I have been asked to write about stupidity. I cannot think of why. Perhaps it is that glowing sagacity that rises, like steam, off my hateful words? Or, perhaps, there is some desire for a voice of reason (Reason?) in these trying times–after all, we are watching the rockets’ red glare over Tel Aviv and Tehran everyday now. We are also seeing ICE’s Dick’s Sporting Good mannequins wrestling hard working Americans to the ground and walking them off to jail. I am inclined to think, however, that the answer to this mystery is a bit more simple: I am a professional hater, and I have not abused my customers for a noticeable interval. And so, duty calls.

Writing about stupidity is, itself, stupid. One might wish they could leave the topic at this laconic paradox. After all, the real trouble with stupidity is that those to whom it applies will dismiss any discussion of it. Writing requires thinking, while reading requires some knack (if not skill) for catching on to references, meanings, and the ability to sustain one’s attention. There is also the work that goes into writing, which will not be appreciated by those who can’t summon the imagination to understand the text itself, let alone empathize with the actual work. Most people who ‘write’ these days do it on Substack, or they ‘leave reviews’ on Letterboxd, or they make a post on any number of social media platforms. I can hear, like a ghost, the words of Truman Capote and his lowbrow sneer at lower-brow Jack Kerouac: ‘That’s not writing, that’s typing’. This is the current state of writing, while the current state of reading sits somewhere between skimming (if you are educated) and snarls over specific words, phrases, or slogans being present–or absent. Unable to read the entire post, which I sympathize with given how bad they are, the ‘reader’ growls about what they believe was said or not said. And then, people comment, seeking to get as many notifications on their phone as possible as they give some ‘answer’ to whatever the post said. Some use it for a joke, others use it for a long, solemn ‘thread’ as they play the part of playground orator, while others still use it to reference whatever side hustle or failing podcast they belong to.

I cannot say I am entirely innocent–in more ways than one. In this case, however, it is often an activity of mine to treat a lot of these posts as spectacle. Like the funny pages of yesteryear, I will drink my coffee as I read through these posts–or, occasionally, sharing them with my friend Dwayne. If you treat the posts the way the posters themselves treat them, they become Benny Hill (or his cocaine reincarnation, Chris Farley) sketches, where people confidently run into poles (and polls) while others, following in their footsteps, step on upturned rakes or slip on banana peels. It is all marvelously funny. The first thought to come to mind, a true specimen and classic type of such idiocy, would be the month long Twitter-tantrum of a Evgenia Kodva and her husband, Yasha Levine, as they defended an observation that kids make one’s art more meaningful than those who do not have kids. It was thoroughly debunked in seconds, or members of the Twitterati asked to accept that this may not be an observation but merely an opinion (or, to use the right word, prejudice), and so they spent nearly three weeks yammering on about it. In those three weeks, no actual attempt was made to defend the position–outside of referencing a few movie directors–but rather the disreputable bozart of Suburbia and her reputable husband decided to start calling names. ‘Middle aged incels’, ‘childless Left’, ‘neo-eunuchs’ (I wonder: what is new about eunuchs?) and ‘childless pet owners’, to pick the more intelligible ones. All of this culminated in a tweet about someone’s missing pet and a, god help us, ‘TikTok poem’ that put the ‘men in their trucks, ranting’ category of videos to shame in its absurdity. I made the mistake of trying to offer some sense to the couple, noting that there is no right deportment for how an artist must be to make meaningful art–whatever, of course, that is supposed to mean. I was duly, and predictable, called some names, leading me to withdraw from the virtual scrum. It was much better, I concluded, to be a spectator.

The other issue with stupidity, beyond its density, is the fact that stupidity is often discussed as though it were a contagion or disease that one would rid themselves of, if only one lived a ‘good, proper life’. Often, one hears this in the daily duels of politicos and armchair theorists–communists call fascists evil, but they call liberals stupid. Liberals consider fascists stupid, while considering communists evil. Fascists think everyone is stupid, except themselves and their imaginary ‘superior men’. Republicans have nothing to say–they may have traded out leather suits for empty suits of a clearance rack kind, but they are still gimps, driven along by their fascist mobs. Each one of them, multiple times a day, gets up on their avatar soap boxes and addresses the Twitterati from their virtual street corner and says some variation of: ‘The trouble with my enemies is that they are stupid.” The title to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, were it written in our dwindling days of postmodern palaver, would be Irony Lost. The irony of calling others stupid for little else other than not believing in your ideological crutches is lost on all. 

After all, the issue with this is that we are all stupid. On the subject of the human mind, I am inclined to agree with the psychologist Howard Gardner, who stated a theory in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences that intelligence is often multifaceted–that is, where one might be intelligent in some areas, they may deficient in other things. Or, if you prefer, as Schopenhauer put it in his Art of Literature:

‘But there is always a limit to human capacity; and no one can be a great genius without having some decidedly weak side, it may even be, some intellectual narrowness. In other words, there will foe some faculty in which he is now and then inferior to men of moderate endowments. It will be a faculty which, if strong, might have been an obstacle to the exercise of the qualities in which he excels. What this weak point is, it will always be hard to define with any accuracy even in a given case. It may be better expressed indirectly; thus Plato’s weak point is exactly that in which Aristotle is strong, and vice versa; and so, too, Kant is deficient just where Goethe is great.’

Schopenhauer, as always, is talking about genius–I, however, am referring to the ‘men (and women) of moderate endowments’ he is comparing them to. While I agree with Gardner and Schopenhauer, the way I would frame it is closer to H.L. Mencken, who said that the fact a brain of great ability and otherwise efficient ‘may have a hole in it surely is no secret’. We are all, he and I say in unison, illogical, irrational and almost insane. Anyone who has read any bit of history does not need a Schopenhauer, a Mencken, or a Gardner–or me–to tell them this obvious point. But you might need them–or me–to remind you of it.

I

And yet, I wish to submit one more exhibit: the philosopher John Gray’s interesting essay ‘Humanism and flying saucers’, which he wrote in his book The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths(2013). I offer this because saying ‘stupid’ without substance (even with copious examples) means nothing at all. It is an amorphous label meaning absolutely anything–like ‘Chinese buffet’ or ‘American Communism’. In this essay, John Gray notes the form in which our stupidity comes and has always made an appearance: cognitive dissonance.

John Gray’s essay begins with an oft made claim that fans of the philosopher like myself can recite in their sleep: humans are not rational, and if human rationality were held to the standards of rationality…well, we would give up the charade. He presents a 1956 study of a UFO cult by a team of psychologists, led by a Leon Festinger, titled When Prophecy Fails. The study follows a cult that formed around a Michigan woman who claimed to have received extraterrestrial messages from aliens who were going to bring about the end of the world. In an age where every kind of alien invasion has been bungled onto a silver screen, this almost seems like a joke. How would the world come to an end? ‘[B]y being inundated by a great flood in the hours before dawn on 21 December 1954.’ I read this and rolled my eyes–a remix of Old Testament water works with aliens thrown in. But to the scientific eye of Festinger and his gang, this was a chance to test the theory of cognitive dissonance.

At this point, Gray gives a definition of cognitive dissonance from Festinger’s work:

‘…human beings do not deal with conflicting beliefs and perceptions by testing them against facts. They reduce the conflict by reinterpreting facts that challenge the beliefs to which they are most attached.’ (‘Gray’s Anatomy’, p. 523)

Keep this definition in mind. Incidentally, Gray continues telling the story–which sounds like something out of a Herzog documentary. The psychologists test their theory by infiltrating the cult. They did before the date of December 21st came to pass, and they were there to observe the reaction of the individuals to the failure of a doomsday to come. Their reaction? Gray paraphrases: ‘…they interpreted the failure of doomsday to arrive as evidence that by waiting and praying throughout the night they had succeeded in preventing it. The confounding of all their expectations only led them to cling more tightly to their faith, and they went on to proselytize for their beliefs all the more fervently.’ (p. 523-524) Here, Gray quotes Festinger, who presents the theory of cognitive dissonance in a carefully supposing manner, asking us to consider it like it was a spoonful of carrots it was coaxing us to eat.

Gray, however, is more forceful, more definite: ‘Denying reality in order to preserve a view of the world is not a practice confined to cults. Cognitive dissonance is the normal human condition‘ (p. 524, my italics) One’s eyes almost turn away from this, and the voice in everyone’s heads whisper, quietly, ‘yeah but I don’t do that.’ When I read it, I felt like (given how cinematic this rendition of a psychological experiment was) that I was watching a very interesting scene, only for some mad man to smash me in the face with a pan. Cognitive dissonance is what is normal? I gathered my wits, strewn all over the floor, and kept reading.

Gray goes ahead and applied this cognitive dissonance to various things: Christianity, Communism, Nazism, the World Economic Forum at Davos, the neo-conservatives. And, finally, he applies to humanism itself. Beginning strong, he writes, ‘If there is anything unique about the human animal it is that it has the ability to grow knowledge at an accelerating rate while being chronically incapable of learning from experience.’ (p.524-525) It is one thing for someone to merely state this–many a crank stews in resentment and whines loudly. Gray, however, not only makes his point, he picks something which feels like someone is shoving a finger into an open wound and wiggling it around. He writes:

‘Whatever they are called, torture and slavery are universal evils; but these evils cannot be consigned to the past like redundant theories in science. They recur under different names: torture as enhanced interrogation techniques, slavery as human trafficking. Any reduction in universal evils is an advance in civilization. But, unlike scientific knowledge, the restraints of civilized life cannot be stored on a computer disc. They are habits of behavior, which one broken are hard to mend. Civilization is natural for humans, but so is barbarism.’ (p.525)

Gray notes that humanism glosses over this–of course, after much hand wringing and contrition. Its solution is that humans must ‘in future be more reasonable’. That is, be more ‘rational’. Not only, I will add here, more rational individually but more rational collectively . Gray notes that this belief is, itself, hardly rational. It is a leap of faith, in every sense. ‘Since,’ Gray writes with I can only describe as a smirking ebullience, ‘it requires a miraculous breach in the order of things, the idea that Jesus returned from the dead is not as contrary to reason as the notion that human beings will in future be different from how they have always been.’ (p. 525) When told by the various optimists (who see it as their job to play the flies to my irritable horse tail) after a tragedy that ‘this is not who we are’, I state what Gray does in a far more gruff manner. ‘Read,’ I state serenely, ‘a history book.’

Gray makes many fascinating points–from tracing humanism to the Ancient Greeks and, specifically, Socrates’ idea that reason gave humans an access to ‘a spiritual realm’ to noting the way humanism’s hostility to myth is mere irony (lost, once again) since many of its core tenants (progress, increasing rationality, the unique status of humans) are themselves myths. He chides the humanists: ‘The myth [of humanism is] that human beings can use their minds to lift themselves out of the natural world, which in Socrates and Plato was part of a mystical philosophy, has been renewed in a garbled version of the language of evolution.’ (p. 526) From here…well, you better go read it for yourself, because it is wonderfully written, but gets away from my topic.

Suffice to say, the human condition is the most normal when it engages in cognitive dissonance. We do not keep a hold on reality, only to lose it by manner of propaganda or Marx’s ‘false consciousness’ or by the tricks of the Devil. We deny reality first, wanting little to do with it. We never believe the truth unless we are tricked into believing it. And this is why all our politics are, and have always been, topsy turvy: all ideologies are fictions seeking believers, telling them they have been led astray from the truth, all while finding ways to keep them astray so long as it is down one’s own alley. We tell people we are engaging their minds when, in fact, we are grabbing them by the nose and leading them…where? I can only shrug.

II

Please, sit down. You’re dizzy! If you are going to barf, go outside, or take this trash can. Better? Well, that is quite a lot to take in. But I need you to keep yourself focused. From this point of normal cognitive dissonance, I am going to make another claim: Aristotle, dear boy, was wrong. Humans are  not political animals. It is an absurd position to take. We…well, okay, sit down again. Yes, it is normal to feel sick again. Let me ease you in:

At the age of 13, when I finally came to the end of T.H. White’s teratology The Once and Future King, a five book series I had worked my way through, twice, since I began reading it at the age of 12. It was my first introduction to late modernism, the first time I annotated a book I was in the midst of reading, and the first time I fell in love with literature. And, like all first loves, the passion burned so deep I can trace the outlines of its branding on my…soul? Spirit? No, let’s stick with mind. One thing I remember from that great collection of fantasy was its last book in its five volumes, titled The Book of Merlyn. What I enjoyed most about it, an enjoyment I could not express then but can do so now, was the simplicity of its plot, the faithfulness to science which produces the best kind of fantasy, and the way it allowed for some magnificent dialogue. 

The plot? Before his fateful battle with Mordred and his fascistic Thrashers (I am not imposing my ideology here, White calls them this–perhaps anticipating a Britain run by a Maggie Thatcher? Thatcherites? Thrasher? Another time, then…), King Arthur is swept away from the world and into a dream-like, near afterlife called The Combination Room. It is a room where great minds come together to think out a solution to the world’s problems. Incidentally, whenever I thought of heaven when my maliciously Methodist parents made me say my prayers, I thought of the Combination Room. But I am wandering–the rest of the story follows Arthur being turned into different animals, as is the (at this time in the book) famous teaching style of Merlyn, his mentor. It is all quite interesting, but the most interesting part to me, the bespectacled youth I was, was the conversation that came right before Arthur’s lessons.

In a series of back and forths, full of mirth and cranky misanthropy, Merlyn and the creatures of the Combination Room (all are animals except Arthur and Merlyn–as heaven ought to be) discuss the human being. They decide that calling us ‘homo sapiens’ is incorrect. We do not live up to this title, Merlyn states. And so they brainstorm new names, settling on three: homo ferox (due to human ferocity), homo stultus (due to human stupidity) and homo impoliticus (due to the neanderthal nature of human politics). They never quite resolve this–Arthur cannot handle the cynicism of their approach, and after his lessons, he is offered a report about how humans, whatever they are called, can only be turned away from their ferocious, stupid, and impolitic ways by diversionary entertainments.

At the time, this was (and still is) good, adolescent, literature. I could not absorb, nor understand, this piece of cynical wisdom that would come to be a principle of my life later on. Looking back on it, few things have made more sense upon reconsideration. Along with the declaration that, in all societies, for every hundred people, there is one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety-nine fools, Merlyn tells the reader the following:

‘”Neither force, nor argument, nor opinion,” said Merlyn with the deepest sincerity, “are thinking. Argument is only a display of mental force, a sort of fencing with points in order to gain a victory, not for truth. Opinions are the blind alleys of lazy or of stupid men, who are unable to think. If ever a true politician really thinks a subject out dispassionately, even Homo stultus will be compelled to accept his findings in the end. Opinion can never stand beside truth. At present, however, Homo impoliticus is content either to argue with opinions or to fight with his fists, instead of waiting for the truth in his head. It will take a million years, before the mass of men can be called political animals.”‘ (‘The Book of Merlyn’, p. 38)

This particular quote stood out to me, and stands out to me, as I am swept away in our large, polluted rivers of ‘information’ (no need to differentiate with a prefix of ‘mis’ or ‘dis’–it is all the same: opinion). After all, we truly are still content to argue with our opinions or fight with our fists. We are, that is, still homo impoliticus. So many people these days are ‘political’ in the most superficial sense: they share quotes, they put flags in their bios and as background pictures, make sure their library of perfect, unbent book spines can be seen on their streams. They talk to the New Yorker and talk about ‘monarchism’ like it isn’t the most ridiculous opinion in politics right now: it is despotism that likes to play dress up and believes in magic. They regurgitate ‘bourgeois and proletariat’ moralism that does not stand the test of reality–let alone a cursory glance at the text of Marx’s work. Fascists are still Thrashers, even if they are no longer Thatcherites or Reaganites, having herded themselves, a grand collective of intensely ‘individualistic’ Ubermensches, into the pasture of brown grass and called it ‘supremacy’. Psychoanalysis is a ‘slap and stroke’ witch doctoring now, oscillating between giving obvious advice to stating garbled gibberish as that always profitable ‘explanation’ of all things. Liberals–well, who is more impolitic than a Matty Yglesia or Ezra Klein and their claim of an ‘Abundance Agenda’? Abundance of what? And, more importantly, abundance for whom? Homo impoliticus, with a stupidity on order of cognitive dissonance, does not mind that our politics, rather than being any kind of ‘realpolitik’ or even ‘idealpolitik’, is an unrealpolitik. Ideologies are fictions used to offer easy opinion and a tool in the mental force that is argument–not to mention being a fiction that kill for.

Unrealpolitik. Marxism is a boogeyman when, were one honest, you’d admit that America is evenly divided between conservatives (whom we call liberals) and reactionaries (whom we call anything from conservatives to fascists to populists to, yes, Marxists!). Fascism is seen as disciplined followers and empty suited network people when they are masked barbarians with a badge from ICE and sexually frustrated men living in basements, watching anime and calling beautiful women ‘mid’ because it is the only way they can cum. The Majority Report is more concerned with getting in a good Tim Pool joke than investigating what is an inherently cruel exercise of the ‘Fight the Oligarchy’ rallies, which goes around a broke nation asking its people for money while their family members are carted off to prisons. People are turning to the likes of Tucker Carlson and Ana Kasparian for a resistance to the Great Earhole and his pussyfooting about war with Iran. Jacobin calls itself a ‘socialist’ magazine while being a liberal one, while Compact calls itself a democratic socialist magazine, while being a fascist rag. 

Argument and force, unreality and politics, conservative and reactionary. Humans are impolitic, humans are ferocious, and humans are stupid.

III

Towards the end of his essay, John Gray lets up his unrelenting knocking about the heads of humanity and its favorite ‘ism’. We cannot expect humans to give up their myths, even of the humanistic flavor. He writes: ‘Like cheap music, the myth of progress lifts the spirits as it numbs the brain.’ T.H. White’s Merlyn suggests diversion (of a dangerous form, he emphasized) for the same reason: the brains that work so hard to deny reality for the sake of its desires can be numbed by games and entertainment. There is a line to walk between shoving our faces into the truth and letting us fly into absurd fantasy; the former leads to cruelties born of apathy, and the latter leads to genocides born of utopian nonsense. Perhaps all ideologies are exactly that; buzzing music to bring up our spirits in the face of the increased cruelties of Trump’s America. How else can one’s spirit rise? And yet, it is at the expense of numbing our brains.

One sees this in America clearly, where the substance of our politics is debated among the cheap music of ideology, when it is obvious: our politics are Pavlovian. For Playboy in 1979, Gore Vidal wrote the essay ‘Sex is Politics’. As he writes:

‘At any given moment in a society’s life, there are certain hot buttons that a politician can push in order to get a predictably hot response. A decade ago, if you asked President Nixon what he intended to do about unemployment, he was apt to answer, “Marijuana is a halfway house to something worse.” It is good politics to talk against sin–and don’t worry about non-sequiturs. In fact, it is positively un-American–even Communist–to discuss a real issue such as unemployment or who is stealing all that money at the Pentagon.’ (‘United States: Essays, p. 540-541)

As we grimace and argue to the buzz of our cheap music, these buttons (now usually called buzzwords–or ‘very important principles’) are pressed to administer a shock. It is a shock felt by all, and it affects all differently, even if the purpose is to make sure we keep ourselves conditioned to the American ‘way of life’–something this cheap country has since it cannot afford to have culture. Currently, the Great Earhole is pressing as many buttons as he can, and what was conditioning is now torture to us. The fascists explain away the shocks, while liberals try to argue with it. Socialists and Marxists argue about whether Marx wrote anything about the shocks, while anarchists think the best way to stop these shocks is to hold hands. And all the while, many die from it.

As I finally come to the end, I know you are seeking a solution. Less like Gray and more like White, I am of the modest (conservative?) opinion that the solution to our peculiar situation is thinking. I know; this is not very satisfactory. That is because most people read essays like this for the writer to give them, dear readers, something to hope for. You want that buzzing music to numb our brains and raise our spirits. And yet, I must ask you: does it never strike you as ridiculous that a situation like ours, born of centuries of cognitive dissonance–human stupidity–which aids and abets violence and tyranny and bigotry, is always offered a solution from the badly read, functionally illiterate and their one shot solutions? Isn’t there more to politics than just politics? Does the human condition, the environment, our histories, our very evolution (with its lack of purpose, a slow ride from nowhere to nowhere) not make the idea that some patchwork political ‘theory’, pieced together by some creature with an absolute faith in its disproven or ridiculous demands, seem at best funny and, at worst, suspect to you? I offer thinking as a solution because I know that I do not know nearly enough to give you exactly what you crave, which is a miracle. 

Perhaps solution is not the right word, anyhow. It is closer to advice: I advise that you think, because the only good politics is the kind where you know your interests, instead of letting some politician, podcaster, pollster, or TikToker tell you what you want. One cannot escape the cognitive dissonance of the human brain. But one can make sure your buzzing music is set to a tune you understand, while your raise your spirits in the name of what you need, rather than hoping the spirit of others can redeem your own. Know your interests, use it to try–as best you can–to catch the knaves and the fools. Perhaps that is all wisdom is.

Perhaps…BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Boy, I am enjoying this song. What is it called? Why am I floating? Is that…a UFO?

I will always believe.