INcapability to solve the most elementary problems of everyday existence.

I am suggesting that being immersed in our religion of "Exceptionalism" for 400 years has de facto made us a stupid people, supporting narcissistic values and imperialist policies that are destined to severely interrupt the survival or continuation of our species on finite Planet Earth. It had certainly made me stupid, shockingly so. As a social species we are genetically and evolutionarily designed to cooperate, live in community, and be inquiring. In a capitalist society we are trained to be competitive, individualistic, and acquisitive - in effect to be either predator or prey. Empathy, the most important social emotion for survival, is discouraged. This is not sustainable behavior. It is destructive to the essence and fabric of life itself.