Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chan­cel­lor of Ger­many, the Luther­an pas­tor Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer took to the air­waves. Before his radio broad­cast was cut off, he warned his coun­try­men that their führer could well be a ver­führer, or mis­leader. Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s anti-Nazism last­ed until the end of his life in 1945, when he was exe­cut­ed by the regime for asso­ci­a­tion with the 20 July plot to assas­si­nate Hitler. Even while impris­oned, he kept think­ing about the ori­gins of the polit­i­cal mania that had over­tak­en Ger­many. The force of cen­tral impor­tance to Hitler’s rise was not evil, he con­clud­ed, but stu­pid­i­ty.

“Stu­pid­i­ty is a more dan­ger­ous ene­my of the good than mal­ice,” Bon­ho­ef­fer wrote in a let­ter to his co-con­spir­a­tors on the tenth anniver­sary of Hitler’s acces­sion to the chan­cel­lor­ship. “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.” When pro­voked, “the stu­pid per­son, in con­trast to the mali­cious one, is utter­ly self-sat­is­fied and, being eas­i­ly irri­tat­ed, becomes dan­ger­ous by going on the attack.”

Fight­ing stu­pid­i­ty, to Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s mind, first neces­si­tates under­stand­ing it. “In essence not an intel­lec­tu­al defect but a human one,” stu­pid­i­ty can descend upon prac­ti­cal­ly any­one: “under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, peo­ple are made stu­pid or that they allow this to hap­pen to them.” And it hap­pens most notice­ably when a par­tic­u­lar fig­ure or move­ment seizes the atten­tion of the pub­lic. “Every strong upsurge of pow­er in the pub­lic sphere, be it of a polit­i­cal or of a reli­gious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stu­pid­i­ty,” he writes. Since such phe­nom­e­na could hard­ly arise with­out blind­ly obe­di­ent mass­es, it seems that “the pow­er of the one needs the stu­pid­i­ty of the oth­er.”

You can see Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s the­o­ry of stu­pid­i­ty explained in the illus­trat­ed Sprouts video above, and you can learn more about the man him­self from the doc­u­men­tary Bon­ho­ef­fer. Or, bet­ter yet, read his col­lec­tion, Let­ters and Papers from Prison. Though root­ed in his time, cul­ture, and reli­gion, his thought remains rel­e­vant wher­ev­er humans fol­low the crowd. “The fact that the stu­pid per­son is often stub­born must not blind us to the fact that he is not inde­pen­dent,” he writes, which held as true in the pub­lic squares of wartime Europe as it does on the social-media plat­forms of today. “In con­ver­sa­tion with him, one vir­tu­al­ly feels that one is deal­ing not at all with a per­son, but with slo­gans, catch­words and the like, that have tak­en pos­ses­sion of him.” What­ev­er would sur­prise Bon­ho­ef­fer about our time, he would know exact­ly what we mean when we call stu­pid peo­ple “tools.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nature of Human Stu­pid­i­ty Explained by The 48 Laws of Pow­er Author Robert Greene

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

I’ve always admired peo­ple who can suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Cas­tle,” a term of dread for the many gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate agen­cies that have an inor­di­nate amount of pow­er over our per­ma­nent records, and that seem as inscrutable and chill­ing­ly absurd as the labyrinth the char­ac­ter K nav­i­gates in Kafka’s last alle­gor­i­cal nov­el. Even if you haven’t read The Cas­tle, if you work for such an entity—or like all of us have reg­u­lar deal­ings with the IRS, the health­care and bank­ing sys­tem, etc.—you’re well aware of the dev­il­ish incom­pe­tence that mas­quer­ades as due dili­gence and ties us all in knots. Why do mul­ti-mil­lion and bil­lion dol­lar agen­cies seem unable, or unwill­ing, to accom­plish the sim­plest of tasks? Why do so many of us spend our lives in the real-life bureau­crat­ic night­mares sat­i­rized in The Office and Office Space?

One answer comes via Lau­rence J. Peter’s 1969 satire The Peter Prin­ci­ple—which offers the the­o­ry that man­agers and exec­u­tives get pro­mot­ed to the lev­el of their incompetence—then, David Brent-like, go on to ruin their respec­tive depart­ments. The Har­vard Busi­ness Review summed up dis­turb­ing recent research con­firm­ing and sup­ple­ment­ing Peter’s insights into the nar­cis­sism, over­con­fi­dence, or actu­al sociopa­thy of many a gov­ern­ment and busi­ness leader. But in addi­tion to human fail­ings, there’s anoth­er pos­si­ble rea­son for bureau­crat­ic dis­or­der; the con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed among us may be for­giv­en for assum­ing that in many cas­es, insti­tu­tion­al incom­pe­tence is the result of delib­er­ate sab­o­tage from both above and below. The ridicu­lous inner work­ings of most orga­ni­za­tions cer­tain­ly make a lot more sense when viewed in the light of one set of instruc­tions for “pur­pose­ful stu­pid­i­ty,” name­ly the once top-secret Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al, writ­ten in 1944 by the CIA’s pre­cur­sor, the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS).

Now declas­si­fied and freely avail­able on the CIA web­site, the man­u­al that the agency describes as “sur­pris­ing­ly rel­e­vant” was once dis­trib­uted to OSS offi­cers abroad to assist them in train­ing “cit­i­zen-sabo­teurs” in occu­pied coun­tries like Nor­way and France. Such peo­ple, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, “might already be sab­o­tag­ing mate­ri­als, machin­ery, or oper­a­tions of their own ini­tia­tive,” but may have lacked the devi­ous tal­ent for sow­ing chaos that only an intel­li­gence agency can prop­er­ly mas­ter. Gen­uine lazi­ness, arro­gance, and mind­less­ness may sure­ly be endem­ic. But the Field Man­u­al asserts that “pur­pose­ful stu­pid­i­ty is con­trary to human nature” and requires a par­tic­u­lar set of skills. The cit­i­zen-sabo­teur “fre­quent­ly needs pres­sure, stim­u­la­tion or assur­ance, and infor­ma­tion and sug­ges­tions regard­ing fea­si­ble meth­ods of sim­ple sab­o­tage.”

You can read the full doc­u­ment here. Or find an easy-to-read ver­sion on Project Guten­berg here. To get a sense of just how “timeless”—according to the CIA itself—such instruc­tions remain, see the abridged list below, cour­tesy of Busi­ness Insid­er. You will laugh rue­ful­ly, then maybe shud­der a lit­tle as you rec­og­nize how much your own work­place, and many oth­ers, resem­ble the kind of dys­func­tion­al mess the OSS metic­u­lous­ly planned dur­ing World War II.

Orga­ni­za­tions and Con­fer­ences

• Insist on doing every­thing through “chan­nels.” Nev­er per­mit short-cuts to be tak­en in order to expe­dite deci­sions.
• Make “speech­es.” Talk as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble and at great length. Illus­trate your “points” by long anec­dotes and accounts of per­son­al expe­ri­ences.
• When pos­si­ble, refer all mat­ters to com­mit­tees, for “fur­ther study and con­sid­er­a­tion.” Attempt to make the com­mit­tee as large as pos­si­ble — nev­er less than five.
• Bring up irrel­e­vant issues as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble.
• Hag­gle over pre­cise word­ings of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, min­utes, res­o­lu­tions.
• Refer back to mat­ters decid­ed upon at the last meet­ing and attempt to re-open the ques­tion of the advis­abil­i­ty of that deci­sion.
• Advo­cate “cau­tion.” Be “rea­son­able” and urge your fel­low-con­fer­ees to be “rea­son­able” and avoid haste which might result in embar­rass­ments or dif­fi­cul­ties lat­er on.

Man­agers

• In mak­ing work assign­ments, always sign out the unim­por­tant jobs first. See that impor­tant jobs are assigned to inef­fi­cient work­ers.
• Insist on per­fect work in rel­a­tive­ly unim­por­tant prod­ucts; send back for refin­ish­ing those which have the least flaw.
• To low­er morale and with it, pro­duc­tion, be pleas­ant to inef­fi­cient work­ers; give them unde­served pro­mo­tions.
• Hold con­fer­ences when there is more crit­i­cal work to be done.
• Mul­ti­ply the pro­ce­dures and clear­ances involved in issu­ing instruc­tions, pay checks, and so on. See that three peo­ple have to approve every­thing where one would do.

Employ­ees

• Work slow­ly
• Work slow­ly.
• Con­trive as many inter­rup­tions to your work as you can.
• Do your work poor­ly and blame it on bad tools, machin­ery, or equip­ment. Com­plain that these things are pre­vent­ing you from doing your job right.
• Nev­er pass on your skill and expe­ri­ence to a new or less skill­ful work­er.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Decem­ber 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spook

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

The C.I.A.’s “Bes­tiary of Intel­li­gence Writ­ing” Sat­i­rizes Spook Jar­gon with Mau­rice Sendak-Style Draw­ings

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

When the CIA Stud­ied Psy­chic Tech­niques to Alter Human Con­scious­ness & Unlock Time Trav­el: Dis­cov­er “The Gate­way Process”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness