22 Jun It’s stupid to show that you are intelligent (ROBERT MUSIL)
! If one investigates this question of why making a show of being clever should be considered stupid, the first
answer that comes to mind is one that seems to have the dust of ancestral
furniture about it, for it maintains that appearing not to be cle~er is the
better part of caution. This profoundly mistrustful caution, which today is,
at first glance, no longer even remotely comprehensible, probably derives
from situations in which it really was smarter for the weak person not to be
considered clever; his cleverness might be seen as endangering the life of the
strong person!
Stupidity, on the other hand, lulls mistrust to sleep; it “disarms,” as we still say today. Traces of such venerable craftiness and artful
stupidity are also still to be found in dependent relationships in which the
relative strengths are so disproportionately divided that the weaker person
seeks his s_alvation by acting more stupid than he is: these traces show
themselves, for instance, in the peasant’s so-called slyness, the servants
dealings with his culture-tongued master and mistress, the soldier’s relations
to his superior officer, the pupil’s to his teacher, and the child’s to its parents.
It irritates the person who has power less if the weak person is not able than
if he is not willing. Stupidity even drives the strong person “to despair,” in
other words, to what is unmistakably a condition of weakness!
On stupidity
ROBERT MUSIL
