What would the scenario look like? Dinner for idiots, famous comic behind closed doors questioning, in the 1990s, the sources of stupidity, if it had been written in 2023? To read The New Age of Stupidity (Ed. de l’Observatoire), by the philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff, we bet that a fair photograph of contemporary stupidity would require more than an unfaithful Thierry Lhermitte, steeped in arrogance and bathed in certainties, and a Jacques Villeret brimming with clumsiness and naivety. “Since the 1990s, things have gotten considerably worse due to the emergence and spread of “woke” stupidity, which is the contemporary form of the cultivated and sophisticated stupidity of left and far-left intellectuals,” assures Pierre-André Taguieff at L’Express.
The character played by Thierry Lhermitte would thus perhaps defend more “good causes”, the defense of which, as the researcher explains, “feeds the vanity of imbeciles, who congratulate themselves on being “on the good side” and therefore, by the same token, intelligent”… But the moral, if there is one, of this classic of French cinema would undoubtedly remain, because “a real idiot can be recognized by the fact that he is convinced that those who think differently than him on such or such and such are idiots.”
What is stupidity?
Pierre-André Taguieff Let us be modest when we dare to speak about stupidity, because we too often believe we can look down on it or from afar. But it affects us closely, it is as much in us as in others, in what we say as in what we do. In 1986, Milan Kundera spoke of the “stupidity inherent in human beings”. But, on this common background, we distinguish differences of degree so important that they seem to be differences of nature.
To understand stupidity, we must begin by distinguishing, following Pascal, the spirit of finesse and the spirit of geometry: the perfect imbecile is the one who lacks both the spirit of finesse and the spirit of geometry. Let’s say that he reasons poorly while judging poorly. This is the characteristic of “false minds”, according to Pascal.
We are not born stupid, we become stupid, through conformism, vanity and laziness, although we can postulate the existence of predispositions to stupidity. We can formulate the hypothesis that stupidity is essentially produced and maintained by convergent processes of stupidity. Just observe the conversations and debates: most of the participants want to conclude at all costs, or to have the last word, illustrating the Flaubertian definition of stupidity, in 1850, namely that it “consists in wanting to conclude”.
Is stupidity the counterpart of a lack of intelligence?
Stupidity consists of always wanting to be right, or believing that you are always right. So he wants to put reason on his side, believing he can monopolize it. In this respect, it is not the opposite of reason, it is its reverse or corruption, like dogmatism.
A real idiot can be recognized by the fact that he is convinced that those who think differently from him on this or that thing are idiots. It’s not just idiots who say stupid things. Saying something stupid from time to time does not imply being stupid, but saying stupid things regularly and with conviction is the best proof that you are.
In what way would we–have we entered a “new age of stupidity”?
The French high culture of the last third of the 20th century must be given the dubious merit of having made the use of a pseudo-scientific mannerism in the practice of blabbering stupidity.
But this is now concentrated in circles which collect “good causes” according to the spirit of the times. Let’s say the circles that still call themselves “progressive”. The defense of so-called “good causes” feeds the vanity of imbeciles, who congratulate themselves on being “on the right side”, and therefore, therefore, intelligent. This is how they boast. In his March 1937 conference on stupidity, Robert Musil recalled the old adage “vanity and stupidity grow on the same stem”, before asserting that “there [avait] There has always been a close link between stupidity and vanity.
Today, revolutionary leatherwork gives its common style to intersectional neo-feminism, radical ecologism, contemporary decolonialism and neo-anti-racism, nurseries of feathered menu thinkers of both sexes (and of all genders, including trans), pretentious and arrogant. In his short essay on the “bullshit”, Harry Frankfurt began by noting: “One of the most characteristic features of our culture is the omnipresence of bullshit.”
How does this “bullshit” manifest itself today?
Since the 1990s, things have gotten considerably worse due to the emergence and spread of “woke” stupidity, which is the contemporary form of the cultivated and sophisticated stupidity of left and far-left intellectuals. But it is only very recently that awareness has emerged of the phenomenon generally called “wokism”, a certainly debatable designation, on the way to becoming as sloganeering as “radicality”, “communitarianism” or “moral panic”.
This is why polemical essays or pamphlets against the ideologized and institutionalized stupidity that is wokism in all its aspects are multiplying. At the risk of giving rise to a new polemical sub-genre: “anti-wokism”, and of reducing political-intellectual debates to a debate as heated as it is sterile between “wokists” and “anti-wokists”, the issue being to monopolize the so-called “progressive” position, each camp striving to disqualify the other by fascisizing or Nazifying it, or by accusing it of “racism”.
To listen to you, one might believe that denouncing stupidity is the best gateway to sinking into it oneself… and losing one’s audience, if there is one.
In intellectual circles, for several years, there are few who do not ritually denounce the “reductio ad hitlerum” [NDLR : procédé rhétorique qui coupe court à tout débat raisonné en assimilant son interlocuteur à un idéologue nazi]. But the same people, if they are left-wing, do not refrain from practicing the nazification of those they hate.
At the level of international politics, in propaganda speeches, we are witnessing a spectacle of cross-Nazifications between enemies. Putin propaganda nazifies the Ukrainian enemy, while anti-Putin propaganda nazifies the Russian enemy. The left always end up, one day or another, by nazifying this or that right. But the lefts are also Nazifying each other, with jubilation. On September 20, Mélenchon MP Sophia Chikirou denounced the communist leader Fabien Roussel by comparing him to the collaborationist Jacques Doriot. This seesaw game can only cause deep boredom and push spectators to leave the room. Disinterest in political life is fueled by these ridiculous spectacles.
What is the most widespread form of stupidity in our society?
Ordinary stupidity is one thing, sophisticated and “cultured” stupidity is another. My primary object is ideological stupidity, or more precisely ideologized stupidity, that of committed intellectuals, militant academics, supposedly literate politicians, those who play prophets or “doctors of civilization”. A cultivated stupidity, often born from blindness produced by absolute ideological convictions.
Stupidity is at home with good feelings as with bad ones, especially when they are ideologized. “Secular catechizations”, to use Clément Rosset’s words, set the tone. This is how “stupid catechisms” gain authority in the cultural and media space, pushing gregarious minds to utter absurd assertions with the greatest seriousness. For example, on the animalist front, this farm friend and protector of animals that is Stéphanie de Monaco declared with conviction: “Animals are human beings like any other.” But academics have followed suit by devoting seminars or conferences to this meaningless proposition.
Can we fight stupidity effectively?
The stupidity is bottomless and endless. The psychoanalyst Paul-Claude Racamier was right: “The trouble with stupidity is that it knows no respite and we don’t know what it is.” It is therefore without limits, as Claude Chabrol noted: “Stupidity is infinitely more fascinating than intelligence. Intelligence has limits, stupidity has none.” Hence the words of Edgard Varèse: “There are two infinities, God and stupidity.”
Stupidity resists our attempts to define and know it, and even more so our efforts to neutralize or cure it. We perceive it, we recognize it, we describe it, we laugh about it as much as we can, nothing more. It is easy to understand that stupidity lends itself particularly well to witticisms, mockery, persiflage, satire, lampooning, etc. We cannot talk about stupidity without declaring war on it or waging a subtle and desperate war against it, because stupidity is unshakable. To mock her is to put her at a distance. Nothing more, nothing less.
You question the benefits of the strategy of indifference. Some prefer to boycott PAF broadcasts or television channels that they consider stultifying. But doesn’t indifference also mean taking the risk of letting this stupidity become the norm?
Faced with stupidity, we can oscillate between the strategy of indifference, always marked more or less with contempt (displayed or not), and the strategy of mockery, irony, humor. Two ways to protect yourself from its force of contamination. Between the contemptuous avoidance illustrated by the boycott and satire or pamphleteering, which aims to ridicule pretentious or vain imbeciles, the choice is made due to circumstances or urgency. Everyone is free to choose the strategy of “not” (dialogue, collaborate, etc.) or that of “against” (mock, ridicule, etc.) depending on the objectives they want to achieve in a given context.
You cite many thinkers, but not Jacques Brel, who called stupidity “laziness” – that was in 1971. Would you say that (intellectual) laziness is what characterizes modern societies?
Laziness is a factor in the “stupidization” process. But he is far from being the only one. If stupidity were only the expression or effect of laziness, let us say a mental form of laziness, an effective fight against stupidity would be possible, this fight having to be entrusted to educators and re-educators, with the help of psychologists. This is only an attempt, both generous and naive, not to stigmatize anyone, to refuse the idea of inequality between humans based on the distinction between imbeciles and others.
What relates to a form of intellectual laziness widely spread in contemporary societies is rather the desire not to despair of anything, to maintain at all costs the hope of improving the human condition. Now, precisely, the existence of stupidity can be perceived as hopeless: it resists all our efforts to make it disappear. Trying to remedy it amounts to improving it, that is to say, making it worse. Hence the flight into reassuring dreams. This is how stupidity can be defined lazily or comfortably as a form of laziness, and therefore no longer thought of as irremediable. As a fool would say, “Hope is what keeps us from despair.” This is perhaps the best definition of “progressive” faith.