Fortunately, our knowledge of stupidity is not limited to what historians and psychologists have not written about it. Herodotus noted that man was robbed of reason by "Infatuation". Of course, in ancient Greece, deities were responsible for everything, and in this particular matter, it was the goddess Ate who was responsible for infatuation, mischief, delusion and blind folly—apparently everything contributing to maladaptation but stupidity. She rendered her victims "Incapable of rational choice" and blind to distinctions of morality and expedience. (It is worth noting this awareness of the moral dimension of Ate's influence.)

In the Christian tradition, stupidity, blunder and folly were glossed over by Jesus in deference to the sensibilities of his followers, who were remarkably ignorant. Criticism of human idiocy was discouraged, and Christians came to regard the truth about a fool as a type of indecent exposure and strictly taboo. What other major religions of the world have to say about stupidity will not become clear until the beckoning field of Comparative Stupidity comes to flower, but the Christian attitude certainly contributes greatly to the nearly empty shelves in Western libraries where the hundreds of books on stupidity should be.

Those shelves are, fortunately, only "Nearly" empty, because there have been a few pioneers who dared delve into stupidity despite the taboo. First, of course, there were a couple of Germans. In 1909, Dr. Leopold Löwenfeld had Über die Dummheit published. In this work, stupidity was not defined from a medical viewpoint, but rather its broad forms were classified as multi-dimensional functional failings of a faulty intellect—meaning dullness, weak character, inattention, misperception, poor judgment, clumsy associations, bad memory, etc. One of the sexes and one of the races was less stupid than the others, and although the book was updated in 1921, even World War I could not shake the author's conviction about the sexual/racial distribution of stupidity. He might have inferred, for example, that white men were superior in stupidity, but he settled for everyone else being generally inferior in intellect.

Following Leopold's lead, Max Kemmerich had Aus der Geschichte der menschlichen Dummheit published in 1912. A Teutonic cure for insomnia, this work examines stupidity in a Biblical context and is essentially an attack on established religions. Max's emphasis on a belief system was well placed, but his work is intolerantly narrow in that he recognized the Bible as the only legitimate standard for belief and behavior.

stupidity.net