Stupidity Unbundled
It is true that there are animals that resemble Man in their stupidity. Yet one cannot help feeling that this stupidity of animals is not real and that, in any case, it is more innocent than ours. - Canetti
A friend took me to task for what he took to be my comparison of Maoist China to present day Canada in my last essay. He thought the comparison a spurious one. I countered that perhaps he meant specious. I averred it was neither but admitted it might have been Swiftian. While we were onto S words my friend thought I should find a better word than stupid to describe folks who vote Liberal. We ended by exchanging jokes, so friendship trumps all.
Canetti said "by their etymology shall you know them" and so I stand by my use of the word stupidity, but perhaps I need to clarify the nuances of its various definitions. The etymology is French, which perhaps counts for some of its attraction, French being my mother tongue. The Latin origin is stupidus from stupere, to be numb. Meanings include: Acting in a careless manner, dulled in feeling or sensation, marked by or resulting from unreasoned thinking.
Most of us who take offence at the word do so on the basis that the user considers himself to be more intelligent than the person he characterizes as stupid. That has never been my intention - though I have been accused by other friends of that very thing. The world is filled with intelligent people who act stupidly from time to time; we all know them, I stand as guilty as the next.
The picture of careless, unreasoned thinking, dulled of sensation seems to perfectly describe the collective behaviour of those Canadians who voted Liberal in the last election, and the description will be even more apropos should they do so again on January 23rd.
Robert Musil's characterization of stupidity as having "something uncommonly endearing and natural about it" and his assertion that "there is no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses, it can move in all directions, and put on all guises of the truth" helps to unbundle my intended meaning.
It is not simply in the realm of politics where I see stupidity has insinuated its way into our lives as Canadians. Take business as an example. Robert Milton, the CEO of Air Canada for several years leading up to its bankruptcy, and who continues to lead it now after its emergence from bankruptcy, has been named Canadian CEO of the Year. Now who votes in these contests? Would the hundreds of thousands of shareholders of the bankrupt Air Canada whose shares became worthless vote for him? Would the tens of thousands of Air Canada employees whose wages have been slashed, their pensions ransacked, their stock options made worse than worthless due to our byzantine tax laws, vote for him?
Air Canada was the most profitable airline in the world you say. Well, how hard is it to show a profit as the new Air Canada has, if you can cancel all your equity obligations, convert your debt to new equity, obtain hundreds of millions of dollars of new financing to modernize your fleet, and reassume your effective monopoly position as Canada's primary air carrier?
What does it say about what Canadians value in their business leaders when we hold up Robert Milton as a model of business acumen? I argue it says we are stupid.
Numbed and dulled as we have become, we fail to recognize the signs in our society and our culture of what Paul Elmer More, early 20th century conservative thinker, called pleonexia, the perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. In the realm of politics and business, power is everything and those who wield it strive constantly to perpetuate their privileged position as wielders of power. How is it that, blessed as we are with the power of the democratic right to vote and thus terminate, even if only temporarily, the pleonexic politician or CEO, we so consistently fail to act? I say it is because we are stupid.
My Maoist China/Liberal Canada analogy offended my friend because the Chinese masses had no vote, and they lived in enforced rather than self indulgent stupidity. As for the other leaders who knew the evils of Mao, it was the fear and desire for self-preservation which for some made them fail to depose the tyrant. Canadians are free, and well informed argued my friend, so my comparison was faulty.
To the contrary, I say. Our failure to act is even more tragic, not for its outcomes - of course we do not suffer like the Chinese peasants, or those purged in the Cultural Revolution - but because we waste our democratic rights and we freely choose stupidity over wisdom. Like the prodigal son we waste our inheritance.
It has been said that the cure of democracy is more democracy, but surely our recent Canadian experience lends the lie to that aphorism. Russell Kirk counters that the real cure must be not more, but better democracy.
I wait patiently for the argument that makes the case that the re-election of a Liberal government, minority or otherwise, will bring better democracy to Canada.
A friend took me to task for what he took to be my comparison of Maoist China to present day Canada in my last essay. He thought the comparison a spurious one. I countered that perhaps he meant specious. I averred it was neither but admitted it might have been Swiftian. While we were onto S words my friend thought I should find a better word than stupid to describe folks who vote Liberal. We ended by exchanging jokes, so friendship trumps all.
Canetti said "by their etymology shall you know them" and so I stand by my use of the word stupidity, but perhaps I need to clarify the nuances of its various definitions. The etymology is French, which perhaps counts for some of its attraction, French being my mother tongue. The Latin origin is stupidus from stupere, to be numb. Meanings include: Acting in a careless manner, dulled in feeling or sensation, marked by or resulting from unreasoned thinking.
Most of us who take offence at the word do so on the basis that the user considers himself to be more intelligent than the person he characterizes as stupid. That has never been my intention - though I have been accused by other friends of that very thing. The world is filled with intelligent people who act stupidly from time to time; we all know them, I stand as guilty as the next.
The picture of careless, unreasoned thinking, dulled of sensation seems to perfectly describe the collective behaviour of those Canadians who voted Liberal in the last election, and the description will be even more apropos should they do so again on January 23rd.
Robert Musil's characterization of stupidity as having "something uncommonly endearing and natural about it" and his assertion that "there is no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses, it can move in all directions, and put on all guises of the truth" helps to unbundle my intended meaning.
It is not simply in the realm of politics where I see stupidity has insinuated its way into our lives as Canadians. Take business as an example. Robert Milton, the CEO of Air Canada for several years leading up to its bankruptcy, and who continues to lead it now after its emergence from bankruptcy, has been named Canadian CEO of the Year. Now who votes in these contests? Would the hundreds of thousands of shareholders of the bankrupt Air Canada whose shares became worthless vote for him? Would the tens of thousands of Air Canada employees whose wages have been slashed, their pensions ransacked, their stock options made worse than worthless due to our byzantine tax laws, vote for him?
Air Canada was the most profitable airline in the world you say. Well, how hard is it to show a profit as the new Air Canada has, if you can cancel all your equity obligations, convert your debt to new equity, obtain hundreds of millions of dollars of new financing to modernize your fleet, and reassume your effective monopoly position as Canada's primary air carrier?
What does it say about what Canadians value in their business leaders when we hold up Robert Milton as a model of business acumen? I argue it says we are stupid.
Numbed and dulled as we have become, we fail to recognize the signs in our society and our culture of what Paul Elmer More, early 20th century conservative thinker, called pleonexia, the perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. In the realm of politics and business, power is everything and those who wield it strive constantly to perpetuate their privileged position as wielders of power. How is it that, blessed as we are with the power of the democratic right to vote and thus terminate, even if only temporarily, the pleonexic politician or CEO, we so consistently fail to act? I say it is because we are stupid.
My Maoist China/Liberal Canada analogy offended my friend because the Chinese masses had no vote, and they lived in enforced rather than self indulgent stupidity. As for the other leaders who knew the evils of Mao, it was the fear and desire for self-preservation which for some made them fail to depose the tyrant. Canadians are free, and well informed argued my friend, so my comparison was faulty.
To the contrary, I say. Our failure to act is even more tragic, not for its outcomes - of course we do not suffer like the Chinese peasants, or those purged in the Cultural Revolution - but because we waste our democratic rights and we freely choose stupidity over wisdom. Like the prodigal son we waste our inheritance.
It has been said that the cure of democracy is more democracy, but surely our recent Canadian experience lends the lie to that aphorism. Russell Kirk counters that the real cure must be not more, but better democracy.
I wait patiently for the argument that makes the case that the re-election of a Liberal government, minority or otherwise, will bring better democracy to Canada.
posted by Ben Buan | 9:17 p.m.
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