Is there such a thing as stupid philosophy? For stupid philosophers. With all the pathos of philosophy. All the agony of philosophy. But at the level of stupidity.
What if philosophy is without relationship to intelligence at all? What if it’s more an attitude?
There are denser and looser stupidities. There are more compact stupidities and more gaseous stupidities. There are stupidities of heavy gravity and light gravity. There are stupidities that seem to float free of stupidity, but that are, nevertheless, stupidities. And stupidities that simply sink in to stupidity. That just entrench stupidity. Deepen it.
There are deeper and shallower stupidities. There are stupidities of descent and even stupidities of ascent.
Stupidity is not a beginning. But awareness of stupidity is.
A sense of being stupid is a sign that the stupidity isn’t complete. That stupidity isn’t just darkness.
An awareness of stupidity, half emerging from stupidity. Opening its eyes in stupidity.
Stupidity, become self-aware. Stupidity, opening its eyes. Stupidity, reaching … stupidly, admittedly. With little sense of what it was doing, granted. But reaching nonetheless.
Stupidity, trying not to be itself. Ashamed of itself, in some sense. Impelled not to be itself. Stupidity, gaining a kind of energy.
An anti-stupidity, within stupidity. A movement against stupidity, despite stupidity. How was it possible? How did stupidity discover this lightness, this motility?
But it had happened with us. Really, we should be objects of careful study. We should be wired up and tested. They should insert electrodes into our brains and see what happens when we read Hölderlin. What lights up and what doesn’t. To see what synapses are ignited. What pathways open up through the brain’s grey matter. Because something happens, it’s clear.
And how did our stupidity break open? What took root in it? What broke its surface? What opened stupidity to the light? To the whole vertical dimension.
What seed was cast into its depths, that made it open? What secret germination burst open its surface? How was it sown in us? How did it begin?
Somehow, light reached us. In the depths of our stupidity. In its utter darkness. Somehow, something was born from stupidity.
The lifting of stupidity. Its lightening. Stupidity, opening its eyes.
Perhaps that’s what Cicero’s doing: writing her long-promised dummkopf-analysis.
There should be some kind of stupidity-analysis. That should be making of Cicero. That could be her magnum opus: her treatise on stupidity, that would set out the critical method of stupidity-analysis. Dummkopf-analyses.
Sounds better in German.
And Cicero, like Moses, could lead us all from the deserts of stupidity by studying stupidity. Could be a whole new school of education.
How to turn stupidity inside-out. How to exposes its darkness, its density, to the light. Stupidity’s bloom: what’s that in German? It sounds almost like a line from Celan.
But we have a gift for stupidity. It’s not simple. A kind of meta-stupidity within stupidity, that’s part of stupidity. There’s a spirit floating above stupidity, that is more than stupidity.
Is there such a thing as noble stupidity, like the noble savage? Or is stupidity always grotesque?
We should really open a school of stupidity studies. And perhaps that’s what she had already done, Cicero mused.
When you let the lunatics take over the asylum: what then? When you let the chimps take over the zoo?
But it wasn’t just a matter of letting stupidity loose in the institution.
Guided stupidity. Strategic stupidity. Cicero wanted to deploy stupidity, that was the truth of it. Let it lose like some virus. Just to see what would happen. Would it spread? Could you be bitten by stupidity as by a zombie?
Stupidity’s not simply a lack of intelligence. Stupidity is its own thing. With its own laws.
Work in Progress 