‘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 in human beings at least a sense of unease. 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 than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

  • dustycups@aussie.zoneEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Ignorance can be treated with instruction/information. That isn’t the problem with stupidity.

    …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.

    • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Socrates was talking about willfull ignorance, amathia.

      Doesn’t translate well into English. Read the originals

        • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          Yeah me neither, but we can read about them. I used to link this good article about it, but it’s gone down now, unfortunately.

          Wayback machine to the rescue!

          https://web.archive.org/web/20250512172356/https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/

          That should work but I’ll paste a bit anyway

          Belangia helpfully adds: “A-gnoia means literally ‘not-knowing’; a-mathia means literally ‘not-learning.’ In addition to the type of amathia that is an inability to learn, there is another form that is an unwillingness to learn. … Robert Musii in an essay called On Stupidity, distinguished between two forms of stupidity, one he called ‘an honorable kind’ due to a lack of natural ability and another, much more sinister kind, that he called ‘intelligent stupidity.'”

          Belangia also quotes Glenn Hughes, from an essay entitled “Voegelin’s Use of Musil’s Concept of Intelligent Stupidity in Hitler and the Germans,” providing a further elucidation of the concept of amathia (italics in the original):

          “The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to [its] honorable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right … The stupidity this addresses is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself. … [S]ince the ‘higher stupidity’ consists not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings … We may say that the reversal of a spiritual sickness must entail a spiritual cure.”

            • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 day ago

              Uh agnostic is not knowing and amathic is not learning, afaik

              By my understanding of the texts an agnostic person would possibly learn a thing when you teach them, but an amathic person wouldn’t. That’s the difference. One just lacks the info the other refuses to accept it.

              And the article loans other essays which quote third essays and it’s kinda hard to keep track. The whole thing is only like 1.5-2 pages, worth a read.