The Theory Of Stupidity - by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

[Hassin Bin Sober]

[patphil]

1. I liked the line about how uneducated people can be very intelligent.

My father was a son of a Wisconsin farmer, and only had an 8th grade education, but he was a pretty wise man.
I'll give you a couple examples:
When I was about 13 years of age, around 1960, I experimented with smoking. My father caught me, and I expected he was going to smack me one. But, he told me that he had been smoking for all his adult life, and now, in his late 50's he couldn't quit. He told me to stop now, before I ended up like him. I took his words to heart and never got hooked.
Another time, perhaps a year or two later, he said, "The Republican party never did a thing for the common man". True then, and still true today.
He was a strong Democrat. We camped out at a remote lake in northern New York State in the summer of 1960. He stayed up all night listening to my transistor radio to hear John F. Kennedy get the Democratic nomination for President He knew this was a big deal.

Education is a good thing, but simple wisdom is just as important.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

2. Agreed.

My father-in-law was not an educated man. He and his bothers grew up dirt poor in Missouri. They both learned a trade - my father-in-law learned to fly and his brother earned his aircraft mechanic’s license. They ended up owning an airplane dealership and airport operation (FBO).

Boy was he a skeptic of religion. He used to tell the story about Jim Baker and his crew coming through town for what my father-in-law called a tent revival. He overheard the gaggle laughing it up about the suckers and counting the “haul” for the day.

My father-in-law hated republicans and specifically George Bush. We used to go down there and sit on the porch all day and, as he called it, “Bush bash.”

[Karadeniz]

3. This is what I've tried to explain. Political stupidity is a moral choice.

[struggle4progress]

4. Bonhoeffer does not warn against stupidity but against folly

He notes that intellectually slow people are not always foolish -- and that very intelligent people can do very foolish things.