When a nation decides to self-destruct, we know who to blame. Stupidity

Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity explains what is going on in Nigeria today.

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Famous author and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis in 1945.

Author Eric Metaxas described Bonhoeffer as “one of a small number of dissidents and saboteurs who worked to dismantle the Third Reich from the inside.”

Bonhoeffer died because of his involvement in a plot against Adolf Hitler at dawn on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp just two weeks before soldiers from the United States liberated the camp.

Bonhoeffer famously argued that stupid people are more dangerous than evil ones. This is because while we can protest against or fight evil people, against stupid ones we are defenceless — reasons fall on deaf ears.

This famous text described by the writer, Jonas Koblin as Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity serves any free society as a prescient warning of what can happen when certain people gain too much power.

In the darkest chapter of German history, during a time when incited mobs threw stones into the windows of innocent shop owners and women and children were cruelly humiliated in the open; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young pastor, began to speak publicly against these atrocities.

After years of trying to change people’s minds, Bonhoeffer came home one evening and his own father had to tell him that two men were waiting in his room to take him away.

In prison, Bonhoeffer began to reflect on how his country of poets and thinkers had turned into a collective of cowards, crooks, and criminals. Eventually, he concluded that the root of the problem was not malice, but stupidity.

From prison, Bonhoeffer wrote, arguing that,

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenceless.

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears. Facts that contradict a stupid person’s prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

In all this, the stupid person is 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.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, stupidity is in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one.

There are human beings who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or rather, they allow this to happen to them.

People who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals in groups. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.

It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, such as intellect, suddenly 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 an autonomous position.

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us from 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 – incapable of seeing that it is evil. 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.

~ Jonas Koblin

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

There are many parallels between the stupid fellows of Bonhoeffer’s theory and how my countrymen, Nigerians, willy-nilly choose political leaders and their misrulers to their undoing.

I am certainly not proud of my country’s trajectory. But I must own up to the stupidity behind our unmitigated rolling disaster of a dysfunctional country.

Why?

Many of Nigeria’s misrulers were educated in the West and conversant with Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity. Yet, they use this knowledge exclusively for their advantage at the expense of those they profess to lead — the stupid ones.

In Nigeria, we are aware of the underlying causes of our long-standing suffering and afflictions. Yet, we raise our hands in complicit learned self-helplessness, asking, “Who do us like this?” We did ourselves.

Nigerians ask: Who do us like this?

Nigerians answer: We did ourselves.

“Na we we dey do ourselves”, is how now Nigerians put it in broken English

Stupidity keeps inflicting unimaginable suffering on all Nigerians. A single post or story won’t suffice, but Nigerians are the ones most destructive to their country.

How?

1. A horde that is always insisting on old discredited ways.

On my way back from Church a week before Nigeria's 2023 presidential elections, I realized that my people are neither ready nor preparing for "A New and Better Nigeria". No, not yet.

On that day with my son behind the wheel, I caught myself thinking loud.

“Son, from the look of things, I don’t think Nigerians are ready for any change that will make our country better. It appears that most of our people are unwilling to let go of their outdated methods and discredited ways of doing things.

He waited for me to finish and as if he was reading my mind replied, “Dad you are correct. Nigerians have not reached or been hard-pressed to their breaking point.

2. In Nigeria, we prefer to choke on religiously bigoted, primitive, tribal, and pretentious rulers.

The consequence is that there is no sense of nationhood. What we have is a battle for ethnic supremacy, where you have one tribe trying to upstage and subdue the rest.

Next, edged on by religious leaders, some of whom are in syncretic symbiotic alliance with our misrulers, start urging their followers to pray to God to make their rulers rule well. Many Nigerians love their religions so much that they prefer lifelong poverty and destitution if that is what it takes to uphold their bigoted beliefs.

A significant number of Nigerians play a role in the appointment of ineffective rulers. Yet, after each election cycle, Nigerians and their religious leaders keep urging the people to pray to God for these bad rulers to steer the country aright.

The outcome of cumulative heady bad choices is what Nigerians are reaping today.

3. Many leave Nigeria (but the ills) of Nigeria never leave them.

Many Nigerians in the diaspora are still deeply entrenched in ethnic and religious bigotry. Despite their having sojourned in democratic, merit, and rule-based societies, back home, they add fuel to firestorms of ethnic and religious division.

While some Nigerians are embracing changes and building bridges of a united country, other Nigerians are widening and deepening the gulf of destructive ethnic and religious cleavages.

Many Nigerians are comfortable with alternative truths that favor their tribes or religions, because of tribalism and religious bigotry still coded in their DNA and being constantly transmitted to society..

4. Most Nigerians are numb and apathetic to their “would-be” deliverers.

“Sidon Look” (Sit down and look), apathy is killing us all. Incapacitated by ignorance and poverty, many pauperized Nigerians are complicit in their undoing at the hands of conscienceless unleaders.

On election days, when their future is being decided many Nigerians prefer to be docile and non-participative. Instead of rallying around their would-be deliverers, they tell you, “Leave these thugs alone. Don’t let them injure you o.”

What better way to nail one’s coffin than to be entombed alive?

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

~ Edmund Burke

5. A country drowning in a sea of Orwellian doublespeak

Good and evil are determined here based on tribal loyalties, religious biases, or a disposition to political immorality. We’re sinking in an ocean of perfidy and there is no end or landfill in site. And our people love to have it so.

A commenter on YouTube lamented, “Only in Nigeria will you find people rejoicing and clapping for the same politicians that spoiled their lives and damage their future. This is the reason why Africa (Nigeria) still has a long way to go.”

Also, only in Nigeria will the leader of a ruling political party declare to opposition party politicians to join the ruling party and all their sins (meaning cases of alleged corruption) will be forgiven.

Only in Nigeria will you find people poking fun at your misery with some well-known bloggers flipping and flopping whitewashing and supporting evil. Any person who supports evil is evil no matter how long it takes for it to manifest.

Final Words

Stupidity is an unbreakable shackle that holds back the development of any modern society. Nigerians must break free and escape the dangers of the stupidity holding their country back.

Source

• Jonas Koblin — Sprout Schools

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