A universal characteristic of relationships within human society is that the oppressed, subordinate, exploited are portrayed as intellectually inferior: as irresponsible, incapable of taking care of themselves, and incompetent in organizing their community. This applies both to relationships among individuals and among communities. And this portrayal is not false: the subordinate person indeed typically behaves irresponsibly, incompetently, and incapably—in short, they behave stupidly. The question of why this is the case, often prompted by frustration over the inability to change it, has a long history in human thought. If something that seems universal is even possible to change, the change certainly involves understanding the phenomenon and raising awareness of it. This is my small contribution toward that goal.
In Transactional Analysis, a school of thought in psychology, three types of ego states are recognized: the child ego state (emotionally authentic yet vulnerable, seeking gratification), the parent ego state (bearing values, hence supportive or judgmental), and the adult ego state (rational, objective, balanced, fair). The former two have been argued to be less stable and less prone to rational perspectives than the adult state.
In social relations, the parent-child states dynamics may relate to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's views on stupidity. Bonhoeffer observed that stupidity is a social rather than an individual-psychological phenomenon. He spoke of willful ignorance: people willfully ignore epistemic and ethical considerations to conform to authority. This kind of stupidity flourishes in contexts of existential threat and strong social pressure. Mimicking th parent-child relationship, where parents take existential responsibility for their children, the oppressed pass the responsibility for their existence to the authority and take the roe of the intelectually inferior. Reason demands coherence and consistency, while authoritarian environments force people to believe what is not logical or true and to do what is not ethical. Assuming stupidity resolves the tension.
Pushing this reasoning further, stupidity is the main human sign of submission. In situations of strong subordination, the subordinated individual must play stupid. Signs of intelligence, lucidity, and knowledge are signs of insubordination. Do not think. Obey! The stupid cannot bear responsibility for their acts and existence; they relinquish their responsibility to the authority. They obey, trusting that the authority will ensure their survival.
This aspect of human nature, built into our genes, evolved in relations between individuals or small groups. The growth of human population and technological advances, especially in mass communication, have created new contexts for stupidity as submission, targeting large groups: classes, nations, identities.
In other words, the very fact that a transactional relationship is asymmetric—one group exerting power over another—results in the latter adopting stupidity within the relationship. Once adopted in certain domains, stupidity spreads to others, as it is difficult to switch from stupidity to intlectual competence while switching btween domains. Stupidity is not easily contained.
History is written by the victors, discourses are constructed by the dominant. It is a general tendency of human cultures to view the stupidity induced by exerted power as a choice of the oppressed. The causal relation is inverted: the oppressed are not stupid due to asymmetric transactional relations; they are perceived as choosing stupidity over reason out of afinity for it or laziness, thereby justifying their oppression. The oppressor accepts the burden of responsibility for them, claiming all profit in that relation is justified because without them, the oppressed, who refuse to take responsibility for themselves, would not survive.
This dynamic is institutionalized in the gifting of ideology. The oppressor claims to have been chosen to be given the universal ideology. Or that they discovered, or developed it. And this is what makes them superior. Whether it is the affinity of the gods, Hellenic cultural integration, the legal state, Christianity, Islam, or liberal progressivism, the ideology belongs to the oppressor, who generously shares it with the oppressed. The fact that the oppressed fail to fully adopt the ideology (not just because it is incompatible with their culture but also because the arbiter is the oppressor) justifies their oppressed status. If they tried a bit harder, if they were not so lazy and corrupt, essentially: if they were not stupid, they could live the blessed life, but they choose not to.
In this dynamic, especially in the complex environment of the globalized world and mass media, the policies of the oppressor develop to maximize the stupidity reaction of the oppressed. This, in turn, means maximizing justification of oppression and manipulation over the oppressed. Essentially, it maximizes exploitation and comfort for the oppressor.
The dynamics of stupidity are not sustainable: they are shaped in growing bubbles that eventually burst. The gap expands, the truth undrlying the discourse is forgotten, the oppressor grows tired of the responsibility they robbed from the oppressed, and their appetites grow beyond sustainability. They begin to clash over the oppressed. The oppressed lose the guarantees of survival. This leads to catastrophic events that reset some dimensions of the process. Then the same process, with the same outlook, starts over again.
Not just ethically, but also pragmatically, stupidity is the seed of doom. The more stupidity, the less responsibility, satisfaction, and motivation. The more stupidity, the more conflict and violence. The more stupidity, the closer the collapse. It is our meta-responsibility not to give up responsibility. For the likely oppressor, it means not taking responsibilities away, not exploiting and oppressing. For the likely oppressed, it means rejecting stupidity, facing the reality and seeking the ways to improve it.
Returning to Transactional Analysis, the question of highest interest can be formulated as: Is human society, at the group level, limited to the two imbalanced roles: the parent and the child state, the oppressor and the oppressed? Does it have the capacity to develop adult-state relations? And if the answer is positive, what is the way to achieve this?
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