sat bolt upright in bed at 12:38am to deliver this extremely hot take.
I would like posit that Gideon has no fucking idea what a cow is, and that Jod, self-aware memelord that he is, decided to decorate his inner sanctum with engravings of cattle.
parasocialism: when you think a public figure is more left wing than they really are because you personally like them
renly is so funny hes the closest thing in this series to a normal modern human man dropped into medieval fantasy europe so obviously he had to die. poor renly you deserve to live in a world with podcasts and grindr :'( hope you get reincarnated in new jersey
In the darkest chapter of German history, during a time when incited mobs threw stones into the windows of innocent shop owners and women and children were cruelly humiliated in the open; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young pastor, began to speak publicly against the atrocities.
After years of trying to change people’s minds, Bonhoeffer came home one evening and his own father had to tell him that two men were waiting in his room to take him away.
In prison, Bonhoeffer began to reflect on how his country of poets and thinkers had turned into a collective of cowards, crooks and criminals. Eventually he concluded that the root of the problem was not malice, but stupidity.
In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears.”
Facts that contradict a stupid person’s prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this, the stupid person is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature.
This much is certain, stupidity is in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. There are human beings who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid.
The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or rather, they allow this to happen to them.
People who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals in groups. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.
It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.
The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up an autonomous position.
The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us from the fact that he is not independent. In conversation 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.
He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and is abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil – incapable of seeing that it is evil.
Only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then, we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.
Bonhoeffer died due to his involvement in a plot against Adolf Hitler, at dawn on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp - just two weeks before soldiers from the United States liberated the camp.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity
Not every story is about seeing yourself in it. Sometimes it’s about learning to see other people too.
Person: “What’s your favorite song?”
Me with no object permanence: “UhHhHhh, it’s hard to choose.”
People are walking biomes if u think about it
My affection towards Harrow knows no boundaries like i just saw a cutesy skull hairclip and tag it “for Hawwow” when the girl is literally a 5ft warcrime
Honestly, one of my favorite things about GRRM's writing in asoiaf is how it turns the reader's bloodthirstiness against them.
Take Theon in ACOK, you are cheering in his final chapter because finally! Just desserts for that arrogant foolish bastard!
You read how the Bolton's have him captured in ASOS and say "Heh, good riddance".
And then... you read Reek chapters and with growing horror, you realize who is the person narrating. And suddenly, this need for payback, for him to face justice, doesn't feel that righteous anymore. No person should go through this.
The same goes for Cersei, her blaze of cruelty and scheming catches up to her when the sparrows imprison her. FINALLY, justice! and... you can only stare in horror and disgust at the walk of atonement scene. There is no vindication to be found here.
they/them, 20s | locked tomb brainrot
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