Man is stupid

- May 1948 - A Kind of Sermon -

More and more often the heretical idea that man is not the crown of creation, but a false construction, destined to decline like the dinosaurs of the Jurassic period, because he is incapable, let's just say it out: because he is too stupid, to adapt the changed (by himself!) living conditions of a new earth period.

Even the dinosaurs have probably been pretty stupid. This conjecture arises when one looks at the tiny heads on which the flesh-mountains appear to have been conducted on the images drawn around the skeleton of bones found.

You find, dear reader, that man looks very different. But you must not now think of the individual who fought with the dragons at the time and who has remained victorious. There is no longer a single person in the area of ​​our experience. It only gives people a collective, even if there is so much talk about the personality. Think about where the clothes you are wearing, the car you drive in, even the bread you eat. However, all sorts of suspicious parallels can be drawn between the collective human and the brontosaurus, which has grown into a giant organism, especially those of the short-sighted intelligence.

Right, you understand me right: I do not mean your private, personal intelligence, of which I have a very high opinion, but your insight as a piece of a social body that you are, as part of your people, your state, your state federation or if you allow humanity.

Man as a single being, think of Robinson, for example, is a very clever creature; but as soon as he has to live with other people, his prudence seems to fail, and the more so the greater the mass that surrounds him. It is as if his spiritual horizon were becoming smaller as his distance from the other man diminished.

If every square kilometer of soil had only one human being, the human world would probably be in order; rather, it would require no special order. The more dense the human population becomes, the more necessary the order would be. But people can not understand that. They do not want to give up their freedom, their elbow room, even if at the table of the earth, which can not take off, there are now twice and three times as many guests as there were a few generations ago. They continue to breed happily, but everyone wants to live as if they were alone.

The strangest thing is the fact that the recipe for a prosperous coexistence of humanity has long been well known. It means: love your neighbor as yourself. If it were followed, all social and political problems would be solved in one fell swoop. But people just do not love each other, but are very indifferent.

Since one can not force oneself to love, as we want to confess, one might perhaps try to substitute a moral agreement in which each one would at least have to accept the other, for example on the principle: What you do not want, that one Do not do that to any other. Without a doubt a reasonable and tried and tested rule. Theoretically nobody will dare to shake her. But in practice it tends to be broken with even greater cynicism, the higher the level of responsibility of the persons acting and the broader the interests involved. Otherwise, for example, there could be no more war - clear proof that man is stupid.

After the war from 1914 to 1918, someone figured out that the war costs would have been enough to give each family in the participating peoples a well-made cottage in a garden. But probably a minister who made such a proposal instead of the war would have been sent to a sanatorium. The man who began World War II twenty-five years later, his compatriots, and not only these, long considered a great statesman, a genius. He was, in a word, stupid. But he was no exception. Man is stupid.

Now we live in the break between the second and the third war.

It is eagerly prepared on two sides so that it does not break out. As a result, one expects his outbreak in three, seven or twelve years. He is estimated to be half the world in ruins. The other half will start to tidy up afterwards. Maybe next time you will leave the rubble. If man were not stupid, he would have long since realized that wars hurt the victor more than they were good. It is he who has to pay the war indemnity if the loser is bankrupt; just as you may have the pleasure of being able to pay the opposing lawyer after a process has been won. That the modern war is no longer an ancient duel in which the more capable of life has the greater chance of remaining, but a reverse selection, in which the very best perish, could have been gradually noticed by the academically educated circles.

However, since bombs have been dropped from the sky on the civilian population, the weak are also destroyed; a process that our grandfathers might have encountered.

Modern technology is often regarded as evidence of high human intelligence. But does not it always give people, and not only in war, the opportunity to show their stupidity?

He could not make life on earth with her help to paradise (which is somewhere else), but quite comfortable and comfortable. Instead, he continues to bother himself. He works about twice as long as he needs it; and many of the workers who are enslaved to human automata still need to be happy if they are allowed to work at all.

Good harvests are more feared than bad harvests, because one must destroy the abundance in some way, while at the same time elsewhere hunger is dying. No one has come up with the idea that the blessing of the earth could be given away to his fellow men. Let's face it: we are too stupid.

With the treasures of the earth, which are by no means infinite, as little as the earth itself is, a joyous depletion is driven. Wood, coal, iron, whatever it may be, are exploited and carelessly wasted without regard for later generations. Forests are destroyed, animals and childlike peoples are exterminated - after us the deluge!

It seems that over-exploitation is the form of economic activity that most closely resembles the human character. But for a humanity of two billion, who still wants to father children and grandchildren, he is an unscrupulous folly. If she can not memorize this inevitable multiplication table, she will one day end up with her much-vaunted culture, and then she will not have to worry about capitalism and socialism.

Perhaps it is a meaningful omen that the great states of the earth still carry predators in their coat of arms, which will soon be encountered only in zoological gardens.

The dinosaurs were also predators. And dumb.

I'm afraid I'm afraid humanity will perish because of its stupidity.

Published in: People and Time: Politics, Society, Spiritual Life of the Peoples, 3. Vintage, May 1948 http://www.landesarchiv-bw.de/plink/?f=1-1073192

see also current:

Species extinction is becoming increasingly threatening 

Stuttgarter Zeitung, 24.04.2019, by Klaus Zintz

A study by the United Nations makes people sit up and take notice: up to a million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, it says. The report has not yet been published, but the draft has already been leaked: According to this, the authors predict that many of the 500 to one million highly endangered species are in danger of disappearing "in the coming decades". The report does not hide the fact that the blame for this clearly lies with humans and the progressive environmental destruction they cause: agriculture, deforestation, mining, fishing and hunting are mentioned, followed by climate change and environmental pollution. However, it remains to be seen in the coming week whether the alarming report will ultimately be approved by the states. The study by the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is to be presented at a conference that will take place next Monday in Paris. 000 IPBES member states are represented there, and the message is explosive because up to a million species that are becoming extinct are a huge number. Critics may object, however, that one does not even know how many animal and plant species there are on earth. An extrapolation from 130 was based on 2011 million species. However, experts working on this topic believe that up to 8,7 percent of all species have not yet been discovered. So the estimates range from two to 80 million species. If you add the host of microorganisms, there could be more than a trillion species. It is not even certain how many species have already been scientifically described: According to estimates, it could be more than two million. Even if - as is so often the case at such conferences - changes and weakening of the text should be made, the conclusion is clear: The world is heading for a mass extinction - on a similar scale as was the case after the impact of a giant meteorite around 100 million years ago, when the dinosaurs also died. Only that today it is not nature but man who is responsible for it.