Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young priest in Hitler’s time, at a time when incited supporters were throwing stones at dissidents and women were brutally humiliated in public, began giving public speeches against the polarization produced by the regime. He wanted to put a stop to this polarization.
After years of struggling for this, Bonhoeffer came to his house one evening and his father told him that two policemen were waiting in his room to take him away. Bonhoeffer was imprisoned. During his time here, he questioned how the people in his country became this way. His conclusion was that at the root of the problem was “stupidity”, not evil.
Bonhoeffer wrote while in prison that it is possible to revolt against evil, but there is little that can be done against stupidity.
In his letter, he addressed the issue with the following sentences:
Any truth that contradicts the prejudices of a stupid person is simply rejected and pushed aside if they cannot be disproved. It is considered trivial or accidental. In all these situations, the stupid person who is contented and easily angered is extremely dangerous when it comes to attacking.
This is exactly why arguing with a stupid person is more tiring than arguing with a bad person. If we want to prevail against stupidity, we must first understand the nature of stupidity.
It is certain that stupidity is not a mental deficiency, but a quality in itself, a spiritual thing. There are people who are smart but stupid. There are some who are a bit obtuse mentally, but not at all stupid.
The impression we get is that stupidity is not an inborn deficiency. On the contrary, in some cases, people are deliberately made stupid. People even allow themselves to be made stupid.
People who do not belong to a group exhibit this deficiency much less than people who live in the group. This shows that stupidity is a sociological problem, not a psychological one.
This is why both political and religious views can easily spread like a virus among idiots. The power of the chief needs the stupidity of the others, almost as if there were some sociological, psychological law.
The process referred to here is not the failure of certain human capacities such as intelligence; on the contrary, it is the deprivation of inner independence of people under the dizzying influence of a rising power.
There is a tremendous correlation between fools and dictators, they both need each other. As the dictator increases his power, the fools fall under its spell and seize their ability to think independently. They act autonomously. They stubbornly reject the facts that are put in their eyes.
When talking to them, one feels as if he is speaking with slogans that control him rather than as if he is talking to a person. Bewitched, blinded, abused and even abused. Thus, stupid people, who turn into a tool that cannot think, become vulnerable to all kinds of abuse, unable to see that it is bad.
Only liberation, not advice, can defeat stupidity. Here we have to face the reality; A true inner salvation is possible only when there is an outer salvation that precedes it. Until then, we must stop trying to persuade a stupid person.
Bonhoeffer was executed on April 9, 1945, for participating in an assassination of Adolf Hitler.
He was executed in the concentration camp just two weeks before American soldiers liberated the camp.
Bonhoeffer says: Action; It arises not from a thought, but from a state of taking responsibility. The greatest test of a moral society is the world they will leave to their children.
Bonhoeffer’s “Theory of Stupidity” tells us, in a nutshell, that good people can unite and win the war against bad characters like in the movies, but stupidity is a completely different issue. We generally underestimate stupidity compared to evil. Whereas, stupidity is easily manipulated by the wicked, so it is far more dangerous than evil.
When the stupidity of society is reduced to a minimum, statues of intellectuals they imprisoned are erected, not statues of dictators. One day…
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