Dear Friends,
It seems to me, many people are more than happy to let others do their thinking for them. It’s more efficient that way. Such folks can be part of a bound organization, a fasces if you will, that has a brain and they become its willing arms and legs. That way, they don’t have to burn a single calorie in thought. Those precious calories can instead be stored as fat. One thing I have noticed, those who let others do their thinking for them seem to love uniforms. Whether that uniform is a snazzy black outfit or a nose ring, they prefer to distinguish themselves from the monsters who do their own thinking. Jung, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky all opined how ideas have agency, captivate, and control people. Bonhoeffer called such people stupid.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who opposed the Nazi rise to power and was executed by them. Dunning and Kruger later expanded on Bonhoeffer’s ideas. They created the theory of stupidity. In it they considered that there are four kinds of people. There are the martyrs, the users, the wise, and the stupid. A martyr will lose themselves benefiting others. The user will exploit others to benefit themselves… they are normally called evil. Fewer are the wise, who act in ways that benefit themselves and others. Lastly, there are the stupid, people who harm not only the interests of society but of themselves. Bonhoeffer said the stupid are far more dangerous than the evil users. This is because there are far more stupid people and they harm themselves as much as everyone else.
Stupid people like to let others do their thinking for them. That way they can’t be blamed for their actions. That’s why such people make up the core ideologues of centrally planned movements. They don’t think, they act. Most importantly, they act without remorse. This is made possible because their morality is replaced with ideology. An ideologically captured person has no empathy, regret, or sympathy. Their ideology is their whole world. While that ideology might be the acme of stupidity, to them it is the be all and end all. So, if the road to utopia requires blood to grease the wheels, so be it. This is the case even if the blood required is their own. The amount of people Stalin and Hitler managed to manipulate into self-sacrifice for the good of evil is staggering.
Those who let others do their thinking for them (the stupid) are often called zealots. I think that is a good way of characterizing the stupid… as mindless robots who act against their own interests. Zealots, however, like to self-identify. That way they can identify others caught in the same mind trap. This also serves to identify the enemy… anyone who isn’t a zealot. Secret organizations have used rings, political organizations have used uniforms, and others use jewelry and tattoos to identify themselves. Setting themselves apart is a means to group cohesion. The zealot is viciously protective of the idea that has captured them. Jung said, “People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.” Those ideas then use their people to protect themselves, like a junkyard dog guards his food dish.
The zealots, stupid, or ideologically captured, whatever you want to call such people, are very dangerous. Moreover, they are made. They aren’t born. In a state of nature stupidity is weeded out quickly. The young who are stupid learn not to be, or become a meal. If kids are well educated to think for themselves they are far less likely to become stupid zealots. Sadly, our education system prefers to teach ideology instead of creativity, judged by the curriculum. So is it any wonder so many people let an ideology do their thinking for them? Logic ricochets off a zealot like a bullet off a King Tiger tank. Their stupidity is impenetrable. So the best thing to do is ignore them as best we can. They are stupid. Then try to teach the kids to think for themselves… to inoculate them from stupidity.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
