The Story of Stupidity

[onager]

One of my favorite books. And since it's non-fiction, I can safely give away the ending:

For what it is worth, which is not much, the position of the Catholic Church on the population problem is consistent with the idea that the miracle of the loaves and fishes can be repeated endlessly. For skeptics, another strategy is very much in order but not much in evidence...

The lesson of the twentieth century is that science and technology will not save us from ourselves. Nor will we be saved by spiritual superstitions and religions. If there is to be salvation, it will come from a soul searching appreciation of the pitfalls of our subjective nature and be based on universal human rights and a respect for the natural environment.

The author is Dr. James Welles, and you can conveniently read the whole thing online:

http://stupidity.com/story1final/index.htm

The book is about, well...stupidity and its effect on human history. Welles says he was inspired by Barbara Tuchman's classic The March of Folly.

His description of what caused the Great Depression could have come from any recent news story:


The basic, political/economic schema of America at this time was open-ended and based on the assumption that capitalism was good simply because individuals were free of governmental restraints in business affairs.

No one was looking out for society in general, since good things were just supposed to happen for everyone automatically. The best people (i.e., the most efficient entrepreneurs) would emerge triumphant (with the most money), and the best ideas (i.e., most profitable policies) would naturally come out on top because whatever happened would be a matter of character and fate. The grand myth was that of the American businessman arrogantly assuming the mantle of material righteousness and pompously proclaiming he would bring happiness and progress to everyone if just left alone to compete freely with other capitalists in the marketplace of life.

A myth this was indeed, as the business community had a long tradition of requesting and getting government support for and regulation of controlled competition...

But as a Fundamentalist Atheist, I think my favorite chapter is "Stupidity Reformed," dealing with the Protestant Reformation:

As theologians, the Protestant reformers replaced the authority of the Catholic Church with the authority of the Bible, which they opened to the public. The inevitable but unforeseen result was that every individual who could read thought God could communicate directly with him.

Unfortunately, as recorded in the Bible, the voice of God often rambles incoherently like that of a slightly schizoid manic-depressive with delusions of grandeur.

Worse yet, his Protestant readers promptly splintered into numerous sects which agreed only on one point—they wanted to be separate. By 1650, there were 180 sects all based on the Bible and each more dogmatically intolerant than the next.

And for our British readers:

Actually, in totalitarian Tudor England, the Anglican Church evinced a canny capacity for compromise with the state—or at least an ability to pretend that certain theological problems did not exist.

The church was a conservative institution which lacked the usual Protestant zeal for saving the world from itself, and its history in the mid-sixteenth century showed how easily masses of people can be pushed through a series of mutually conflicting beliefs, particularly if they are secondary to the identifying schema of the believers.

To wit, in 1534, Henry led the country away from the Catholic Church, only to have Bloody Mary return it to Catholicism in 1553, only to have her sister Elizabeth re-return it to Anglicanism six years later.

There was no one stupid enough even in England to believe the contradictory pronouncements everyone was required to make during this period. It was mostly a matter of taking theology lightly or going mad, and going mad just was not...well, "English".

[mr blur]

1. Sadly, THIS is no longer true:

and going mad just was not...well, "English".