Stupidity

Bonhoeffer On Why Societies Succumb To Evil Leaders

In December 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer shared a Christmas reflection with his brother-in-law Hans Von Dohnanyi, his close friend Eberhard Bethge, and Major General Hans Oster, a German military officer involved in plots to overthrow the Nazis. The reflection was entitled “After Ten Years,” and in it Bonhoeffer looked back over the last decade, taking stock of what had happened to Germany. Four months after writing the essay, on April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested. After two years of imprisonment they were executed.

"After Ten Years" contains seventeen sections. In each section Bonhoeffer tries to account for the moral collapse of Germany and attempts to trace the shape of moral action in the face of that collapse. Those who had spoken out, people Paul Schneider and the White Rose group, had been killed. Those who had put up milder resistance, like Bonhoeffer and others within the Confessing Church, were ineffectual and had, in various ways, become quiet and complicit in order to survive. In "After Ten Years" Bonhoeffer wrestles with the stark choices facing people of conscience in such dark times, martyrdom to one side and ineffectiveness to the other. As Bonhoeffer puts it in his reflections, "What remains for us is only the very narrow path, sometimes barely discernible, of taking each day as if it were the last and yet living it faithfully and responsibly as if there were yet to be a great future."

In yesterday's post, politicians were described as "black magicians." Hitler, obviously, is one of the best examples of how a political leader can come to wield dark, occult powers over the masses. And yet, this charismatic power doesn't absolve citizens of their moral responsibilities. As they say, it takes two to tango. What, then, characterizes a populace which causes them to succumb to the occult influences of the leader? We might point to some intrinsic moral corruption and wickedness in the people. Some evil or malice. But that's not Bonhoeffer's diagnosis. Instead of evil, Bonhoeffer points to something more depressing and mundane: Stupidity.

Here is the full passage on "Stupidity" from Bonhoeffer's essay "After Ten Years":

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind at least a sense of unease in human beings. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed—in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical—and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that in essence it is not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. 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 establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. 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. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. 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. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what “the people” really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The biblical passage, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, states that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.