If I had to point to one single factor in the persistence of stupidity in intelligent people, I think it could most easily be summarized as an unwillingness to suffer. All smart people, if they remain truly open, will find their way eventually. But countless people who make thinking the main purpose of their lives–academics and intellectuals–persist in stupidity in large numbers across long lifetimes.
I deal in aches daily I am long accustomed to, which I cannot avoid. Adding to these aches by purposefully opening myself to insights and ideas whose course I can’t predict, which go I know not where, is really no extra work. I do not have strong willpower, I don’t think: I am simply stuck in a moment, and one aspect of that moment is that confronting things which terrify most people is no extra work most of the time. In any event, I am in the habit of doing it.
I am watching Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou at the moment, and will now return, now that my tea is done.
I will comment too that much of the French New Wave, Existentialism, and literature and art generally in Europe since World War 1 has to be seen in the context of the horrors of war. No one escaped. If you, your father or grandfather, brother or son did not serve, those of people you know did. Many of them were scarred permanently psychologically, and shared their unprocessed grief and rage with everyone around them. They raised children, married wives, worked jobs. They took your money at the train station, sold you flowers, and walked their dogs in the parks.
Who we might become in a truly sustained peace, not filled with insane propaganda, it is hard to say, but I think the default of most human beings is peace and tranquility. We have savage beasts within us, but we are not savage beasts. We are humans, which makes us complex, with many possibilities.