rachified's Diaryland Diary

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The Stupidity of Intelligence

Everyone knows that our knowledge is unfounded, that science is a self-defined system of rules and laws. And as long as we all act dumb and pretend that our wisdom is soundly based, everything goes without a hitch. Imagination keeps the world going round. Disclosure of the obvious, however, would prove fatal.

But whom are we fooling? If everyone knows at the back of his mind that our knowledge is baseless, who can there be who does not know this? Who persists in flying in the face of all the evidence and continues to believe in the solid basis of our knowledge? The paradoxical answer is: our intelligence does not and cannot know it. Thinking has an inbuilt safety mechanism; our thought patterns prevent us from directly recognizing stupidity. Intelligence stops us from taking cognizance of stupidity. No man is intelligent enough to grasp his own stupidity, and even that fact passes all human understanding.

The stupidity of our intelligence is that we cannot recognize its stupidity. However, that inability also reflects the hidden wisdom of our intelligence. The discovery that all our knowledge is built on stupidity would deprive us of knowledge, undermine its legitimacy, and invalidate this very insight, which, after all, rests on our knowledge.

2.15 a.m. - 2005-02-07

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