BY MARK MITCHELL
Los Alamos

While traveling down the Moselle River, I was fortunate to be able to participate in a guided tour of Winningen, near Koblenz, Germany. Winningen is a picturesque municipality known for its terraced vineyards and Roman-era history. During our tour, our guide brought us to the front of a house and introduced us to the concept of “tripping stones.” Tripping stones in Germany, called Stolpersteine, are small brass-plated cubes set within concrete sidewalks to memorialize victims of Nazi persecution, commemorating their last freely chosen residence with engraved names and life details. Tripping stones were initiated by artist Gunter Demnig. These stones highlight personal tragedies, requiring passersby to “stumble” and bow to read, creating an intimate connection to history.

While discussing this period in German history, our guide told us of a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoffer was a German Lutheran pastor, neo-orthodox theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. The Confessing Church was a movement within German Protestantism in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all of the Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church.

Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to the Nazi euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of Jews. He was arrested in April of 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegal Prison for a year and a half. Later he was transferred to Flossenburg concentration camp. He was accused of being associated with a plot to assassinate Hitler and was tried along with other accused plotters. He was hanged in April of 1945, during the collapse of the Nazi regime.

While in prison, Bonhoeffer documented a number of his thoughts in a work now known as “Letters and Papers from Prison.” One of these essays, entitled “On Stupidity,” records some of the problems which Bonhoeffer likely saw at work in Hitler’s rise to power. Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings, at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

“If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.

“We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

“The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

“Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.

This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

“But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.”

I can’t help but wonder if future tourists in America will be led by their guide to some sort of Americanized tripping stone. It is said that “hindsight is 20/20.” In hindsight things are obvious that were not obvious from the outset; one is able to evaluate past choices more clearly than at the time of the choice. This is tragic. What I find even more tragic is that some can see situations with crystal clarity from the outset, but these people wind up dead.