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My name is Johnny Thompson. I'm a writer. I'm a columnist at Big Think and I run the Mini Philosophy Social Network where I explain philosophical ideas to millions of people. I am the author of the upcoming book, The Art of Enough, where I explain epicurionism and teach everybody how it can apply to our lives.
How power cultivates stupidity. Intelligence, according to Bonhaofer, is measured by the ability to think critically. It's measured by the ability to take evidence to condense it and to take on what is good and to reject what is bad. It's to think for yourself. Don't outsource your thinking to technology. Don't outsource your thinking to an influencer, an academic, a teacher, your parents, whatever.
And so what do you see in power? What do you see particularly in democracies? What you see is that when people are elected, they no longer are individuals. They're no longer seen as individuals. They are seen as part of a party system. So what you see in political party democracies such as the United States, such as the United Kingdom and all over Europe is you have these party democracies where people are expected to surrender their own critical thinking for the wider party. You have to tow the line.
In the UK, we have something called the the threeline whip where you have a whip, which is the title you give to somebody within your political party who will go around all of the politicians and will say to them, "You know which way you're voting, don't you today? You're not going to vote the other way, are you? You know exactly which way you're going to vote, don't you?" Now, it might be that each of these individual politicians has their own beliefs. It might be that they have their own thought process. They have applied their critical thinking to the issue, but what they have to do is they have to vote according to the party political lines. They have to obey the whip. There are versions of the whip across all sorts of political parties. And Bonhaofer is saying that when you get power, you are expected to tow the line in this sense.
In 1969, an author called Lawrence Peter gave us something called the Peter principle. And what Peter was arguing was that when you're part of an organization or a company, you are expected to have certain skills and a certain knowledge base that gets you to the next step. And you get promoted. Well done. And you go up the ladder. But the Peter principle argues that you will reach a point where you can no longer get promoted because your skills and your abilities can no longer get you any further.
Now what we're seeing with Bonhaofer's argument is almost the inverse of the Peter principle. What Bonhaofer is saying is that to become elected, to become powerful, you have to be intelligent. You have to have a certain degree of critical thinking. But when you occupy the position of power, when you walk through the corridors of power, you are expected to now tow the line and to sacrifice your critical thinking for what somebody else is saying. And so you outsource your thinking to what your leader is saying or what the political party whip is saying instead.
So in his work beyond good and evil, nature devotes an entire chapter to truth where he says that philosophers and academics and writers have become obsessed with this notion of truth that truth is a thing that we should value in and of itself. Bon says if you look at how people actually consider truth, it is not something that is valuable in itself. It is a tool in a box to be used. This makes sense on an evolutionary level because there are sometimes when obviously knowing the truth helps you. It's good to know that that red snake is dangerous. It's good to know that that mushroom will kill you if you eat it. It's good to know that that mushroom will give you calories. Truth in that case is very useful evolutionarily.
But what about conformity? N talks about how truth often plays second place to conformity because it often pays to be part of the pack. The tall poppy gets cut down first. And so what we see is when we're talking about institutions and corporations and organizations, truth is less important than towing the party line. It's actually better to be seen as good. It's better to be seen as somebody who knows their stuff rather than any concern for the truth.
This relates to actually something that the philosopher Harry Frankfurt talks about in his famous paper on bullshit. Frankfurt talks about the distinction between the liar and the bullshitter. Now the liar on the face of it seems to be a bad thing. But what Harry Frankfurt is saying is that the liar is actually better than the bullshitter because the liar still is concerned about the truth. When somebody lies to you, they are trying to warp reality. They are trying to make this thing seem like it is true. They want you to believe that this thing is true because they recognize that being called true has a value. There is a cache, a prestige to being called true. The bullshitter though doesn't even care about truth. They will say whatever they can, whatever they want to try to get to their own ends. They will say whatever they can to win. So if you call them out on their lies, if you call them out on their bullshit, they will smile. They will shrug and they will just say, "I don't care. Let's move on."
Frankfurt says this is actually a worse problem because what this does is it normalizes lying and it normalizes a disregard for the truth. And when that happens, you have conformist and according to Bonhofer, you have a world which leads towards something like Nazi Germany. Now, Frankfurt wrote this article in 1986 and he argued back then that there was a rise in bullshit. And I'm sure many people today will think that we also have a rise in bullshit today.
And so the question then becomes why are we seeing such a rise in bullshit? And I suspect one of the reasons is that we are all expected to have an opinion on things. We all are expected to have an opinion on politics, on the latest celebrity drama, the latest movie, the latest album release, whatever. But of course, we cannot possibly know everything about everything. We cannot know enough to talk about things confidently, competently and articulately. And so into this world where we are expected to have opinions, the bullshitter is naturally going to rise. We have to because we are expected to have an opinion. And those who don't have an opinion are considered to be stupid or ignorant. But what Bonhaofer, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are all saying is that those who admit they don't know something are actually the wisest of all.
I think a better reflection of the mechanisms behind stupidity today can be found in an essay from George Orwell written in 1946 known as Politics and the English Language. In the essay, Orwell makes the point that the language we use around economics and politics has become hollow. It's become flatter and vague and as a result, our thoughts about politics and economics has become flatter and vague as well. Orwell argues that when we are asked our opinion on a certain issue, we are often presented with a menu of cliches and ready-made platitudes. And so we are limited to only rattling off these platitudes.
For example, it might be that somebody goes on to camera and they say that we have to make some necessary sacrifices. Necessary sacrifices is a cliche and it's a euphemism for you are worse off. But no leader is going to say to the camera, you the people are worse off. And so they say necessary sacrifices instead. It might be that you say something like negative growth. Negative growth is a cliche and it's a euphemism for a recession. The economy is much worse off. But rather than say that, they retreat to this euphemism. And Orwell says that we see this all of the time in our language. We see this flattening. We see this regression to the cliche.
But it's not just seen in the political world. It's also seen in our institutions. For example, if the boss calls you in and they say, "We're going to have to make some efficiency gains." That's a euphemism. That's a cliche for the fact they've laid off 10% of the company. And Orwell would say they are hiding behind that language. They are hiding behind the cliche. They are hiding behind the platitude. Of course, this makes sense because it gives our leaders a degree of plausible deniability. We have entire teams devoted to storytelling and messaging rather than truth and clarity because it's easier to say negative growth and necessary sacrifices or collateral damage than to accept the stark truth that civilians have been killed or that you are worse off.
So, social media has a whole range of problems. Of course, our attention span, of course, the lack of real life connection. But one of the often ignored casualties of the social media age is a lack of proper debates, the lack of proper discussions. In ancient Greece, two and a half thousand years ago, Plato attacked what's called the sophists, who were these paid philosophers who would teach people how to argue. They would teach people how to win an argument. And Protagoras who is known as the greatest of all the sophists has this famous line where he says that man is the measure of all things. And I think that Protagoras and the sophists would love the social media age because what we are seeing in the social media age is the age of assertion. We think that if somebody says something in 140 characters or in a 90-second reel or on social media that that is enough to be considered a debate.
But of course what Plato was saying in the ancient world was that a debate needs more time and it needs the maturity of thought to challenge ideas in a space which is not about identity, in a space which is not confrontational. And so what we're seeing today is a rise in debate and not enough dialectic. And there is a key difference. The online world encourages reposting. It encourages status. You get a kick of dopamine every time somebody likes what you say. And so as a result, if you occupy an echo chamber, you are encouraged to say certain things even though you might not believe them, even though they might not be true, even though you haven't possibly thought them through. And so when you say these things to your echo chamber, you are rewarded by your community, by the tribe, by your niche of the internet.
Now this is a great example of what Bonhaofer talks about as stupidity because what you have here are people who are valuing conformity and the tribe more than their own critical thinking abilities. So what you see with social media is millions of people who are perfectly capable of independent thought suddenly outsourcing their own beliefs to other people. This might be a friend that they see posting something on social media. But of course we are seeing the rise of the influencer. We are seeing the rise of people who are telling their followers what to believe. I believe this and if you are like me, if you want to belong to this pack, you also have to repost. You have to like, you have to comment on my reel. And so what this encourages is that degree of group think. It encourages that sacrifice of your critical thinking to become part of that group.
So what we see with social media is we have a puppet master without a fuhrer. We are presented with certain things that we should see, that we should believe, and things that we should say. And so we go along with it because the algorithm tells us so. So whenever I post on social media about stupidity, the lack of critical thinking, or the rise in group think, they often do very well. People will repost them and they will say, "Oh, look, it's you guys over there. Oh, look, it's those people there."
And of course what Bonhaofer is saying, what Aristotle, what Plato and what all the philosophers are saying is that we should also apply the same logic to ourselves. We also need to introspect and say well hang on, am I guilty of being indoctrinated in the Chrisali sense. Do I hold any belief which I haven't questioned?
Now the archetype of self-questioning is a man known as Rene Descartes. In Descartes' Meditations, he says that everybody should at least once in their life question everything that they believe because it's so easy to walk through life inheriting our beliefs. We say things that our parents said. We will repost stuff that our friends have posted. And so a lot of our beliefs are given to us. They are implanted in our heads. And so what Descartes says is that we should occasionally throw all of those beliefs out because Descartes says that it might be that one, two, three, or many of our beliefs are corrupt. He gives an analogy of an apple basket or an apple barrel. He imagines that there's a big barrel of apples and we know that within this barrel somewhere is a rotten apple. Now what should we do? Yes, we could take the long diligent time to pull every apple out and to look for the rot. But what Descartes is saying is that what you should do is throw all of the apples out and start from scratch.
Because when you're growing up, so many of your beliefs are given to you. When you're five years old, you do what your parents say. But when you are older, you have a sense of rationality. You have your adult critical thinking abilities. So it's now that you can assess your beliefs. This isn't easy. In fact, Descartes himself says it is often difficult to challenge your own beliefs on this universal scale, what's called radical doubt. But we need to do it because if we don't do it, then we can't be sure that we don't ourselves hold these beliefs which are indoctrinated. And we can't be sure that we don't hold these beliefs which are unquestioned and possibly wrong.
And the other thing is to reconsider our relationships with other people. Our social media algorithms are very good at throwing us into these echo chambers. And the worry is that we are replicating that in real life. That we surround ourselves only with yes-men and people who are ideologically pure. The people who agree with us on everything. And what philosophy is saying is that we should have people in our friendship group, people around us who genuinely believe other things. If you are pro-war, find somebody who is anti-war. If you are an atheist, find a believer. If you are a vegan, find a meat eater. And so on. Don't occupy real life echo chambers because if you do that you'll never be able to challenge your own beliefs and you can never be sure that those beliefs are true, right, and good.
So there's often a thought experiment I like to suggest for those who want to analyze their own beliefs. And this is where I ask, what would you do if the entire world suddenly hated your belief? What would you do if you would lose your reputation, your status, your job for believing something? For some things such as 2 plus 2 equals 4, it's hard to imagine surrendering that belief. But what about your other beliefs? The thought experiment is designed to highlight something that Nietzsche was saying. Do you believe these things because they are true, because they are right, or because they are socially advantageous? Now, it might be that once you've analyzed those beliefs that they are socially advantageous, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to jettison them. But what it does mean is that you need to look at those beliefs carefully and see whether they are actually worth holding.
When you're debating an idea or a belief with someone, it can often degrade into a kind of argument. It can often become confrontational. And so I'm often asked how it is that philosophy can help this. Because philosophy is unique in that it presents ideas in an objective way. And so I'm often amazed that when I am discussing an idea with somebody, how honest and open people are with me about their beliefs. Because when you're discussing something that you read about in Simone de Beauvoir or when you're reading about something that Bonhoeffer says or when you're reading about something that Descartes says, you aren't discussing yourself, you're discussing yourself in a roundabout way. And so by dissecting these arguments, by dissecting the philosophy, you are actually dissecting your beliefs in a way which is non-confrontational and is far closer to what Aristotle and Plato would have approved of.
The third thing is something that we can learn from the ancient skeptics. Now the ancient skeptics were a Greek school of philosophy who were concerned about happiness and in particular the word ataraxia. How we can be less mentally disturbed, how we can find that peace of mind, that tranquility of thought. And the skeptics made quite a bold claim. They said that you can be free of anxiety and distress if you get used to saying the words "I don't know." If somebody asks your opinion about something, say "I don't know." If somebody wants to know what you think about a movie or a political policy or a geopolitical position, whatever you say, "I'm sorry, I don't know enough about the situation, I don't know enough to give a good answer." So, what the skeptics are saying is if you want to be happier, if you want to be calmer, and you want to get on with more people, you should get used to saying the words "I don't know" from time to time.
So, what can we all do to reverse what Bonhoeffer was seeing in society and what Frankfurt was seeing in society, what Descartes is pointing out in his work on indoctrination? The first thing is to model what we want to change. We can all be better at saying "I don't know." We can all take a leaf out of the skeptics' book and recognize that we just cannot know a great many things. And so saying "I don't know" is a courageous act. And by doing that, you invite other people to also say "I don't know" as well. In my experience, when I come across somebody who says, "I don't know," I actually respect them more than somebody who is happy to bluff about a topic they know nothing about.
But the next step is to appreciate what Bonhoeffer was talking about, what real stupidity means. And this is to challenge those who are willfully ignorant. Because to stay ignorant about something, ironically, takes determination and commitment. You have to stay ignorant by avoiding any information that might correct you. And so as a society we need to be less accepting of those who say "I don't know" and "I don't care about not knowing." For Bonhoeffer that is the greater problem. And for Aristotle in his politics it might even be the death of civilization.
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