> "The responsible life before God" -- I don't think any modern person is capable of understanding what that meant in the 1940s. We just don't think that way anymore.

I would suggest that perhaps you are limiting your scope of possible "we" (21st century human) thought states. The passage seems to me perfectly clear. For reference, the full quote is:

> "The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity."

He's discussing one way out of the trap of conforming to group/tribal beliefs. If you put your fear of God (in other words, some power higher than, and distinctly external to, any social group) you begin to liberate yourself from caring too much about what other people think.

If you believe that God demands that you act as morally (for some definition/code) and as responsibly as possible, and you place that demand/requirement higher than any other motivating feeling, you will ask about any belief or course of action "Is this Right?" (ie. Does this align with God's command), and consider that question more deeply than the creeds or slogans of your fellow mortals.

Note that he's not saying that the above state of mind is easy, it's merely something just strive for. Many devout religious people still try to the best of their ability to work towards that exact state.

> He's discussing one way out of the trap of conforming to group/tribal beliefs. If you put your fear of God (in other words, some power higher than, and distinctly external to, any social group) you begin to liberate yourself from caring too much about what other people think.

This is well said. I believe it was the theologian Stanley Hauerwas who said in the 70s that the decline of religion in America would inevitably lead to the rise of political tribalism - seems prescient.

"There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship [...] is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness." David Foster Wallace

I am pretty sure I don’t warship anything. Not even logical thinking or reasoning. Nothing is perfect. Everything is flawed or limited in applicability. No human is either 100% good or evil. Everything depends on context. So what is there to worship?

> Nothing is perfect

If logical thinking is, as you say, imperfect, is it possible that your own conclusion that no perfect things exist is itself an imperfect conclusion? If you use this word perfect, you at least have the Idea of Perfect, even if no perfect things exist. This kind of funny talk I'm using about Ideas of perfect things goes back 2400 years to Plato and his Theory of Forms[1]. According to the philosopher-logician A. N. Whitehead:

  The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition
  is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms

Yep it is fun to think about. Especially when you realise that information is not abstract but physics. I recommend reading the “Constructor Theory of Information” if you haven’t already. It is free online.

> So what is there to worship?

David Bowie.

That made me smile :-)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (as I understand him) would undoubtedly say that Jesus Christ is both perfect God and perfect Man, and therefore Jesus Christ is what there is to worship.

Based upon my understanding of him, his allegiance to Jesus Christ is what motivated his actions that resulted in his death at the hands of the Nazis.

edit: typo

My argument was that I (for one) doesn’t worship Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Ra the sun god, humans, myself or anything else. So the argument that we all worship something is false. Dietrich might have been worshipping a god or humans but that is besides the point.

The term "worship" isn't limited to the worship of any deity alone - as the quote itself indicates. It includes worship of things such as beauty, youthfulness, fame, wealth... or whatever that consumes your thinking

Agree. And I don’t worship any of those. Which was my original point.

Fair enough.

I could not find that particular statement by Hauerwas, but it seems to be a (valid, IMO) narrow interpretation of his perspective in this paper[1]. Do you have an exact citation?

Prescient indeed, and to me, disturbing.

[1]: https://stanleyhauerwas.org/the-importance-of-being-catholic...

edit: typo

Sorry, not Hauerwas, Lesslie Newbign, probably in his Foolishness of the Greeks from '86, but I suspect he wrote earlier on the topic as well. See: https://www.pastortheologians.com/articles/2020/10/28/politi...

Thanks, never heard of Stanley Hauerwas.

Of course, I wouldn't take David Foster Wallace (or anyone who killed himself, actually) as an authority on anything.

I don't know how much some god is going to help. Isn't your belief of what your god wants you to do, or at the very least lets you get away with, shaped by your group? If you're already caught in group dynamics, then your god's authority will probably act through the group. People seem to use their gods to reinforce what they already want to think or do.

Well said.

Personally I imperfectly strive to think this way, and I imagine at least hundreds of millions of others do as well.

Well said.

Of course, he was a minister, so he'd spent his life thinking about that.

And as a theologian whose work included a book on Christian ethics, and The Cost of Discipleship.

It's really too bad he didn't survive the war and help us with the understanding of it all. There's never enough of that.

First thing I thought when reading your comment was Men in Black

Kay : A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

"Most of them are just trying to make a living..."

https://youtu.be/w2ppyMUlXfM

What you write is perfectly true, but both tribes read that and think “Yes, that’s how it is for people in the other tribe. We in this tribe, of course, are much better than that.”.

"We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability"

Is there a pattern of thought that makes one immune to this? Like, if I reject every tribe, I become part of the 'everyone is dumb tribe', if I accept the views of every authority, I become part of the 'sheep' tribe, but maybe if one were to employ some pattern of acceptance and contrarianism in the face of other's arguments, then, on average, one's own tribalism would dissolve.

The partial solution to this is what _used_ to be called "open-mindedness". But it's not a pattern for "immunity" but in analogue, practices to keep you "fit" and prepared.

I think CGP grey summarized the pattern nicely, and I quote: (timestamped)[0]

"The trick is to keep your identity separate from your opinions - they are objects in a box you carry with you and should be easily replaceable if it turns out they're no good.

If you think that the opinions in the box are who you are then you'll cling to them despite any evidence to the contrary.

Bottom line: If you want to always be right, you need to always be prepared to change your mind"

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlsU_YT9n_g&t=72s

I would also add my personal take that you should also presuppose that the person you're talking/listening to will have that attitude. Most people don't, but by merely starting from that point, conversation can have a positive turn when you get a glimpse of why they decided to put that opinion in to their mind-box.

Brecht had a whimsical take on this. There's a German saying that goes "wer A sagt, muss auch B sagen": he who says A, has to say B, meaning of course you should always try and follow through.

Brecht wrote "Wer a sagt, der muß nicht b sagen. Er kann auch erkennen, daß a falsch war": he who says A, doesn't have to say B. He can also realize that A was wrong.

https://beruhmte-zitate.de/zitate/126572-bertolt-brecht-wer-...

I would say that this binding of identity with opinions is the outstanding feature of the "stupidest" and most destructive people I know.

Yep. You nailed it. People will literally kill and torture to preserve their identity.

Check out The Scout Mindset. It's the best book I've found on how to think clearly (on these kinds of potentially tribal thoughts), and how to productively interact with people who may not be trying to improve in this area (the "stupid" people).

We're actually making it required reading at my workplace.

Seconding this. The Scout Mindset is the best book I've read this year. Life changing. Note that it's more aimed at helping you recognized (and defeat) your own biases than help you with other people's biases. I think it will help with extending empathy to them, though, recognizing the mechanisms through which they appear "stupid".

I had this in my "eventually" pile (worthwhile but not immediately compelling), until I read this review by Scott Alexander: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-scout-...

You view yourself as the other tribe, and therefore criticize yourself as if you were your worst enemy. From that perspective most stupid ideas you have are easy to see through. You know how stupid the other side is, yeah you probably look around that stupid yourself unless you go through this process regularly and fixes the issues you find in yourself.

Although I don't think it is possible to do it perfectly, but you can fix some things this way.

> You know how stupid the other side is, yeah you probably look around that stupid yourself

Any other techniques for dealing with this?

To get a better measurement of my own intelligence I think about my “dumb friend”, and then try to realize that that’s probably actually about how smart I am.

Always attack your own ideas as hard as you can. Ask yourself what evidence you have for what you believe is true. Figure out possible facts that will prove your idea false. Seek out evidence for those contrarian facts. Be ready to drop precious ideas that turn out to be brittle against facts.

Any test for determining whether I’m doing a “good job” at dropping ideas that contradict evidence?

How often have you dropped an idea you think is true after attacking it with everything you have? If it never happens then it is likely that you are not doing a “good job”. If few ideas you like/agree with survive then you are more likely to be doing a “good job”. It is humbling for me to realise how quickly I can emotionally believe something to be true and then realise that I have no real evidence to support it. And remembering all the things I used to think was true and I now realise might not be (not enough conclusive evidence). The key insight is that ideas are just models of the world. All flawed and with the potential to be improved/more accurate. Don’t become your ideas. Stand apart from your ideas/truths and be critical of them. Assume you are wrong and try to prove it.

Best I've found is the first + humility.

"Everyone is dumb...myself included" at least gives me room to change my mind, and an impetus to try and find things to change my mind.

Being a member of multiple tribes and through that seeing that each has its own goals, beliefs, and communication protocols.

The moment you are aware that you are part of a tribe and can see the tribe for what it is, including its flaws and ugliness, that’s the moment you start thinking for yourself.

Self-awareness in the context of one's adherence to "influencers" in culture. If you read the article as I did, and constantly thought: "Could this apply to me in some way?", then you are appropriately testing yourself.

This is compounded by neither tribe admitting the other tribe's good ideas. We focus on all or nothing rejection of the opposing team.

Very true. And of course, no member can admit that their tribe is that way, too, without risking expulsion.

Yes I was taken by his idea that the idiot has an armour made of a potentially massive social network. It gives you perspective of what you’re really dealing with and the difficulty of the job ahead

Do you have a source for what Bonhoeffer would have meant by that?

I have my own guess to its meaning, but I hesitate to say it does/doesn't match his definition without seeing some exposition on it.

Given this layout, I can't tell whom you're addressing this to: the guy who said "folly" was the better translation?

In any case, I did study German in college, but I'm far from being able to judge what word is accurate. If the word was "Dummheit" that translates literally as "dumb head" but that doesn't mean a German would understand it that way.

Funny how your mind works. I just realized Dummheit doesn't mean "dumb head" like I said; it's "state of being dumb" or, as Google Translate puts it, "stupidity."

I think aside from interpreting that prescription, he didn't live long enough to see what actually happened, which is that the power associated with the stupidity was overcome by sheer and overwhelming force.

It depends on where you were raised. Maybe not in Blue Urban cities but it's trivial in the rest of the USA (where FEW Blue Urban denizen has likely ever traveled).