Imperialism and Stupidity

October 29, 2003

Stupidity is a form of madness: it occurs when a person allows intellectual resources to lie fallow. In order to be stupid, you have to know better. Stepping on a rake in darkness may be a pratfall for a sitcom, but "stupid" isn't the word to describe it (unless you left the rake there). Forgetfulness, ignorance, or uncertainty are all components of bad decisions, but they aren't stupidity, and their consequences are normally far less destructive.

Stupidity and its motivations (yes, stupidity requires a motivation!) are crucial to understanding the tragic dimension of human existence.

First, I'd like to explain very briefly the behaviorist explanations of stupidity. In terms of social behavior, it makes sense that stupid behavior might evolve out of successive games of "Chicken."* Like the callow motorist racing towards his antagonist, he has it in his interests to convince the other that he's insane; that death has no meaning to him, or perhaps that swerving is impossible. This might include such bold tactics as removing the steering wheel and dangling it out of the window

As an individual, it is very hard to appear to be something you are not; it's nearly always easier to become the thing itself. In groups, it is ultimately impossible. Thomas Friedman, for example, cannot tell his readers, "Okay, my friends, the entire human race is opposed to this invasion of Iraq because it will seek to set up the US government as a unilateral arbiter of world power; and so my strategy will be to set up and isolate the most vocal foreign government as uniquely perverse. I will pretend that it is France that is somehow disrupting our efforts, not the six billion humans who live neither in the USA nor Iraq..." If he did, Dominque de Villepin (the Foreign Minister of France) would just laugh at everything he said. No, Friedman and his fellow advocates of imperialism must pretend they really believe this, and cultivate a climate of mass hysteria—group stupidity, in fact, in which absurd conclusions and ridiculous non-facts dominate the discourse.

The will to conquer and dominate other nations requires not just a proclivity to evil; it requires a refusal to accept the facts. Empires collapse, and any empire we create will collapse too. Even if we aren't exposed to retaliation, as the ancient Athenians were for their empire, we still will have to face cosmic economic and political dislocation. Spain was never invaded by hordes of angry Incas or Aztecs; but 350 years after the gold stopped flowing from the New World, Spain was—institutionally—a basket case. If we conquer the Persian Gulf to harvest its oil and extort rents from the human race for it, we will not be able to stand forever against international resentment. And even during the period of history when we can, the vast majority of Americans will never benefit from these rents. They will remain in the hands of the victorious class.

Stupidity is closely tied to evil. Evil behavior is that which destroys the basis for life, which destroys comity within and amongst communities, fellowship between friends, safety and health, the cleanliness of our air and our water, the integrity of our institutions—or, of course, which murders and extorts. An individual who plunders and sacks in a wild land may come out ahead; a dictator with a hierarchy of terror and bribery can often last until he dies in his bed, or (with some petty embarrassment) flees to opulent exile in Paraguay. But when a republic indulges in this behavior, stupidity is in the air. For humans to collaborate in evil is a truly bizarre activity; it requires a stupendous amount of faith in the nonexistent.

BOOKS ON STUPIDITY (links are to Amazon; I found the editions with the most pertinent reviews): In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus; The Peter Principle, Dr. Lawrence J. Peter (a bit snotty; please read the review by Arno Schäfer); The Talent for Stupidity: The Psychology of the Bungler, the Incompetent and the Ineffectual, by Edmund Bergler, Md.; The Encyclopedia of Stupidity, by Matthijs Van Boxsel, Arnold Pomerans (Translator), Erica Pomerans (Translator); Stupidity, by Avital Ronell...

STUPID BOOKS ON STUPIDITY: Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, by Dr. Schlessinger

Reviewer: thexdefect from Corvallis, OR USA
To put it bluntly, this book is fantastic. I used it to line three of my birdcages, and crapping on Dr Laura has never made my birds happier. Most tropical birds will also enjoy chewing on the thicker then average pages. If you're in need of a high quality birdcage, gerbil cage, or (if you can buy this book in bulk) puppy cage liner, this may be just the thing you've been looking for.

NOTE: 1 "Chicken" is a game in which two motorists are driving at each other on a narrow road. The first to swerve is "chicken," or humiliated. If neither swerves, both motorists are killed. Sometimes "Chicken" is treated as a form of "prisoners' dilemma," in which two prisoners are pressured to confess (thereby causing their accomplice to get a far longer sentence) in return for immediate release. These are both scenarios in the "Theory of Noncooperative Games," a field that seems to have become connected with economics with Cournot's studies of duopoly.