Lausten, since I don’t seem to know how to do dialogue you, without it going south, but since aspects of this thread rankle me, as much as it has you, I am going to engage in a dialogue with the Bonhoeffer video you imply I’m ignoring, or dismissing, or dis’ing, or whatever it was . . .
The Terrifying Theory of Stupidity You Were Never Meant to Hear – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
From: Philosophy Coded
0:42
They’re intelligent, well-meaning individuals who’ve fallen victim to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the power of stupidity. And here’s what makes this truly terrifying. It’s not happening to other people. It’s happening to people just like you and me.
1:27
These weren’t sadists or mentally ill. They were normal people who had temporarily surrendered their capacity for independent moral judgment.
Sure, 65% just became sadistic and behaved crazy for the duration of situation. It’s not their fault, they are innocent? Yet, 45% managed to maintain their morality, ethics and sanity?
Perhaps it would be more realistic to approach this by suggesting that we do good to recognize the potential of being sadistic and acting mentally ill within ourselves. (Which I think is his object.)
This raises our awareness of underlaying dynamic balances at the roots of our behavior.
It’s another reason why recognizing our fundamental animal nature is important. How we frame the problem, limits available resolution strategies.
1:37
This is exactly what Bonhaofer witnessed firsthand in Nazi Germany, and it led him to develop one of the most unsettling theories about human nature ever conceived.
But before we dive deeper, I have to ask, have you ever found yourself believing something simply because everyone around you believed it, too?
Sure. I’m even shocked at how gullible I can be. Thing is I love learning about things that interest me. My process is to learn more, all that critical thinking jazz. I’ve been turning on myself, questioning, doubting, listening to multiple conjectures.
For me, experiencing and learning has a higher rank of importance - than projecting and protecting my Ego driven self image.
I always figured honesty gaining experience and substance was more important than puffing up my ego. That means being able to answer difficult questions.
I didn’t get to know Joseph Campbell until my forties and settled with wife and step-kids. But it resonated through and through. The arc of one’s life. Dedicated to serving a notion greater than oneself—rather than ego-driven self-aggrandizement. Thereby discovering who I am, the substance, rather than a projection.
2:10
He was a German Lutheran pastor who watched his entire society transform before his eyes.
And I am a first generation witness of the aftermath, along with the intellectual struggle German-Americans (being an infant 1955 immigrant) where dealing with in the 50s and 60s - by virtue of my mother using the horrors she endured as a teenage victim and fleeing refuge across the heart of Europe during WWII, as teaching lessons, and guidance -
and German newsreels between German double features at The Davis Theater on Lincoln Ave, Chicago (entertainment & German language education in a household with the Golden Rule, speak English outside the home and German within the home, so we grew up bilingual.), and the lessons that grew from listening to those, which I did with interest.
Can’t figure me out within taking that into account.
2:39
He watched as his fellow Germans, educated, cultured, religious people, began supporting policies and leaders that contradicted everything they claimed to believe.
These weren’t ignorant masses being manipulated by clever propaganda. These were professors, doctors, clergy members, and intellectuals who were actively participating in their own intellectual surrender. …
That (narrative, I’m sure Bonhoeffer was also dialed into this reality, though he was a priest, and had his own catechism to adhere to.)
Still this narrative leaves aside the economic crisis and the excellent Nazi propaganda campaigns and events that utterly mesmerized a people (who had never seen a modern rock concert). Scientifically tailored strategies to convince a public. A public softened up by years of economic hardships.
Nor the psyche of children become adults, with their festering resentments and emotional scares created by cold, rigid, often violent, upbringings. German domestic expectations and rules. Look into the Brothers Grimm, and think about children raised on those horrendous stories. Especially in the hands of frustrated, angry parents. I was fortunate, my parents were enlightened and truly loved us, still, even as creativity and individuality was encouraged, order was kept, and it hurt sometimes, and it created resentments, that were acted out in later life. Yin and Yang
I have nothing but praise for my parents & upbringing looking back from 70, but had you asked the boy of 17, though I loved and respected my parents, bet my recollections would have carried a different tone.
Back to the video, I’m not disputing the narrative, simply pointing out some relevant missing details left out, because I can do it, from the inside looking out.
3:40
… But stupidity, it believes it’s doing good, making it absolutely immune to correction.
Perhaps Bonhaofer’s most precent insight was about how stupidity serves existing power structures. Malicious people know they’re doing wrong, which creates internal conflict and eventual breakdown. But people caught in functional stupidity believe they’re doing good, making them absolutely resistant to correction.
The succeeding rise and normalization of sociopathic thinking is a detail Bonhoeffer could not have imagined.
4:11
This isn’t accidental. Those in power don’t need to actively suppress information anymore. They just need to create conditions where processing information honestly becomes prohibitively difficult.
When Bonhaofer used the word stupidity, he wasn’t talking about low IQ or lack of education. He was describing something far more complex, what we might call functional stupidity or willful ignorance.
5:00
Here’s what made Bonhaofer’s theory so revolutionary.
He argued that stupidity often emerges not from individual failings, but from systemic pressures that make thinking independently both difficult and costly. …
7:05
… often emerges in group settings. Writing, it becomes clear that stupidity is not a psychological problem, but a sociological one. …
9:08
In each case, intelligent, educated people abandon critical thinking in favor of group consensus and emotional certainty.
That certainly makes sense, and it is exactly why it’s time that philosophers start incorporating biology into their conjectures about human consciousness, because tools and strategies for behavioral change must grow out of an evolutionary-biological awareness, or be doomed to irrelevance, such as the much touted “hard problem”.
Body + Brain + Interaction (interior & exterior) = Consciousness (Mind)
No need for any metaphysical skyhooks, yet philosophers rather stay within the outdated Mind Bubble of Cartesian thinking, which isa actually an outgrowth of theological concerns over the validity of God.
Now we know that a personal God is only valid against the backdrop reality that we ourselves create this personal God of our own.
This is important in recognizing, we aren’t doing “God’s Will” - we are using our own “god’s will” to justify our own agendas.
We produce our thoughts as well as our God - that deserves to be discuss explicitly, loud and clear. I’ve even been able to track the sober scientific trail that leads to this inescapable conclusion. Still I get nothing but grief.
[ Hazen, Lane, Sloan-Wilson, Solms, Damasio, Sapolski, Levin, Turin, Reber, among many others I can’t recall at the moment, but will be adding in the future as time permits. (Also worth mentioning is Attenborough’s 1979 classic video series about the miraculous evolution of Life on Earth, where he used contemporary “living fossils” to ‘bring home’ the stages Earth’s Evolution passed through.) ]
12:29
But we’re living through something exponentially more dangerous. We’ve gone from Nazi propaganda to social media algorithms that know exactly which psychological buttons to push.
He understood that when people stop thinking independently, they stop being fully human.
But here’s what makes Bonhaofer’s final challenge so relevant today. Who stands fast? When the pressure to conform is overwhelming, when thinking independently requires courage, when the cost of truth is higher than the price of comfortable lies, who stands fast?
15:20
The answer isn’t found in superior intelligence or education. It’s found in the daily choice to remain curious rather than certain, to seek truth rather than comfort, to think carefully rather than react quickly.
These aren’t heroic acts. They’re ordinary practices that become extraordinary when everyone around you has stopped doing them.
The tragedy is that intellectual surrender often feels like liberation. Thinking is hard work. It’s uncomfortable to hold complex contradictory ideas in your mind simultaneously. It’s painful to admit you might be wrong about something important.
But Bonhaofer argued that this discomfort is the price of remaining human. In a world that profits from our intellectual surrender, choosing to think for ourselves becomes a radical act.
Frankly, seems to me, I have been striving to live this path less travels.
16:15
This brings us to perhaps the most uncomfortable truth of all. We’re all susceptible to functional stupidity. The moment we think we’re immune, we’ve already begun to succumb.
Exactly. Here’s another benefit of appreciating I am an evolved creature, with my thoughts/mind being produced by my biological body/brain interacting with life.
The awareness tempers one’s self-importance.
Providing a bit of self-deprecation that makes errors, and knocks to the ego, easy to take, because we value the lessons learned, more than false facades.
17:20
The problem isn’t that people are getting less intelligent. It’s that our systems increasingly reward intellectual shortcuts over careful thinking. Think of critical thinking like physical exercise. It’s uncomfortable at first, but essential for strength.
Implying one has stopped doing it for a period of time.
Best is to have been fortunate enough to be raised within an active and fit family life, thus setting up good habits for a life time.
The next time you find yourself absolutely certain about something, the next time you catch yourself dismissing contradictory evidence without consideration, the next time you feel the comfort of having all the answers, remember Bonhoeffer’s warning.
See, I can’t relate to that. Sure there are layers of certainty. There’s also a spirit of openness to challenges and new ideas. I’m full of doubt and second guessing, and my entire “process” is about learning and double checking and challenging. Heck my Hall of Shame is full of doing the homework and discovering the facts, and weighting claims. But I’ve also purchased the understanding to be able to be certain within specific bounds. And welcome any challenge.
Hell, I’m not the ones who shutting up tight as clams - I’m the guy desperately trying to dredge up some feedback, pushback, engagement because I appreciate that’s how we learn. Bonhoeffer is arguing my cause.
18:10
Functional stupidity doesn’t announce itself with fanfare. It whispers that you already know everything you need to know.
And in that moment of recognition, you have a choice. Will you surrender your mind for the comfort of certainty, or will you choose the more difficult path of intellectual independence?
The question Bonhaofer leaves us with isn’t whether we’re smart enough to avoid stupidity.
It’s whether we’re committed enough to keep thinking when thinking becomes inconvenient, uncomfortable, or costly. …
Here’s my challenge to you this week. Find one belief you hold strongly and spend 30 minutes researching the best arguments against it. Not to torture yourself, not to become paralyzed by doubt, but to practice the kind of intellectual courage Bonhoeffer died defending. If your belief survives honest scrutiny, you’ll hold it more confidently. If it doesn’t, you’ll have learned something valuable about the difference between conviction and truth.
I’ve put my beliefs in print specifically for easy and constructive critique and debate.
19:20
The future of human dignity might just depend on how we collectively answer Bonhoeffer’s challenge.
And here’s what I want you to remember. Every time you choose curiosity over certainty, evidence over emotion, careful thinking over quick reactions, you’re not just protecting your own mind. You’re defending the very possibility of human wisdom in an age of artificial stupidity.
I’m staking my claim.
