EAN: 9781509563494

Bilder-Quelle: averdo

We are living it is often said in a golden age of stupidity in which boneheaded mendacious politicians get elected by voters who've become too mindless to realise their interests are ill-served by narcissists while vapid social media influencers corrupt their no-less witless followers with groundless conspiracy theories and eye- wateringly foolish takedowns of scientific expertise. Our time one might be forgiven for thinking   is one in which the fool's gold of stupidity has become a desirable commodity a must-have with bumbling celebrities venerated more than those who have more than two brain cells to rub together.  In this book Stuart Jeffries analyses how we got into this parlous state and wonders if Schopenhauer was right in contending the stupid like the poor are always with us or if rather stupidity is like Japanese knotweed   difficult to root out but should be exterminated with extreme prejudice. He considers what some of the greatest of human minds - Socrates Buddha Voltaire Arendt and  among others - have to tell us about the slippery nature of stupidity.  During a narrative that takes us from ancient Greece to artificial intelligence and accompanied by such heroes of stupidity as Flaubert's double act Bouvard and Pécuchet Jeffries casts a sceptical eye on attempts to root out stupidity by such means as IQ tests eugenics gene editing and racist education policies   finding each attempt to be more stupid than the stupidity they were ostensibly devised to eradicate. If today we are living in a fool's paradise has our species become too dim to learn anything from its rich history of folly?

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06.11.2025 um 11:30 Uhr

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