The Attractions of Stupidity

There is a universal law in life: 'stupidity always wins.' Such is the startling claim of Howard Mumford Jones who published a fascinating article called "The Attractions of Stupidity." (Howard Mumford Jones, “The Attractions of Stupidity,” The Tuftonian, IV (Summer, 1944), 78-79)

What Jones means is this: most of the time, most people find it hard to think. So we do the best we can to avoid thinking. We try to get other people to do it for us. In doing so, we choose the path of non-thinking (aka, stupidity). Thinking takes time and work, and it can make us less satisfied in life. Yet thinking is essential to being human. Jones quotes the statement: "Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." It is better to have troubling thoughts than to be reduced to an unthinking animal.

In the academic setting, Jones says that students fit perfectly into this mode. Their goal is to pass a class with as little mental effort as possible. They say things like, "Will this be on the test? Will we be graded for this? Is this reading required?"

In contrast it is the job of the instructor to get people to think more than is actually required. Jones says that the vision of the university is to overturn this universal law!

So we know we should think more, but you can't think deeply about everything. The question is, do we think deeply about the right things? Are we game to ask hard questions when it matters most?

In part that is what I'm hoping to challenge people to do through my involvement with http://theDialoguesAtMSU.org. I want to be sure that my limited mental effort is spent at least in part on the core questions of life, questions of ultimate meaning and of how I will handle my own death. How about you?

When followers form their leaders

An idea that has always challenged me is how followers have a profound impact on their leaders. The best depiction of this phenomenon for me is "The Caine Mutiny" by Herman Wouk. The sailors on the mine sweeping vessel rightly commit mutiny against their unstable and unsafe captain, Captin Queeg. In the court martial trial regarding their mutiny, they win their case. Clearly Queeg was rightly overthrown.

But the big surprise is that the sailors were the real guilty party. They had turned Queeg into the officer they rightly mutinied against. Their questioning and actions against a military hero (from previous days) pushed him over the edge.

It is so easy for followers to think and behave like victims when in reality they may be the ones determining the quality of the leadership they suffer under.

The article, "The Student as a Cooperating Consumer" (Kenneth Brown, Foundation Stones, September 1960) makes this very claim about students. That is, students have a huge impact over the quality of the teaching they receive.

So when we are tempted to complain about the quality of the leadership or teaching under which we must sit, we should consider the ways in which we are actually getting what we deserve.