this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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[–] Dasus 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The problem is literally willfull ignorance.

This link is an article, that quotes articles that quote things, so attributing who said what without reading the entire thing is probably challenging, but I'll paste some anyway:

https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/

Belangia helpfully adds: “A-gnoia means literally ‘not-knowing’; a-mathia means literally ‘not-learning.’ In addition to the type of amathia that is an inability to learn, there is another form that is an unwillingness to learn. … Robert Musii in an essay called On Stupidity, distinguished between two forms of stupidity, one he called ‘an honorable kind’ due to a lack of natural ability and another, much more sinister kind, that he called ‘intelligent stupidity.'”

Belangia also quotes Glenn Hughes, from an essay entitled “Voegelin’s Use of Musil’s Concept of Intelligent Stupidity in Hitler and the Germans,” providing a further elucidation of the concept of amathia (italics in the original):

“The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to [its] honorable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right … The stupidity this addresses is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself. … [S]ince the ‘higher stupidity’ consists not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings … We may say that the reversal of a spiritual sickness must entail a spiritual cure.”

...

Enjoy.

[–] shneancy 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

hm, I've always held the belief that if perhaps words and arguments fail then personal experiences must work. Heard so many stories of various bigots finally meeting those who they hate from the comfort of their home and finding out they're just normal, kind, and fun people, and suddenly their bigotry is cured as they realise there is no reason to hate after all. If that article is correct then that just fucking sucks man

[–] Dasus 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yeah, it's not that angry people don't realise "there's no reason to hate", it's just impossible to let go of it. So impossible, that you'll straight up claim up is down and left is right if that's what it takes to avoid admitting to themselves the thing they know are of course true. At that point, having not accepted reality earlier means that they also fear the "shame" of admitting that all the suffering was for nothing.

Three hardest words "I was wrong." People are afraid to be "shamed" for having been wrong. Not for making mistakes, but having been wrong. If the setup is 'you're trying this new thing', getting it wrong won't lose you face.

If you're a known person and you've asserted something, then you it's very hard to go "you know what, I see it now, I was mistaken". And with groups, it gets harder and harder. And then people just don't admit to being wrong. Why admit it's moronic to say "the Earth is flat" when there's a million morons like you all sharing in the delusion, despite everyone knowing it's pretense. And then getting angry on online forums. Then start hating "the norms" and suffer alone at home cursing NASA, while really knowing it's all you.

See through you, we can.

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.