![]() ![]() How does the American abolitionist movement or the American temperance movement or the American labor movement fit into Bonhoeffer's theory of stupidity?Įuropean class based intellectualism doesn't fit well with American traditions or history. The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” Bonhoeffer once said. “Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. Until then, we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.īonhoeffer died due to his involvement in a plot against Adolf Hitler at dawn on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp just two weeks before soldiers from the United States liberated the camp. 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. Only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil - incapable of seeing that it is evil. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and is abused in his very being. 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. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us from the fact that he is not independent. 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 an autonomous position. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. People who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals in groups. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or rather, they allow this to happen to them. There are human beings who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid. This much is certain, stupidity is in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. ![]() #Youtube the professor vs trash talker how toIf we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. In all this the stupid person, is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. Reasons fall on deaf ears.” Facts that contradict a stupid person’s prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplishes anything here. In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Eventually he concluded that the root of the problem was not malice, but stupidity. ![]() In prison, Bonhoeffer began to reflect on how his country of poets and thinkers had turned into a collective of cowards, crooks and criminals. ![]() After years of trying to change people's minds, Bonhoeffer came home one evening and his own father had to tell him that two men were waiting in his room to take him away. #Youtube the professor vs trash talker windowsIn the darkest chapter of German history, during a time when incited mobs threw stones into the windows of innocent shop owners and women and children were cruelly humiliated in the open Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young pastor, began to speak publicly against the atrocities. ![]()
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