Worse than evil by Manova’s editorial team, 8/25/2025

Worse than evil

Stupidity is the most destructive human trait because it shields falsehoods from insight with a wall of complacency.

“We are powerless against stupidity. Neither protests nor violence will achieve anything here. Arguments fall on deaf ears.” So wrote the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his prison cell in 1943 while awaiting execution by the Nazis. Bonhoeffer’s far-sighted insight concerned the question of how stupidity serves existing power structures. Malicious people know that they are doing wrong, which leads to inner conflict and ultimately to collapse. But people who are trapped in functional stupidity believe that they are doing good, which makes them completely resistant to correction. In such an environment, those in power no longer need to actively suppress information. They only need to create conditions under which honest information processing becomes impossible. The author is convinced that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is issuing a clear warning to our generation, eight decades later. We must examine ourselves honestly in order to “belong to those who remain steadfast when all others have stopped thinking.”

by Manova’s World Editorial Team

From Philosophy Coded

[This article posted on 7/19/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/schlimmer-als-bose.]

“We are helpless against stupidity. Neither protests nor violence can harm it; arguments fall on deaf ears. Evil always carries the seeds of self-destruction within itself—it creates unease. But stupidity feels self-satisfied, immune, and convinced of its own righteousness. And that makes it far more dangerous.”

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

What if I told you that stupidity is not just the absence of intelligence, but something far more insidious, a force that can turn brilliant minds into tools of destruction?

What if the greatest threat to civilization were not evil people doing evil things, but ordinary people who have simply stopped thinking?

Imagine this: a renowned scientist with multiple academic degrees suddenly begins to believe and spread dangerous misinformation. A compassionate teacher starts espousing harmful ideologies. A loving parent makes decisions that endanger their own children.

These are not evil people. They are intelligent, well-meaning people who have fallen victim to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “the power of stupidity.” And that is what is truly frightening about it.

It is not happening to other people. It is happening to people like you and me. This is not philosophical speculation.

In 1961, Stanley Milgram conducted his infamous obedience experiments at Yale University. Normal volunteers were instructed by an authority figure to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another person. Despite hearing screams of pain, 65 percent of participants administered shocks that they believed could be fatal.

These were not sadists or mentally ill people. They were normal people who had temporarily surrendered their ability to make independent moral judgments.

This is exactly what Bonhoeffer saw with his own eyes in Nazi Germany — and it led him to develop one of the most disturbing theories about human nature ever formulated.

But before we dive deeper, I have to ask you:

Have you ever believed something just because everyone around you believed it?

Keep that question in mind as we explore one of the most important psychological insights of modern times.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not your typical philosopher sitting in an ivory tower pondering abstract ideas.

He was a German Lutheran pastor who witnessed his entire society change before his eyes. He was born into an intellectual family in 1906. His father was a renowned psychiatrist and neurologist. Bonhoeffer had every reason to believe in the power of education and rational discourse.

But when the Nazi Party came to power, Bonhoeffer witnessed something that shook his faith in human reason. He saw his fellow Germans—educated, cultured, religious people—begin to support policies and leaders that contradicted everything they claimed to believe in. This was not an ignorant mob manipulated by clever propaganda. These were professors, doctors, clergy, and intellectuals who actively participated in their own intellectual surrender.

From his prison cell in 1943, while awaiting execution for his involvement in the assassination attempt on Hitler, Bonhoeffer wrote what is probably his most poignant observation:

We are powerless against stupidity.

Neither protests nor violence will help here.

Arguments fall on deaf ears.

What made this observation so frightening was not only its context, but its precision.

Evil, he noted, always carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It creates unease, resistance, and ultimately collapse, but stupidity? It believes it is doing good, which makes it absolutely immune to correction.

Bonhoeffer’s perhaps most prescient insight concerned the question of how stupidity serves existing power structures. Malicious people know that they are doing wrong, which leads to inner conflict and ultimately to collapse. But people who are trapped in functional stupidity believe that they are doing good, which makes them absolutely resistant to correction. This is no coincidence.

Those in power no longer need to actively suppress information. They only need to create conditions under which honest information processing becomes impossible.

When Bonhoeffer used the word “stupidity,” he was not talking about low IQ or lack of education. He was describing something much more complex that we might call functional stupidity or deliberate ignorance.

In his letters from prison, he explained that the fact that stupid people are often stubborn should not blind us to the fact that they are incapable of independent thought. When talking to them, one almost gets the feeling that one is not dealing with a person at all, but with slogans, catchphrases, and the like that have taken possession of them.

That is what made Bonhoeffer’s theory so revolutionary.

He argued that stupidity often does not arise from individual weaknesses, but from systemic constraints that make independent thinking both difficult and unattractive. The truth is that our economic systems actively promote intellectual shortcuts.

Social media platforms earn billions when users react emotionally instead of thinking critically.

News agencies get more clicks with outrage than with nuance. Politicians win elections with simple slogans rather than complex policy proposals.

When people have multiple jobs, are drowning in debt, and are constantly bombarded with information, intellectual surrender becomes a survival strategy.

The result is what economists call rational ignorance.

For individuals, it is more efficient not to inform themselves about complex issues than to invest the time and energy required for genuine understanding.

But this individual rationality leads to collective irrationality — precisely the dynamic that Bonhoeffer observed in Nazi Germany. The result is not just an individual decision, but a structural pressure to surrender intellectually.

And our stressed and overworked brains are perfectly designed to give in to this pressure. While economic systems push us toward intellectual shortcuts, our brains are actually wired to conform. Leon Festinger’s groundbreaking research on cognitive dissonance in the 1950s showed exactly how this works psychologically:

When people encounter information that contradicts their beliefs, their brains struggle to reject it.

But Bonhoeffer understood something that modern psychology has confirmed. This process is amplified when people are stressed, overwhelmed, or economically insecure. These are precisely the conditions that our current systems create.

Bonhoeffer observed that stupidity often occurs in groups and wrote:

“It becomes clear that stupidity is not a psychological problem, but a sociological one.”

He noticed that perfectly rational individuals abandoned their critical thinking skills when they became part of a larger group or movement. This insight was decades ahead of its time.

Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments in the 1950s demonstrated exactly what Bonhoeffer had observed. When people are surrounded by a group that is giving obviously wrong answers, around 75% will agree with the majority at least once, even if they know the group is wrong.

Now imagine how this plays out in our digital age. Social media algorithms create echo chambers that make this transformation easier than ever. A 2018 study by MIT researchers found that false information spreads six times faster than true information on social networks.

But this is precisely the key insight: false information is often more emotionally satisfying than complex truths.

When someone shares misinformation that confirms their worldview, they are participating in a system that rewards intellectual shortcuts over careful analysis. The algorithm feeds them more of the same, creating echo chambers that act like intellectual quicksand.

Have you ever noticed that your social media feed seems to show you exactly what you want to see?

This is no coincidence. It is the architecture of chosen ignorance in action. This pattern repeats itself throughout history. The Salem witch trials were not carried out by evil people, but by God-fearing community members who sincerely believed they were protecting their neighbors. The “Red Scare” of the 1950s was not instigated by malicious actors, but by patriotic Americans who sincerely believed they were defending democracy. In each case, intelligent, educated people gave up their critical thinking in favor of group consensus and emotional certainty. If our minds and systems are working against us, how can we fight back?

Bonhoeffer believed that liberation from stupidity requires what he called “precious grace” — namely, the willingness to think independently, even when it is painful, unpopular, or dangerous.

But now we understand that we are not just fighting social pressure, but millions of years of evolution and billion-dollar algorithms designed to exploit our mental shortcuts.

On an individual level, we can cultivate what psychologists call intellectual humility: the recognition that our knowledge is always incomplete and potentially wrong. This means actively seeking out information that contradicts our beliefs, not to torment ourselves, but to test whether our beliefs are worth holding on to.

Here are some concrete exercises that can serve as daily resistance to intellectual surrender. First, practice intellectual friction.

First, take time each week to read thoughtful arguments from people who disagree with you — not necessarily to change your mind, but to see if your beliefs stand up to scrutiny.

Second, embrace productive ignorance. When you are absolutely certain about something, ask yourself what evidence would change your mind. If you can’t think of any, that’s a warning sign.

Third, share less. Before you post something online, take 60 seconds to check it against an independent source. This brief pause can break the algorithmic cycle that feeds on our emotional reactions.

Finally, practice saying “I don’t know” when you actually don’t know something. In a world where self-assured ignorance is rewarded more than modest uncertainty, admitting gaps in your knowledge becomes a radical act.

But individual practices are not enough. We also need structural changes that make intellectual honesty easier and more rewarding. That means requiring social media platforms to disclose their algorithmic biases and how they curate content. It means funding comprehensive media literacy campaigns that teach people how to evaluate sources and evidence. It means designing online platforms to reward intellectual humility over tribalistic certainty.

Most importantly, however, we need economic policies that reduce the stress and uncertainty that make people vulnerable to intellectual shortcuts.

When people don’t have to constantly worry about their healthcare, housing, and jobs, they have more mental capacity to think carefully about complex issues. Bonhoeffer’s theory was brilliant for its time, but there was one thing he couldn’t know: this isn’t just about moral surrender or social pressure. Modern neuroscience reveals something far more disturbing:

Our brains are literally programmed to descend into functional stupidity. Think about that.

Bonhoeffer witnessed Nazi propaganda being spread through newspapers and radio. But today we are experiencing something exponentially more dangerous. We have moved from Nazi propaganda to social media algorithms that know exactly which psychological buttons to push.

Now we are entering the age of AI deepfakes that can fabricate reality itself. The threat is not only escalating, it is targeting the architecture of human perception. This is not just about Nazis or propaganda — it’s about the wiring of your brain.

Our minds have evolved to prioritize speed over accuracy, to trust familiar sources more than unfamiliar ones, and to seek out information that confirms what we already believe. These were survival traits that helped our ancestors make quick decisions when hesitation meant death.

The scariest part?

We are all vulnerable, no matter how smart we think we are. It is precisely this mechanism that Bonhoeffer described.

When people feel threatened and insecure, they are more susceptible to authoritarian-sounding explanations that reduce complex issues to simple narratives. But here lies the crucial insight that makes Bonhoeffer’s warning more urgent than ever.

We are no longer dealing with human manipulation alone.
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We are facing systems developed by artificial intelligence to exploit our cognitive weaknesses with surgical precision. Every click, every pause, every emotional reaction is analyzed and used against our ability to think independently.

We witnessed this in real time during COVID-19. Doctors, engineers, and lawyers—people with proven analytical skills—began spreading debunked theories about vaccines and treatments.

This was not a failure of intelligence. It was the failure of intellectuals whose independence collapsed under unprecedented pressure.

Bonhoeffer paid the ultimate price for refusing to surrender his intellectual independence. He was executed by hanging on April 9, 1945, just weeks before Germany’s surrender.

According to a fellow prisoner, his last words were: “This is the end for me, the beginning of life.”

His sacrifice was not just political resistance; he was defending the very possibility of human thought.

He understood that people who stop thinking independently cease to be fully human. They become, as he put it, puppets whose strings are pulled by the strongest force. But that is precisely what makes Bonhoeffer’s final challenge so relevant today.

Who remains steadfast?
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When the pressure to conform is overwhelming, when independent thinking requires courage, when the price of truth is higher than the price of convenient lies, who remains steadfast? The answer does not lie in superior intelligence or education. It lies in the daily decision to remain curious rather than secure, to seek truth rather than convenience, to think carefully rather than react quickly.

These are not heroic deeds. They are ordinary behaviors that become extraordinary when everyone around you has stopped practicing them. The tragedy is that intellectual surrender is often perceived as liberation. Thinking is hard work.

It is uncomfortable to have complex, contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. It is painful to admit that you may be wrong about an important issue, but Bonhoeffer argued that this discomfort is the price we pay for remaining human.

In a world that profits from our intellectual surrender, the decision to think for oneself becomes a radical act.

This brings us to perhaps the most uncomfortable truth of all.

We are all susceptible to functional stupidity.
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The moment we believe we are immune, we have already begun to succumb to it. The price of intellectual freedom is eternal vigilance, not against external enemies, but against our own tendency to stop thinking when thinking becomes difficult.

Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity is disturbing precisely because it is so accurate. We see it everywhere. Intelligent people who believe obviously false things, educated people who make disastrously bad decisions, well-meaning citizens who support policies that contradict their own values.

The problem is not that people are becoming less intelligent. The problem is that our systems increasingly reward intellectual shortcuts over careful thinking. But there is also real hope in this sobering diagnosis.

If stupidity is partly a choice, it can also be rejected.

If it is partly structural, structures can be changed.

If it is the result of cognitive overload, we can create conditions that facilitate rather than hinder thinking.

Consider critical thinking like physical exercise. It’s uncomfortable at first, but essential for strength. Just as we wouldn’t expect to run a marathon without training, we can’t expect to process complex information without intellectual discipline.

The mental muscles required for independent thinking must be exercised regularly, otherwise they will atrophy.

The next time you are absolutely convinced of something, the next time you find yourself dismissing contradictory evidence without consideration, the next time you have the comforting feeling that you know all the answers, remember Bonhoeffer’s warning. Functional stupidity does not announce itself with fanfare. It whispers to you that you already know everything you need to know. And in that moment of realization, you have a choice.

Will you surrender your mind for the convenience of certainty?

Or will you choose the more difficult path of intellectual independence?

The question Bonhoeffer leaves us with is not whether we are smart enough to avoid stupidity, but whether we are determined enough to keep thinking when thinking becomes inconvenient, uncomfortable, or costly.

In a world that profits from our intellectual surrender, the decision to think carefully and independently is one of the most important tasks we can set ourselves.

Here is my challenge to you:
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This week, find a belief you hold dear and spend 30 minutes researching the best arguments against it. Not to torment yourself or let doubt paralyze you, but to practice the intellectual courage for which Bonhoeffer gave his life. If your conviction stands up to honest scrutiny, you will defend it with more confidence. If not, you will have learned something valuable about the difference between conviction and truth.

The future of human dignity may depend on how we respond collectively to Bonhoeffer’s challenge.

If this content has caused you to question something you thought you knew for sure, that is not a weakness. It is the beginning of intellectual courage.

Share this post with someone who isn’t afraid to think deeply, even when it’s uncomfortable. Because in a world designed to profit from our intellectual surrender, simply thinking is the most important form of resistance we have.

And here’s what you should remember:
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Every time you choose curiosity over certainty, evidence over emotion, careful thinking over quick reactions, you’re not only protecting your own mind, you’re defending the possibility of human wisdom in an age of artificial stupidity.

What belief are you willing to question this week? Write it in the comments and let’s stand together as people who remain steadfast when everyone else has stopped thinking.

#### The terrifying theory of stupidity you should never hear – Dietrich Bonhoeffer