Playing Stupid
J.K. Rowling once wrote: “Never in my lifetime have so many people tried to signal their intellectual and moral superiority by playing stupid.” She nailed something that defines our age. The problem isn’t ignorance; it’s the performance of ignorance. We know better. Even children know better.
Windmills and CO₂. We build forests of wind turbines across Germany, tearing up landscapes, slaughtering birds, filling the horizon with metal. The story sold is: this will save the planet. The truth: Europe’s emissions are a fraction of the global picture, while China, India, and the rest of the developing world keep raising theirs. Europe could go dark tomorrow, and the curve wouldn’t bend. Everyone knows this. But still the game goes on: “Look how moral we are.” Playing stupid.
Migration. On paper, it looks so simple: population shrinking, import people, problem solved. Plug them in like USB sticks, instant workforce, instant renewal. But people aren’t USB sticks. As a social worker, sometimes working with refugees and migrants, I see every day how long and difficult the process of really arriving is. It’s not months. It’s not years. It’s generations. Education can be taught, but willingness is harder to shape. Too often, arrival is mistaken for integration: I’m here, so I belong. But belonging isn’t automatic; it demands contribution, exchange, commitment. The way it’s run now isn’t sustainable, and deep down, everyone knows it. Even a child can see through it. But the polite thing is to play stupid, to nod along, and pretend that society can carry an infinite weight without ever snapping.
Debt. Entire nations live on borrowed time and borrowed money. The figures aren’t hidden; they’re published in newspapers every week. The debts are unpayable, the arithmetic impossible. Yet politicians smile into the camera, promising new programs, more subsidies, endless safety nets. Playing stupid as though numbers have no gravity, as though the bill will never come due. Everyone can count, but we act as if two plus two equals five, because that answer feels kinder.
Crime. A man stabs someone in broad daylight, and by evening he’s out again. The papers report “mental instability,” the courts mumble about “social hardship,” and the politicians tell us crime is statistically falling. Ordinary people know better. They walk differently at night, avoid certain streets, swallow their anger when a shoplifter walks free. Everyone sees the fracture between law and justice. But instead of speaking it, society plays stupid, because to speak it would make you sound like the wrong kind of person.
Technology. We pretend that smartphones and social media are just tools: neutral, harmless, extensions of ourselves. Meanwhile our attention spans disintegrate, children’s mental health collapses, and politics gets poisoned by algorithms. We all know it’s not neutral. I’ve seen what it does to children firsthand: as a school social worker and in the mental hospital for kids where I worked. We all feel it every day. Yet we still buy the latest model, still scroll until dawn. Playing stupid, because admitting the truth would mean facing our own addiction.
Rowling is right: playing stupid has become a badge of virtue. To notice, to speak, to call things what they are, that makes you dangerous. But the real danger lies in the pretending. The house is on fire, and everyone nods politely, saying, “What a beautiful day.”