Active ignorance

I chose the title above because I had already, in 2021, written a post called “Aggressive stupidity“, and on rereading it, was not disappointed. There is a quote widely attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, that “there is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” I think I know what it means, but am having a hard time clarifying it in my mind. I know there is stupidity, much of it mindless. It is not the same as “ignorance”, which is curable once admitted.

However, as the comedian Ron White says, “You can’t fix stupid.”

There is also this insult levied in haughty arguments where we accuse one another of suffering from the “Dunning Kruger effect,” which says that stupid people cannot possibly know they are stupid, and this because they are stupid. This roughly translates to the idea that we all regard ourselves as not only smart, but also just a little bit smarter than the people we know. All of us. 

Goethe used the words “Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine tätige Unwissenheit”, which translates to “There is nothing more terrible than active ignorance.” That is a shade different than “aggressive stupidity. I think we are looking there at the subtleties of linguistic tones, so that Goethe was not being quite as harsh as the English version makes out. 

However, I am going with “aggressive stupidity”, as even if it did not precisely come from Goethe, and we all know that we all like to quote really smart people. And, I’ve read a little of him. That’s it.

First, what is it?

Aggressive stupidity is a coupling of two facets of being human. “Aggressive” assumes our being right and almost everyone else being wrong. “Stupidity” refers to lack of knowledge coupled with unawareness of that shortcoming. Ignorance is treatable.

The results are not often good. A short list of bad things resulting from aggressive stupidity follows:

• Too many police. We’re safe, and all threats to our safety are overblown.
• Too many scientists. This is a result of funding being taken over by government, the stupid idea behind it that a lot of money for science results in a lot of new scientific knowledge. Oddly, it was a man named “Bush” (Vannevar) who promoted this idea in the early stages. Now it is at pandemic stage.
• Too many teachers. This is self-evident, or should be.
• Too many experts. I’ve known maybe a handful in my life. That’s it.
• Too much school. Let the kids be on their own and let them be bored. Stop medicating them!
• Too much entertainment. The amount of talent available to fill all these electronic signals is sparse, maybe a full bathtub of water now spread over an entire house. It’s pretty thin.
• Too much indoctrination of youth. (See too many teachers, too much school, above.) The idea is that if it is right, there is no harm in shielding children from alternatives.
• Too many soldiers. Too many weapons. Even as there are no nuclear weapons, there’s plenty of other kinds of weapons around.
• Nuclear power, which is real, safe, cheap and abundant. Because it cannot be rationed, powerful people do not want it around.
• Too much TV, and all of its forms including movies. Marshall McLuhan was right about the nature of the media, that people don’t experience it, but rather partake of it, blend with it, and become saturated with it to the point that they are easily convinced of anything. People who watch news believe news, instantly, on first viewing. It’s that powerful.
• Too many forms of communication. Have you noticed now that people rarely answer their phone, and that businesses rely on answering systems and AI? When’s the last time you called a business and got a person answering on the other end?
• Climate change. This is a result of too much TV coupled with too many experts. Leaders of this movement are knowingly evil, followers are just duped.

And on it goes. Each of these things came about in an often mindless state where people drifted into environments that are, on the whole, bad for us. But more often than not, as with science, teachers, school, television and entertainment, it is conscious thought control by hidden hands. These hands imagine that overall, it is good to have a dumbed-down public and thought control systems that make governance easier. These hidden hands are both aggressively stupid, and dangerous. And, all about.

They are not, however, actively ignorant. That, the Amish view I suppose, while benign, is not a good way to experience being alive and having a brain.