Towards a Phenomenology of Deep Stupid

The widespread emergence of Deep Stupid threatens to become the defining aspect of our era. Not to be confused with “stupid” as a byproduct of innate cerebral defects or low IQ, Deep Stupid is a self-reinforcing cognitive and behavioral state that can be found in persons who at one time may have exhibited above-average intelligence. Nor is Deep Stupid synonymous with ignorance or the mere absence of data or information so much as it is a predilection for embracing self-contradictory, patently wrong, or absurdly caricatured ideas. Deep Stupid means not only being wrong but passionately so and about several things.

The prevalence of Deep Stupid is evidenced everywhere:

• Black lives matter but we must not notice much less count those violently ended by other black people and “All lives matter” is a hateful racist statement.
• Contrary to the overwhelming volume of data, mask mandates and vaccines prevent the spread of COVID and those who disagree are no better than murderers.
• Some people with penises and testosterone-influenced muscle development are women. It is a form of genocide to disagree.
• All failed predictions, obviously wrong causal attributions, and the horrific costs and abject practical failures of green energy do not change the fact that there is an immediate climate crisis. Everyone who disagrees is a mass murderer.

Deep Stupid is not just about getting facts wrong but living in a state of hatred for anyone who disagrees or merely notices inconsistency or contradiction.

Is there a psychosocial root cause for Deep Stupid? A possible Freudian insight may be that the formation of the superego (conscience and standards) is vastly better and healthier if a young person has actual close adult models, a father in particular. In the absence of a father, the superego is developed more by imagination than personal experience and can become an inhuman, scary figure. Exhibit A is from The Words, the autobiography of the egocentric Marxist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who was raised by a single mother under the eye of a strict but very distant grandfather:

For several years longer, I kept up public relations with the Almighty; in private, I stopped associating with Him. Once only I had the feeling that He existed. I had been playing with matches and burnt a mat; I was busy covering up my crime when suddenly God aw me. I felt his gaze inside my head and on my hands; I turned round and round in the bathroom, horribly visible, a living target. I was saved by indignation; I grew angry at such a crude lack of tact and I blasphemed…. He never looked at me again.

Normal kids react in a more balanced way to feeling guilty about rule-breaking and do not become narcissistic atheists in a single screaming fit at age five. But what if instead of normal kids, there were many little Jean-Pauls out there who hate the very idea of conscience and any and all masculine authority figures who carry around all that traditional morality, science, thrift, common sense, and notions of duty just to be mean to Jean-Paul? The scope of rejection and resentment and the degree of characterological deformation could be horrific.

In the case of female instances of Deep Stupid, perhaps we should give a nod to Carl Jung who theorized that the “shadow” (the opposites of the traits we consciously express) and our personal unconscious together present as being of the opposite sex. For males, this is the anima; for females, the animus. A mentally and spiritually healthy woman develops independence, confidence, and assertiveness without losing femininity as a result of her productive relationship with her animus, borrowing masculine traits as needed as it provides an ongoing “you go, girl.” In contrast, an “animus-possessed” female begins to exhibit a caricature of masculine thinking, given to supposed certainties forcefully expressed with authority but without logical coherence and without tacit affection or affirmation.

Can we say that Jung got all that anima-possessed or animus-possessed stuff wrong as we witness hordes of loud, angry women fiercely wedded to bumper-sticker-level ideas and brain-dead causes and as we also deplore the sight of all those young men who demand that their feelings and fears be given broad deference by professors, deans, and employers?

The problem is less that so many Americans are currently espousing astonishingly counter-factual ideas (e.g., that Hamas is not a depraved death cult and that there was once a Muslim Arab country called Palestine) but that so many have programmed themselves to accept whatever bad ideas can fit into social-media-sized bites with no context, nor with any logical nexus to anything factual, ethical, aesthetic or more fully human. They are orcs waiting for their Sauron.

Truths do not contradict other truths. Lies don’t much care about contradicting truths or other lies. The psychology, the cognitive habits, and the communication patterns of Deep Stupid are far more amenable to lies and hate than to truth and virtue. Merely stupid people can be guided by smarter people of good will. Deep Stupid people manage to be prideful (in the biblical sense) of their error and evince an immunity to reason and dialog.