The power of collective stupidity
By Victor Angula /
There is none so much powerful in restraining political freedom and suffocating economic productivity as the power of collective stupidity.
While politics, more especially democracy, means that there must be leaders who must keep the people within the collective framework, collective frame of mind, and collective pursuits, something which is very important and necessary for society to go forward, there is also a danger and trap in collective stupidity.
Collective stupidity is when there is no freedom because the power of politics has suffocated all forces of individual thought and individual action in political offices – and in society. When everyone acts and thinks just within the collective framework like a flock of sheep.
Collective stupidity is when none wants to think critically, think independently and act decisively and courageously. Collective stupidity is when everyone has given over their minds and bodies to state or political or economic institutions.
The opposite of collective stupidity is collective intelligence.
While intelligence is an individual trait, just as courage and bravery an individual characteristic, collective intelligence is when individuals, who have thought out what is good or right or beneficial or productive, act together and stand together to fight for what is right, what is just, and what is collectively beneficial, collectively productive or collectively useful today and tomorrow.
In a free society anyone can think for themselves and act for themselves, working for their own good – that is individual intelligence. Collective intelligence is when individuals think individually but act collectively and work towards goals of common achievement.
Collective stupidity is when no one ever thinks, nor acts, for the common good – because no one is thinking or acting at all – because, apparently, the state is thinking and acting for all. Thus collective stupidity is when people give over their minds and bodies to the state institutions or the private institutions which control the economy.
When society has no free souls, collective stupidity breeds and thrives. In turn collective stupidity breeds poverty, economic inequality and unemployment which lead to decaying towns and failed states.
Collective stupidity is powerful because it can drag society into the abyss of poverty, unemployment and social ruin. Collective stupidity is just as powerful as collective intelligence, in that collective intelligence has the power to move society up to glorious heights of human achievement, while collective stupidity has power to take society in the opposite direction.
So that, while the Namibian nation has been politically free for many years, but poverty and unemployment and unproductivity keep going up every year, it perhaps is time to look whether our political freedom is being restrained and our economic productivity suffocated by none other than collective stupidity – or not.
– Victor Angula is the editor of Omutumwa News Online. victorangula@yahoo.com
