There is more and more I tell no one,
strangers nor loves.
This slips into the heart
without hurry, as if it had never been.
And yet, among the trees, something has changed.
Something looks back from the trees,
and knows me for who I am.
— Jane Hirshfield
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed—in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical—and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or 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 establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with 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 and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that 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. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from ‘After Ten Years’ in Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, vol. 8) Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010
I sit in your T shirt
with its spots of paint
as a certain fierceness pours
outside, perhaps, too, on you.
I’m smoking a CAMEL now
and I have a big hole in my
shoulder from washing away
a lot of dirt. Are you there?
there, are you? I am here
and the storm is not enough,
it should crash in and wet,
there should be maelstrom where
a privileged host is smiling.
And naked in debris I there
should be, but, being here, should
bend to you, pick out of rubble
a scrap of painted shirt,
as if it were soiled ivory from
a grand piano, possessed of us
both, and ruined now by storms.
— Frank O’Hara, The Paris Review, issue no. 45 (Winter 1968)
Listen! Listen! How it moans with evil memories – or evil forebodings?
Yes, I am sad along with you, you dark monster, and for your sake annoyed even with myself.
Oh that my hand does not possess sufficient strength! Gladly indeed would I redeem you from evil dreams! –
And as Zarathustra spoke thus he laughed at himself with melancholy and bitterness. “What, Zarathustra!” he said. “Do you want to sing comfort even to the sea?
Oh you loving fool Zarathustra, you who are over-blessed with trust! But you have always been so; always you came trustingly to all that is terrible.
You wanted to caress every monster. A hint of warm breath, a bit of soft shag on the paw – and already you were prepared to love it and lure it.
Love is the danger of the loneliest one, love of everything if only it lives! Laughable indeed are my folly and my modesty in love!” –
Thus spoke Zarathustra and he laughed once again. But then he remembered the friends he left behind – and as if he had violated them with his thoughts, he became angry for his thoughts. And suddenly the laughing one began to weep – for wrath and longing Zarathustra wept bitterly.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
a found poem: Virginia Woolf’s The Waves
He is gone. The fine filament
that spun between us
is darkened now. How strange
this moment. How alien.
He is returning to the world—
to that comfortable
simplicity—and I stand
in the lengthening flocking dark.
Spirits and familiars
are in the corners and the air
is mocking. I feel old.
I feel shabby. Who am I now?
My love took refuge
from me.
Beloved dog, in from the wet
Reeking of earth, licking my face like a flame,
Your red-brown coat and glowing eyes
Clearer than anything in human nature
Tell me I will live another year.
— James Merrill (1974)
Toward evening the wind changes. Boats
still out on the bay
head for shore. A man with one arm
sits on the keel of a rotting-away
vessel, working on a glimmering net.
He raises his eyes. Pulls at something
with his teeth, and bites hard.
I go past without a word.
Reduced to confusion
by the variableness of this weather,
the importunities of my heart. I keep
going. When I turn back to look
I’m far enough away
to see that man caught in a net.
— Raymond Carver (1987)
With no one
can our innermost
thoughts
be shared.
With what is
most important
in the world
we are alone.
It is a
lasting burden
it is a
subtle joy
that here no one
can reach you
and no one
can be let in.
— Tove Ditlevsen (1969)
trans. Cynthia Graae and Michael Favala Goldman