Try Not To Be A Slogan
One of his famous writings is a longer letter called After Ten Years that he wrote to friends and some fellow conspirators. It is an essay that explores their work and their country with encouragement to not see all their efforts as wasted.
One of the sections is called On Stupidity. He is not using the word in the normal bully put down way, like “Look at the blackboard, STUPID.” In a work he never finished before he was arrested, he refers to Hitler as the “tyrannical despiser of human beings,” who “considers the people stupid and they become stupid.” In this way stupidity is a psychological/socialogical characteristic.
“It is ... not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.” So it is something else he is trying to describe than brain ability or education. He says a further characteristic is that this ailment is found less frequently among those who are solitary and more among people “condemned to sociability.” This is like Soren Kierkagaard’s “The crowd is untruth.” Yet humans are social creatures, we like to band together and be together.
Bonhoeffer speculates that it is more of a societal law or principle. “Every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity … under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.” We see this effect in a variety of areas … think about all the people who sleep outside to get the newest version of the iphone; its not hard to think of politicians in this regard. But keep this in mind, “every strong upsurge of power.”
Bonhoeffer continues (please keep in mind the very specific way he is using stupid, its not a put down but to describe a sociological phenomenon): “The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversations with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him.” Ok it is precisely here that I keep thinking about. I know what this makes me think of, but as I was re-reading this section yesterday, I also thought of the “strong upsurge of power” in the public protests. I am happy about this power, the people’s power. I love being part of a country that knows sometimes you have to protest to see change. I have been part of these in my small town and hope to be again.
But if Bonhoeffer is on to something about the sociological principle, then this power also brings some danger of stupidity, that is, not engaging as a person, but becoming “slogans” and “catchwords.” This is not to say that slogans are not important and powerful. I for one think the slogan Black Lives Matter is very powerful and write it on my poster each time. (I also think the movement BLM is powerful and was first to action when myself and others were sitting on the sidelines). No argument from me that slogans can be an effective method of speaking truth. But we cannot become slogans. We are messy, bloody human beings, who each have strange and particular histories. We are minds and bodies and souls. We live in a nation that is not one thing with one history, but is many histories.
Sadly, our current president is trying to convince everyone there is only one history--1492 to today, pure heroic journey. This will not do. We all know this isn’t true. We have to have conversations about this. Conversations involve talking and listening and often will involve some reading to better understand. This work will not fit into tweets, instagrams or even facebook statuses. We will have to go beyond those. We must go beyond parrots looking for our little amen-crackers. (BTW, I am sure parrots are not stupid, they only do this to make us happy and to get our attention).
My friend Keith used to get frustrated when he sent emails to people (his emails are easily 5 pages single spaced). He would talk to them afterward and they barely scratched the first paragraph. “Don’t got time for all that,” they’d say. Then Keith would explain that if you are saying something conventional, something everyone already knows about and most likely already believes, then you can do it in a very short manner, a few words. But if you are saying something new, something rarely discussed, you need a lot more time to explain why it is worth considering. We are in a time where we need to examine some new ideas and this is going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort.
So I would say that if we are going to think new thoughts it will take many many paragraphs, not just a few words or sentences. Some of the topics we all have on our docket are not the type you can understand within a 5 minute video or a wikipedia post. They don’t even fit into a two hour video. This goes for politics, racism, capitalism, history of policing, effectiveness of policing, scientific method, religion, etc.
It may not be possible if Bonhoeffer is correct in his observation of a sociological principle, but I wonder if simply becoming conscious of the danger will be a good first step. It isn’t about no slogans it is an effort to not become a slogan/catchword person. And I think part of this will be for all of us to stop banting around other peoples tweets/instas like a beach ball at a baseball game. No rule here, just observe whether you are doing more of this than sharing your own thoughts or sharing the larger and more complex thoughts of a new teacher you are reading and learning from. Further, if you are doing this and someone comments are you entering into some form of dialogue or sending another beach ball? Bonhoeffer’s conclusion is that “only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity.”
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