The NPC: Why stupidity is more dangerous than evil

Anti-Nazi martyr and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.”

Blaze media co-founder Glenn Beck not only agrees with Bonhoeffer’s poetic statement wholeheartedly, but says it’s exactly what we’re seeing in American politics today — which he believes has been devastating for independent thought and morality.

“He was trying to figure out, I think, the same thing that we’re going through. And I think the same thing that in some ways, both sides think they’re going through because both sides are saying to themselves, ‘I can’t even talk to these people,’” Glenn says.

Both sides will point out evil based on where they’re told to see it, but that’s all they can see — leaving them blind to their own moral or intellectual failings.

These people often are called “NPCs” or “non-playable characters,” because they’re completely unaware that they’re following a script.

“Stupidity, not evil, is the greater threat. Not because it’s more powerful, but because stupidity is unreachable. You can expose evil. You can argue with it. You can shine a light on it. You can resist it. But stupidity just doesn’t respond. It doesn’t engage. It just is. And it spreads,” he continues.

And contrary to popular belief, to be “stupid” doesn’t mean to be uneducated.

“He didn’t mean a lack of intelligence. In fact, some of the stupidest people he encountered in Germany were very highly educated. Some were university professors,” Glenn says.

“What he’s talking about is moral failure. It’s a willful surrender of independent thought, a kind of intellectual cowardice that allows propaganda and groupthink to take over and become the root like cancer,” he continues.

While the right often accuses the left of this, the issue exists anywhere there’s a crowd.

“Bonhoeffer called it a psychological problem,” Glenn says. “It emerges in groups and crowds and movements. Listen to this. People hand over their discernment not because they’re dumb, but because they choose not to think. They let slogans replace ideas. They let ideology replace truth.”

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