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Being Human: Stupidity and Compassion

Being Human: Stupidity and Compassion. Robert Hariman Northwestern University rhariman@gmail.com www.nocaptionneeded.com. the lecture that I am not giving. The distinguishing and most valuable characteristic of human being is the ability to reason The Delphic imperative: Know thyself

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Being Human: Stupidity and Compassion

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  1. Being Human:Stupidity and Compassion Robert Hariman Northwestern University rhariman@gmail.com www.nocaptionneeded.com

  2. the lecture that I am not giving • The distinguishing and most valuable characteristic of human being is the ability to reason • The Delphic imperative: Know thyself • The Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living

  3. Being Human: A or B? • Option A: Reason • Option B: Fallibility • “Man can be viewed either as a poor or as a rich creature. . . . Man contains in himself the stored-up harvest of all of physical reality, or he is a creature of deficiencies, left in the lurch by nature, plagued by residues of instincts that he does not understand and that have lost their functions. . . . Man is a creature who has fallen back out of the ordered arrangements that nature has accomplished, and for whom actions have to take the place of the automatic controls that he lacks. . . From this point of view, language is a set of instruments not for communicating information or truths, but rather, primarily, for the production of mutual understanding, agreement, or toleration, on which the actor depends.” Hans Blumenberg, “An Anthropological Approach to Rhetoric” • “As rational metaphysics teaches that man becomes all things by understanding them (homo intelligendo fit omnia), this imaginative metaphysics shows that man becomes all things by not understanding them (homo non intelligendo fit omnia); and perhaps the later proposition is truer than the former, for when man understands he extends his mind and takes in the things, but when he does not understand he makes the things out of himself and becomes them by transforming himself into them.” Giambattista Vico, The New Science

  4. Political Speech, Humane Speech • How should people communicate if they are to form sound political judgments? • Two principles of communicative action: • Reason (+ fallibility = stupidity) • Relation (+ fallibility = compassion)

  5. The Normative Problem • Can a scholar say that some person, act, or practice is stupid? • NO: • One-sided imposition of values from a position of privilege • An act of bad faith likely to damage discussion and other inquiry • Scholarship requires precision, not use of vernacular concepts • Scholarship should be objective, neutral, and dedicated to knowledge for its own sake • YES: • Scholarship in the humanities cannot be objective or neutral or avoid affecting human interests • Scholarship should recognize the attitude in other guises, attend to what lies outside its category system, be engaged with its intellectual history, and grounded in ordinary language.

  6. The Ground Rules • Having taken care to avoid obvious errors, although not at the expense of avoiding worthwhile risks, a scholar may: • Argue that everyone is foolish • Analyze stupidity as it is a discourse active in specific periods, societies, cultures, institutions, or practices • Take a political standpoint, which must be identified, that impels confrontation on these terms • Engage in phenomenological investigation of one’s own stupidity • Stand within or beside practices or beliefs thought to be stupid to understand them, perhaps to address bad judgment or abuses of power • Articulate the term to identify dehumanization or destructiveness that might be not seen or rationalized otherwise

  7. Stupidity, n. • a lack of ability (especially mental ability) to do something • a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention • lack of intelligence • rashness, thoughtlessness • dullness of mind • extreme folly

  8. STUPID, i.e., idiot, fool, numbskull, bonehead, dimwit, nitwit, bimbo, airhead, dolt, boob, oaf, ass, dumb ass, brain dead, hare brained, blockhead, hooplehead, boob, chump, dodo, dork, dumbbell, dummy, stooge, half-wit, imbecile, moron, clod, ditz, dunce, addlebrain, lamebrain, dunderhead, lunkhead, meathead, pinhead, birdbrain, blockhead, cretin, yo-yo, . . .

  9. Conventional Wisdom about Stupidity • A lack of reason (cognitive deficit) • Caused by collective association • Passive or self limiting • Localized

  10. Cognitive Deficit • “He is a few bricks short of a load.” • “She is not playing with a full deck.” • “Not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  11. Collective • “Most people, when let alone, are not dumb. They can make reasonable decisions if given the right information. However, when people are part of large groups, somehow it seems, the IQ of an average individual, and even the effective IQ of the group as a whole, appears to decrease. Members of the group can then do really dumb things.” (www.sciencebits.com)

  12. Self-limiting • The Darwin Awards: “The Awards honor people who ensure the long-term survival of the human race by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion.”

  13. Localized The Arizona senator is holding on to the GOP base. McCain has a sizable advantage over Obama among evangelicals (76 to 20 percent), small town/rural voters (53 to 40), and those living in the South (54 to 40).

  14. Unconventional Wisdom about Stupidity • Lack of social imagination (asymmetric with reason) • Distended individualism • Aggressive: a will to power • Universal: the dark matter of human relations • Cultural: distinctive forms representative of specific modes and histories of social organization

  15. Asymmetry • “Stupidity can’t be the opposite of genius, because there are limits on genius.” • “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not so sure about the universe” (Albert Einstein) • “It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say, then say the opposite” (Sam Levenson)

  16. Expert Stupidity • “Four or five frigates will do the business.” Lord North • “Pasteur’s theory of germs is a ridiculous fiction.” Pierre Pochet • The telephone has no commercial application.” J.P. Morgan • “X-Rays will prove to be a hoax.” Lord Kelvin • “Radio has no future.” Lord Kelvin • “Everything that can be invented, has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the US Office of Patents, 1899 • “A pretty mechanical toy.” Lord Kitchener (on the tank) • “Speaking movies are impossible.” D.W. Griffiths • “There will never be a bigger plane built.” Boeing engineer on the 247 • “Nor are computers going to get much faster.” Arthur Samuel, New Scientist, 1964 • “Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.” Alan Greenspan, 2004

  17. My definition of stupidity,in part,provisionally, with due respect for the necessary additions and qualifications yet to be acknowledged • NB: all reflect sliding scales: some S. is inevitable, more S. is worse: • 1. Acting on the basis of mistaken judgment contrary to available resources and one’s best interests. • 2. Willful denial of how speech, action, practices, or institutions are harmful. • 3. Rigid adherence to delusions of knowledge, control, or importance that accompany speech and action in the face of evidence that they are mistaken and counterproductive. • 4. Insisting on definitions of others that are categorically mistaken to avoid association or change.

  18. The Discourse of Stupidity in the US Vernacular and Elite Verbal and Visual Social, Professional, and Political

  19. John Cleaseinterview with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC • “I want a president who is so damn smart . . . that I’d keep my mouth shut so he wouldn’t think I’m a fool.” • [By contrast, some Republicans want] “someone who is not going to be not terribly bright or very highly intelligent or awfully sharp or a very good judge of people.” • [On a McCain gaffe while speaking:] “I spent a week trying to think of something that was stupider to say than ‘my fellow prisoners’ and I absolutely couldn’t come up with anything.” • [Poem about Bill O’Reilly:] still has one skill, a skill of sorts he can amuse a true dumb ox the dumbest crayon in the box the kind of ox that watches Fox

  20. Oops! . . . . he will not shirk from Rupert’s work he really is a perfect Burke. • “uh . . . .Burke at the end?” . . . • . . . “Cockney rhyming slang” . . . • “Well I’ve heard of that, that’s a substitution process, but what is Burke supposed to rhyme with? • “Well, it it it it it It rhymes with the Berkeley hunt” • “OK.. . . [forced laugh]

  21. “Stupid” in US public discourse • From Ashley Todd to Levi Johnston: The five Stupidest things that happened this election, 32/6, November 4, 2008, http://www.236.com/news/2008/11/03/from_ashley_to_levi_the_five_s_1_10003.php • Here are a few more that I am sure you considered and didn't have the space: Bill Clinton's entire primary season performance, Dennis Kucinich admitting that he'd seen a UFO during one of the debates, Rudy 9-11's decision to bypass all the early primaries and focus on Florida, Hillary ignoring all the caucus states, McCain's economy strong/economy in crisis, suspending campaign/but not really, cancelling debate/debating anyway week of absurdity and really the STUPIDIST MOMENT EVER: Choosing Sarah Palin in the first place (and let's face it she get's a whole wall of stupid all to herself. • You've no doubt seen the ad in which Liddy Dole accuses her opponent, a practicing Christian, of godlessness, which the media have been raising holy hell about. The ad is rank nonsense and is obviously malign. It's also a prime example of what I have been writing about on this blog. No matter what the pols say, they assume people are stupid enough to be moved by simplistic analyses, dopey slogans, and misleading ads. http://howstupidblog.com/ • Somehow, in Sarah Palin's brain, it's a threat to the First Amendment when newspapers criticize her negative attacks on Barack Obama.  This is actually so dumb that it hurts. Glenn Greenwald, FRIDAY OCT. 31, 2008 13:38 EDT http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/31/palin/index.html • re: sarah palin...the mind reels at how stupid this woman [Victoria Jackson] is. just a few quotes will suffice: "I don't want a political label," she wrote on her website, "but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti- Christ and I'm scared to death that un- educated people will ignorantly vote him into office.” Later in the posting she wrote: "We must in all seriousness ask if Barack Hussein Obama could be a Muslim terrorist sympathizer or a Marxist mole.” And unfortunately, there are tons of people who are more stupid than this, who will eat this crap up with a ladel. This country is drowning in stupidity! http://self-doubt-america.blogspot.com/2008/08/re-sarah-palin.html

  22. Sarah Palin Sounds Stupid (And Talks Funny) http://www.granbymass.net/nation/election-2008-nation/sarah-palin-sounds-stupid-and-talks-funny/ • Victor // Sep 14, 2008 at 9:43 pm Sara Palin answered all questions by 'Charlie' just the way most sensible Americans would.
Charlie was trying to ridicule Sarah with his questions. Another media flake who seems to thnk he is superior in intelligence than those he interviews. As for Bush and his doctrine, he's been a stumblebum since he was sworn in. Attacking Iraq instead of Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia has been his biggest blunder! One BIG BOMB on Bagdad instead of sending in troops, would have ended war in the mideast for many years! • steve // Sep 18, 2008 at 3:49 pm Wow, Victor...you arestupid. Sorry, that was the first thing that popped into my head when I read your comment. Are you serious? Drop a nuke on Baghdad and gas prices would be $1,000 a gallon. Besides, perhaps one day Cheney will explain it to you in a letter from his prison cell...IRAQ HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11. Jeez... • Taylor // Sep 29, 2008 at 6:30 am 
Gee Victor, you must have a lower IQ then Palin. What's your take on the Couric interview? Underestimated brilliance on Palin's part or was Couric ridiculing her too? 
She's a moron. Anyone who could not see that simply saying "I don't have much foreign policy experience, that's not what John wanted me for" would be better then Putin flies over Alaska (which by the way, he doesn't...they fly over the Atlantic when he comes here) is just moronic. God help us all.


  23. Republicans blow off the smart cities with the counterargument that they win the exurbs — the frontier of new homes, young families and the fresh middle class. . . . That will not happen this year. Polls show McCain is losing 20 percent of self-described moderate Republicans. . . . But in the kind of pattern that has held true since McCain went over tothe stupid side, his brother recently referred to suburban northern Virginia as “communist country” and a top adviser, Nancy Pfotenhauer, said it was not “real Virginia.” Timothy Egan, “The Party of Yesterday,” New York Times, Oct. 26, 2008 • The McCain campaign is so dumb that it bought into the press’s confirmation of its own prejudices. Frank Rich, “In Defense of White Americans,” New York Times, October 26, 2008 • Opening for a McCain rally in North Carolina last weekend, Representative Robin Hayes said he wanted “to keep the crowd as respectful as possible.” In order to pursue that goal as efficiently as possible, Hayes then announced that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” This was an especially unfortunate turn of phrase given the fact that he had begun his remarks by saying he wanted to “make sure we don’t say something stupid.” Gail Collins, “Confessions of a Phone Solicitor,” New York Times, October 22, 2008 • “Obama and the War on Brains,” By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, November 9, 2008

  24. Real Americans • “We are a movement of the plain people, . . . We are demanding, and we expect to win, a return to power into the hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualized, but entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanized, average citizen . . . The opposition of the intellectuals and liberals who hold the leadership, betrayed Americanism, and from whom we expect to wrest control is almost automatic. This is undoubtedly a weakness. It lays us open to the charge of being ‘hicks’ and ‘rubes’ . . . We admit it. Far worse, it makes it hard for us to state our case and advocate our crusade in the most effective way, for most of us lack skill in language. . . . Every popular movement has suffered from just this handicap.” Hiram W. Evans, Imperial Wizard, Ku Klux Klan, 1926, quoted in Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism • “The worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialists, but a lot of cowards who work under cover--the long-haired gentry who call themselves ‘liberals’ and ‘radicals’ and ‘non-partisan’ and ‘intelligentsia” and God only knows how many other trick names!”Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis • We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. ... We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. Sarah Palin, quoted at Palinisms: Dumb Sarah Palin Quotes, Gaffes and Lies

  25. Why is stupidity appealing? • Answer I: Stupidity is the result of anti-intellectualism, which is produced in the US by the intersection of egalitarianism and Evangelical Christianity. • In the United States the more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people; on the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes; . . in democratic times you attach a poor man to you more by your manner than by benefits conferred. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, chapter 4. • “I thank God I ain’t got no education!” Holy Roller, 1928

  26. I’m just a common man, drive a common van My dog ain’t got no pedigree And if I have my say, it gonna stay that way ‘Cause high-brow people lose their sanity And a common man is what I’ll be John Conlee, “Common Man,” http://www.cmt.com/lyrics/john-conlee/common-man/321208/lyrics.jhtml • Matthew Tully has covered government and politics since 1992. He started his career at the Gary Post-Tribune, later covered the U.S. Senate for Congressional Quarterly, and has worked for The Indianapolis Star since 2002. . . . Tully graduated (barely) from Indiana University in 1992. A lifelong fan of Elvis Presley and the Chicago Cubs, he lives in Indianapolis with his wife, Valerie. Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=NEWS08 • “What the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.” Sarah Palin

  27. Presidentialspeech • Flesch Readability Scores: comics 92; Reader’s Digest 65; New York Times 39; Internal Revenue Code -6 • Annual Message 1790 30 (college), 2006 60+ (8th grade) • Inaugurals: 1979 20, 2005 60+ • Public papers: from 50.3 to 69.9 • Queen’s speeches to Parliament 1988 ff.: 40 • Sentence length: from 40 words to 20; from 60 to 20 • 2003 Census: 43% read at 4th grade level or below • NB: appeals to “common sense” in public papers/year: TR 1, GB 50 • Soundbite in TV ads: 1968 42.3 seconds, 2000 7.8 seconds

  28. Populism: the rhetorical techniques • Leveling expertise • Denigrating eloquence and the media • Monologic debate • Insisting on absolute standards • Selective use of skepticism • Foregrounding truth in conviction • Making provincialism a virtue contrary to sophistication • A mission from God

  29. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life Just How Stupid Are We?Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid Dumbocracy Dumbing Down Dumbing Down or Smartening Up The Dumbest Generation The Age of Unreason The Assault on Reason The Anti-Intellectual Presidency The Myth of the Rational Voter Foolish Words: The Most Stupid Words Ever Spoken Idiotocracy

  30. 80% don’t know that the Senate has 100 members • 60% can’t name the three branches of government • 65% don’t know that Congress can override a veto • average score on a poll of college students on basic civics: 55/F • 25% believe that the Constitution makes Christianity the official religion • 48% reject belief in any form of evolution • 42% say that human beings have existed since the beginning of time

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