Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler just 2 weeks before allied troops liberated his concentration camp.
Here is an engaging animation to explain Bonhoeffer's proposed Theory of Stupidity... which was accompanied by an analysis of how to "get the upper hand" - at least to some extent - when dealing with "stupid" people.
(I have learned to distinguish neatly between "stupidity" and "ignorance." In my lexicon, ignorance is, emphatically, not stupidity but rather a choice or an impulse to ignore, whereas stupidity is pretty much built in, although truth be told most people can increase their IQ if the try to learn.)
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(From TUMBLR)
BONHOEFFER: On How Dummheit (Stupidity/Folly) on a Large Scale Can Be Dangerous to a Society
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister and theologian who worked with the German resistance during WWII and who was killed by the Nazis in 1945 for his association with persons involved in the July 20,1944 Hitler assassination plot.
Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity discusses how Dummheit* (a “moral” rather than “intellectual defect,” which can be translated as either “stupidity” or “folly”) “is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.”
Bonhoeffer certainly thought that Dummheit was a major reason for why so many Germans came to embrace Nazism.
Sadly, there seem to be parallels happening in the U.S. today.
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