Recently I -- as I was previously saying -- cursorily reviewed my old blog, which led me among others to an old article where I was attempting to superficially dissect one of Bertrand Russell's overquoted pop-sayings. God knows it ain't the man's fault for the pop-ization of his quote, he only said it and the multitudes took it out of context and turned it into a slogan; and God also knows that it wasn't really my fault for my own shallowness, despite, admittedly, my general(ly) superficial approach to writing back then1.
The article, incidentally, was decrying precisely this, namely the poor sourcing of quotes and the general lack of means to contextualize these little pieces of text posted on ye hyperprogressive interwebs of "ours". The godforsaken shithole where I initially found this quote:
The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
sourced it to Marriage and Morals, which actually can be found today in multiple editions on archive.usg2. Another particular shithole sources it to the chapter called "Christian Ethics", but believe you me, I've read it and I haven't found the phrase above anywhere within the cited text.
Fortunately, yet another, slightly better documented shithole, mentions a blogpost written by Russell, named "The Triumph of Stupidity", which indeed contains that piece. Bitch as much as you like about today's interwebs, but they also happen to host the full version of this text, as maintained by one Akiyoshi Matsushita3. The post is actually pretty short, so let's reproduce it in full right here:
What has been happening in Germany is a matter of the gravest portent for the whole civilised world. Throughout the last hundred and fifty years, individual Germans have done more to further civilisation than the individuals of any other country; during the latter half of this period, Germans, collectively, have been equally effective in degrading civilisation. At the present day the most distinguished names in the world of learning are still German; the most degraded and brutal government is also German. Of the individual Germans whose work has caused Germany to be respected, some are in exile, some in hiding, and some have disappeared, their fate unknown. Given a few years of Nazi rule, Germany will sink to the level of a horde of Goths.
What has happened? What has happened is quite simple. Those elements of the population which are both brutal and stupid (and these two qualities usually go together) have combined against the rest. By murder, by torture, by imprisonment, by the terrorism of armed forces, they have subjected the intelligent and humane parts of the nation and seized power with the view of furthering the glory of the Fatherland.
What has happened in Germany may well happen elsewhere. The British Fascists are not as yet a large party, but they are growing rapidly, and if at any future time there should be danger of a Labour Government that meant business, they would win the support of most of the governing classes. Meanwhile, the British government of India is a form of Fascism, all the worse for being alien. The British in India, like the Hitlerites in Germany, can only govern by putting the best people in prison.
Brute force plays a much larger part in the government of the world than it did before 1914, and what is especially alarming, force tends increasingly to fall into the hands of those who are enemies of civilisation. The danger is profound and terrible; it cannot be waved aside with easy optimism.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. This was not always the case. A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being.
It is quite true that the intelligence of the philosophical radicals was very limited. It is, I think, undeniable that the best men of the present day have a wider and truer outlook, but the best men of that day had influence, while the best men of this are impotent spectators. Perhaps we shall have to realise that scepticism and intellectual individualism are luxuries which in our tragic age must be forgone, and if intelligence is to be effective, it will have to be combined with a moral fervour which it usually possessed in the past but now usually lacks.
In this gloomy state of affairs, the brightest spot is America. In America democracy still appears well established, and the men in power deal with what is amiss by constructive measures, not by pogroms and wholesale imprisonment. After the defeat of the French Revolution, democracy; discredited by the reign of terror, reconquered the world from America. Perhaps America is destined once more to save Europe from the consequences of its excesses. (10 May 1933)
Now you'll have to agree that the quote looks much clearer when placed in context. The man isn't just contrasting the stupid (side of society) with the intelligent (side of society), he also explicitly associates (whatever he deems) intelligence with a certain kind of individualism and then, only then with a certain kind of silence. Which leads me to believe that whatever Russell deems intelligence is indeed a certain kind of intelligence, namely: the same kind of intelligence that a hungry dog shows when he gives you the puppy eyes instead of barking loudly or growling at you with his teeth on display4. Otherwise I find it hard to believe that at the beginning of the 1930s those "intelligent" folks actually knew what's coming for them. This is actually a problem of mine, or otherwise a fundamental shortcoming of this text, that is: that I can't tell who he's actually talking about! Einstein? what, he was smart enough to get out somewhat early, but what else can I say about his political intelligence?
Perhaps Russell is saying that group intelligence is necessarily entailed by tempering individual intelligence. But whether he's saying that or not, his point about moral fervour is spot-on, which comes in stark contrast with his popular opinions, or whatever the pantsuits made of his opinions on Christianity. So perhaps after all one must go and read Marriage and Morals in order to understand what he meant here.
I won't comment on whatever Russell has foreseen and what he's missed, say, about the future of "democracy" and of "America". I will instead return to the comments of my initial text and the premise that led to this one.
The author was right in recognizing the gregariousness of stupid people as a so-called "fundamental trouble" of the modern world. This trouble is so fundamental that it made a living all throughout the twentieth century and it's still plaguing the twenty-first, actually even more so than before. The whole situation may be reduced to -- actually, it may be extrapolated from -- that old saying, "let an ill man lie in thy straw and he looks to be thy heir". The fundamental cause not even being so much that stupid folks are permitted to speak, nor even that those in power listen to them, but that the latter in fact encourage the former to "speak", that is, to generate loads and loads of noise, precisely because the stupid have nothing interesting to say and that through their sheer stupidity they are easier to steer towards some particular state of affairs or another. Divide et impera, as it were.
Now, as to who will "sink to the level of a horde of Goths" and when5, I suppose this remains to be seen. Meanwhile the problem remains a problem, indeed a fundamental one, and I believe that there's no solution in sight for now6.
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Perhaps also today, for all I know. I know, I know, it's Dunning-Kruger herpderpitude all the way down, now get over yourselves already. ↩
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For example; for another example. There are other copies of the same book on the site, both in scan and OCR. At least we have this much a decade later.
Of course, these links work today, I can't make any guarantees as far as tomorrow's concerned. ↩
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Have you ever been faced with a pack of dogs? Yes, a pack. I'm not referring to a generic group of dogs that happen to be walking on the same street with you. I mean a pack, in the same sense a bunch of wolves together form a pack. However intertwined the evolutionary history of man and dog might be, dogs ("humans", too, but that's besides the point) are deeply instinctual animals which, when left to their own devices, will revert to a behaviour specific to an earlier stage in the phylogenetic tree.
This is how we can explain (scientifically, yes?) why a pack of dogs won't give you the puppy eyes. If they're hungry enough, they'll tear you to pieces, what can they do. They're simply programmed by mother Nature to behave this way, whichever other way you're trying to picture this. ↩
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Yes, when, not if. ↩
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I agree that on long enough timescales the problem is more or less self-correcting; then again, you and I may be long gone by the fabled "moment of correction". ↩
Well I certainly wouldn't mind being swarmed by a horde of Goths, and they don't even need to sport the proverbial massive mammary endowment :V
Lol, that wave looks direly out of fashion. More likely you'll be swept by a horde of Manelars nowadays...
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