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should expect stupidity to continue to be our constant companion as history unfolds. Certainly, it has been an integral component of Western Civilization since the beginning. The ancient Greeks indicated their firsthand familiarity with it when they formulated Cassandra's Curse—that those who prophesy the truth will not be believed. There have been numerous examples throughout history of accurate warnings wasted because recipients were not disposed to alter their beliefs simply to accommodate new and better information.
In his last plays, Euripides paired moral evil with folly and asserted that people would have to confront both as part of their being, but we have been very reluctant to do so. The problem seems to be that however brilliant the human mind may be in other ways, it is not geared to compensate for its own deficiencies. The reason for this is that cognitive deficiencies (which take the form of opposition to integrity) are expressions of the social dimension of life. It is this which shapes the schema as an individual becomes a member of a reference group. The condemnation of idealism is a constant theme coursing through the history of Western stupidity. Socrates was a case study in the stupidity of civil obedience. Christ was crucified for living up to ideals. John Huss was a religious reformer burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. Giordano Bruno was perhaps a little too philosophical a philosopher to have profited from Huss's experience and so followed his fate in 1600. Not long thereafter, Galileo was forced, under threat of physical torture, to disavow the truth about motion in the solar system. As shameful as all this was, it is embarrassing to note that for all our sophistication and technological expertise, contemporary civilization is as morally retarded and ethically handicapped as any that ever existed. In this sense, there has been no progress throughout history. Worse yet, there is no prospect for any because apparently no one in the research oriented educational establishment is even aware of the problem much less addressing the issue. Thus, we are still imprisoned in our belief systems. For millennia, Western Civilization was enslaved by its belief in God. After She died in the eighteenth century, there was a period of enlightened rationalism when Europeans sank by their own bootstraps into revolutions and intercontinental wars. During the nineteenth century, Darwin seemed to suggest that, although people could modify their environment, that which was innate would remain beyond human control. The only thing people could do about their stupidity was ignore it or label it something else
 stupidity.net 
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