The Case for Stupidity in Asimov’s The Gods Themselves
Every one of us encounters stupidity on a daily basis. The clash with stupidity crushes the soul. We feel — and we are often told by others — that the world is full of idiots. Hand to heart, has that thought not occurred to you at least once in your life? Yet, it is clearly not possible for everybody else to be stupid. What if we, our precious and utterly genius selves, are also stupid?
What follows is my brief and somewhat ironic summary of the book, just in case you haven’t feasted your eyes on it yet. If you have had the pleasure, skip ahead!
If The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov is to be described in a single word, it would be: confusing. There is just so much that happens. The book itself is split into three sections containing three separate but loosely connected plots. In short, the first part deals with the world of men, where contact is made with beings from another universe that they call para-men. Men and para-men can’t communicate directly, but the para-men manage to initiate the construction of a wonderful device that makes the exchange of material between the universes possible and becomes an inexhaustible source of energy. Yet, this part is dominated by conflicts among the individual scientists and, in the end, it is the one who is universally considered the stupidest who wins and gets to run the project. The other scientists then continue working on trying to prove that he is wrong and the world will end in a cataclysmic disaster because of it.
The second part deals with the world of para-men who are not exactly men but strictly hierarchically organised jelly blobs who just float around having emotional trauma. Asimov spends an incomprehensible amount of time outlining the completely irrelevant emotional and sexual dynamics of the blobs in excruciating detail.
However, the main point is that the blobs are trying to make the men’s universe explode because they are smart enough to do it, and they sure could use the energy the explosion would provide. It is an existential question for them because the sources of energy in their universe are growing colder, and they can’t reproduce.
Finally, the third part is set a couple of decades after the events of the first part in the colony on the moon. Once again, Asimov has a good time writing about the social mores of these Lunies like walking around naked a lot and talking about how irrevocably ugly Earthies are. In the end, one of the disgruntled scientists from part one immigrates and manages to prove the theory that the fantastic new device is actually going to destroy everything, and, more importantly, invents a new device that counters its effects. World saved.
Regardless of the plot, the three plots of the book are built around a single phrase uttered at the end of part one. Each part is entitled by a section of this: Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain?
As Asimov writes himself, the line comes out of Shiller’s play The Maid of Orleans, published in 1801. The play itself is a play on the theme of the Joan of Arc story. In the play, Joan is a fierce warrior but falls in love with an English soldier at one point and spares his life. The whole play is about the tension between two contrasting aspects: her moral and spiritual duty and her physical. As you might expect, it is the first that prevails in the end. There’s no question mark in Shiller.
Perhaps, it is this very lens of a struggle within ourselves, our inner idiocy that Asimov is pointing to with this pretty in-your-face reference. The main characters of the plot Hallam (the stupid scientist), Denison (the rationally dissenting scientist), and Lamont (the emotionally dissenting scientist) read almost like the same person. Hallam is so blinded by the success that was handed to him by the para-men that he ignores anything that might endanger it. On the other hand, Lamont uncovers that the project may be flawed and blows his casket when Hallam doesn’t take him seriously. He does find idiocy and the fight against it extremely motivating though.
By God, I’ll do something even that knot-head will have to get straight
It was then that Lamont’s resentment built up to the point where merely proving himself right was no longer sufficient. He yearned to smash Hallam, destroy him utterly.
However, his ferocious attempts to disapprove Hallam seem to go nowhere and Lamont becomes pretty depressed at the end of part one.
It’s really disheartening, the universal stupidity. I think that I wouldn’t grieve at mankind’s suicide through sheer evilness of heart, or through mere recklessness. There’s something so damned undignified at going to destruction through sheer thick-headed stupidity. What’s the use of being men if that’s how you have to die. … I ought not to be fired for the great crime of being right.
The crime of being right feels like something we have all committed at one point or another, haven’t we?
Dennison, the scientist described as natively brilliant, only appears at the start where he is sidelined by the stupid Hallam and at the end where–in the silent space of the Moon — he solves the problem by building on the work that Lamont had done. Crucially, he also shares the following insight:
At the age of twenty-five I was still such a child that I had to amuse myself by insulting a fool for no reason other than that he was a fool. Since his folly was not his fault, I was the greater fool to do it. My insult drove him to heights he couldn’t possibly have scaled otherwise…
What is the point about stupidity then? Within each and every one of us, there is the great stupid one, the ego that won’t rest until it gets to bask in the glory of achievement that it rightly deserves. There’s also the rational one. The one who knows the truth but can’t really do anything on its own. He is the powerless God that contents in vain. Unless there’s emotion. Emotion is a powerful motivator. It is emotion that gives the rational one the material that he needs to contend with stupidity successfully.
In the end, I don’t think that Asimov is arguing against the singular victory of the rational and spiritual along the lines of Shiller’s Joan. In the blob part of the book, the blobs only actually exist in triads of Rationals, Parentals and Emotionals. Rationals are the ones that move civilisation forward, Parentals are the ones that blindly keep civilisation propagating at all costs, but neither one can do what they need to do without the energy that the Emotionals provide in the connection. The three actually become one at the final stage of their development. Similarly, Hallam, Lamont and Dennison were all necessary for humanity to secure a safe and endless source of power that will keep humanity going.
Perhaps the moral of the story is simple. We are all a bit stupid. Stupidity is necessary. It motivates you, drives you, gives you incentive. A bit of stupidity moves the world along. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature. We all need to be a bit stupid and continue to fight stupid. If you are just stupid, the world will explode. If you are just a cold genius, you will make another world explode. If you just float around experiencing emotions and doing nothing, other people will make worlds explode.
Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the very gods.
Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,
Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
Wise foundress of the system of the world,
Guide of the stars, who art thou then if thou,
Bound to the tail of folly’s uncurbed steed,
Must, vainly shrieking with the drunken crowd,
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss.
Accursed, who striveth after noble ends,
And with deliberate wisdom forms his plans!
To the fool-king belongs the world.
(Shiller. The Maiden of Orleans — 1801)
