Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Malice stems from envy or great enmity based on particularity, peculiarity or contrasts. And this can be very dangerous. I fear envy more than I fear the insane. Insanity is unpredictable. But malice is sometimes not easily decipherable or easily exposed. It may sometimes absorb itself in its own destructive reasoning or narcissistic agenda. There is malice aforethought, harm by design, premeditated, deliberate, in cold blood.

Envy, as well as malice aforethought are great evils, great enemies of the good. They too, cannot be prevented by the use of force. They can be exposed. They can be protested. However, are they less dangerous than stupidity? Are we not otherwise defenseless against malice aforethought? Must we not do everything we can to protect the afflicted? To provide justice where justice is deserved?

This sense of unease he speaks of, how does it permeate? That the evil have the inkling thought they are evil? That the infection ravages every material cell of the infected? This unease—is it airborne and effective upon the infected and the victim?

Is it like a rattlesnake with its rattle locked against its head and in its head, rattleheaded, rattlebrained, whistling yap yap, rat-tat-tat symphonies of self-hating havoc of poisonous nothing—a point has two sides, its head to its tail by my feet? Or is it the unbrained rattlesnakemaster by my feet, never annual, angiospermous, never ligneous?

Where does one protest the rattle? By its tail? By its head much the same, helpless in its rattle tales and insipient rattling actions?

Stupidity is a mass grave immersed in its own self-appointing induction. Like the neural pathway—from head to tail, it ignites itself. Blameless? Is Bonhoeffer giving excuses for stupid people from an empathetic point of view? Is there some way to discern, design defenses against stupid people? They are in numbers and multitude, after all, the single most catastrophic source of human misery, evil harm and calamity.