To paraphrase Walt Kelly, we have met the Stupids and they are us:
“In our age of democratic tyranny, it has become, at the very least, tactless to point out the stupidity of the common people, but the evidence does not seem to admit of any other conclusion.” (S.T. Joshi)
I am sorry to begin the new year on such a negative note, but, according to S.T. Joshi, the odds are that you and I are stupid. There is no reason to take that assessment personally; according to Joshi, “The fundamental fact of human history is that people in the mass are irremediably ignorant.” You may ask, “Who is S.T. Joshi and where does he get off insulting the rest of us that way?” The answer is, Mr. Joshi is an author and literary critic, born in India and raised from an early age in Muncie, Indiana. His areas of specialization include “weird fiction,” the work of H.P. Lovecraft, espousing truculent atheism, and, evidently, denigrating the intelligence of anyone who disagrees with him.
While Joshi’s comments about irremediable ignorance are part of his attack on religion and theistic belief (made in his book God’s Defenders), they have wider application:
Even a cursory examination of such phenomena as network television, politicians, astrology, best-selling novels, the Weekly World News, psychic hotlines, horoscopes, alien abduction theories, professional wrestling, and fashion magazines prove [human stupidity] with overwhelming emphasis. The great majority of genuinely intelligent thinkers in human history have endorsed the notion.
Joshi’s “great majority” consists of four dead white males:
Consider John Stuart Mill: ". . . on any matter not self-evident there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging of it for one who is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only comparative . . ." Consider H. L. Mencken: ". . . independent thought, to a good many men, is quite impossible, and to the overwhelming majority of men, extremely painful." Consider Bertrand Russell: ". . . nine-tenths of the beliefs of nine-tenths of mankind are totally irrational." Perhaps the most pungent, and most relevant in this context, is from George Santayana, in a letter to Bertrand Russell: "People are not intelligent. It is very unreasonable to expect them to be so, and that is a fate my philosophy reconciled me to long ago. How else could I have lived for forty years in America?" 1
Joshi also cites a “seminal treatise” on the subject, by yet another dead white male: 2
Stupidity is a phenomenon of wondrous, ineffable complexity, and its effects and ramifications are well-nigh infinite. One of the leading scholars on this crucial subject, Walter B. Pitkin, wrote as follows in his seminal treatise, A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity (1932):
“Stupidity can easily be proved the supreme Social Evil. Three factors combine to establish it as such. First and foremost, the number of stupid people is legion. Secondly, most of the power in business, finance, diplomacy, and politics is in the hands of more or less stupid individuals. Finally, high abilities are often linked with serious stupidity, and in such a manner that the abilities shine before all the world while the stupid trait lurks in deep shadow and is discerned only by intimates or by prying newspaper reporters.”
Those of us who are of a certain age may dimly remember the late Art Linkletter’s TV show, “People Are Funny”. In that same vein, perhaps S.T. Joshi could host a new reality show, “People Are Stupid”. Contestants would be required to have appropriate “smart” credentials (college degrees, academic tenure, incomes over $100,000 per year, etc.) or to have been elected to public office; inevitably, dunking tanks and cream pies to the face would be involved. Contestants could also be evaluated on the “Dunning-Kruger” scale, measuring the discrepancy between their perceived and their actual intelligence.
The stupidity of other people is as widely accepted as the incompetence of other drivers, the blindness of baseball umpires, and the Democratic Party's reliance on election fraud. Even so, the question arises: if most people are dunces, and given the well-known adage that “ignorance is bliss,” why are more of us not blissfully happy? Could it be that God (in whom S.T. Joshi does not believe) loves stupid people, and that is why He made so many of us?
The topic merits further investigation. Fortunately, Walter B. Pitkin’s classic exploration of “the history of human stupidity” is available at Internet Archive; assuming I am intelligent enough to understand Pitkin's book, you may anticipate my report on it sometime soon.
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Introduction to God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (stjoshi.org)
S.T. Joshi's Main Page (stjoshi.org)
1 Joshi adds, “I cite these remarks--which could be multiplied so as to fill this entire volume--only as illustrations.” This reminds me of the ending of the Gospel of John, where the evangelist asserts that “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”
2 I bear no ill-will toward dead white males; some of my best friends, alas, are dead white males, and one of these days I will be one myself.
Carol,
I almost used a graphic of Homer Simpson as the illustration for this post.
Posted by: Jack Shifflett | 01/03/2022 at 09:55 AM
Carol,
I almost used a graphic of Homer Simpson as the illustration for this post.
Posted by: Jack Shifflett | 01/03/2022 at 09:55 AM
As Homer Simpson so memorably whined, “Why do things that happen to stupid people always happen to me??!!”
Posted by: Carol Wald | 01/03/2022 at 09:52 AM