Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.
The quote above is one of Stephen Vizinczey’s most memorable quips, and it rings more true today than it did decades ago. Vizinczey’s observation directly challenges the progressive sacred cow trumpeting education as the miracle solution for all idiocy, particularly for behavior lacking good sense or judgment. The insight requires no explanation or elaboration; its truth is on display everywhere. Positively fortified stupidity via education is the engine of the world’s modus operandi.
With that in mind, it is worth noting that Vizinczey was an even-tempered atheist. Thus, his perspective on stupidity and education is limited because it fails to consider the spiritual. He confines stupidity to the material realm, within which learning can offer no cure. A rather bleak prognosis, to say the least.
Stupidity takes on a different quality once the primacy of the spiritual is acknowledged. On the one hand, all sin is stupidity. On the other hand, not all stupidity is sin.
The Christian perspective includes possibilities and opportunities for spiritual learning and offers a cure for the stupidity that is sin.
Christ redeems sinners and forgives virtually every single stupid thought and action that opposes God and Creation, but only if sin -- the reality of that particular and curable form of stupidity -- is acknowledged and repented as sin and not merely as sinless stupidity.
The quote above is one of Stephen Vizinczey’s most memorable quips, and it rings more true today than it did decades ago. Vizinczey’s observation directly challenges the progressive sacred cow trumpeting education as the miracle solution for all idiocy, particularly for behavior lacking good sense or judgment. The insight requires no explanation or elaboration; its truth is on display everywhere. Positively fortified stupidity via education is the engine of the world’s modus operandi.
With that in mind, it is worth noting that Vizinczey was an even-tempered atheist. Thus, his perspective on stupidity and education is limited because it fails to consider the spiritual. He confines stupidity to the material realm, within which learning can offer no cure. A rather bleak prognosis, to say the least.
Stupidity takes on a different quality once the primacy of the spiritual is acknowledged. On the one hand, all sin is stupidity. On the other hand, not all stupidity is sin.
The Christian perspective includes possibilities and opportunities for spiritual learning and offers a cure for the stupidity that is sin.
Christ redeems sinners and forgives virtually every single stupid thought and action that opposes God and Creation, but only if sin -- the reality of that particular and curable form of stupidity -- is acknowledged and repented as sin and not merely as sinless stupidity.
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