712
submitted 5 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

I'm of the opinion that we defined it several thousand years ago, in some form at least.

https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/

Belangia helpfully adds: “A-gnoia means literally ‘not-knowing’; a-mathia means literally ‘not-learning.’ In addition to the type of amathia that is an inability to learn, there is another form that is an unwillingness to learn. … Robert Musii in an essay called On Stupidity, distinguished between two forms of stupidity, one he called ‘an honorable kind’ due to a lack of natural ability and another, much more sinister kind, that he called ‘intelligent stupidity.'”

Belangia also quotes Glenn Hughes, from an essay entitled “Voegelin’s Use of Musil’s Concept of Intelligent Stupidity in Hitler and the Germans,” providing a further elucidation of the concept of amathia (italics in the original):

“The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to [its] honorable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right … The stupidity this addresses is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself. … [S]ince the ‘higher stupidity’ consists not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings … We may say that the reversal of a spiritual sickness must entail a spiritual cure.”

[-] Machinist@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Willful ignorance is the greatest sin. I've been saying that for a while now, not that I believe in sin.

COVID was a real eye opener for me. Seeing how far people would go to remain ignorant.

Stupid can't be helped and there is nothing wrong with it. Ignorance is different and not necessarily bad, if you see that you're ignorant about something, you can choose to educate yourself.

However, willful ignorance is a different thing. I believe that most of society's ills are rooted in willful ignorance and its exploitation by the evil.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

However, willful ignorance is a different thing. I believe that most of society's ills are rooted in willful ignorance and its exploitation by the evil.

“Wisdom alone, is the good for man, ignorance the only evil” (Euthydemus 281d)

“There is, he said, only one good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance” (in Diogenes Laertius, II.31)

Personally I believe in the statement about "a spiritual disease needing a spiritual cure", but I'm not going for some spiritual mumbojumbo. If we take the spiritual disease to be some sort of block in your empathic abilities, however conscious or unconscious, and then we look at some of the most recent studies on empathogens (MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, etc), it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that the "spiritual cure" might be something as simple as MDMA/psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Maybe we could call looking into this something like "Project Pretty-obvious-when-you-think-about-it "

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

not that I believe in sin

It’s perfectly legitimate to have the concept of sin, even if you don’t believe in a deity. There’s a moral code, whether defined by religious precepts, societal convention, personal preference,or objective logic, and evil is a sin against that regardless.

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

“It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.”

this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
712 points (89.7% liked)

News

23627 readers
2951 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS