Shark versus Chalkboard Proof
Let's workshop this poem about how stupidity can be a greater enemy to humanity than ignorance and evil
Shark versus Chalkboard Proof
While potent enough to counteract
ignorance and evil, reason alone fails
against an enemy deadlier than both:
stupidity (a defect of sharp and dull)—
deadlier, yes, at least when we exclude
some evil super-mind who endeavors
to turn us all, say, into paperclips.
For when struck with an argument
at odds with its self-satisfaction,
or when confronted with information
at odds with its prejudice, stupidity
(top worker ant for evil) lashes out
if not with shouts or shots then—
to use the deaf-ears expression
too prevalent among today’s youth
ever on guard against “triggers”—
with the debate-resistant slogan
that in its safe-space mouth carries
a not-so-sub subtext of xenophobia
under a shoddy guise of tolerance:
“But that’s just, like, your opinion.”
This does not mean only violence
will cure what is in truth lawn grass
(not just weeds)—assuming, that is,
that quarantine and brainwashing
(through surgery, meds, hypnosis),
whether postemptive or preemptive,
need not really amount to violence.
This poem is unpublished
Photo of the anti-Nazi dissident Bonhoeffer, who before being tortured to death by Nazis insisted in his jail that stupidity was a greater threat than evil lifehacker.com/why-stupidity-is-more-dangerous-than-evil-1850111074