Alliance for Mystical Pragmatics

Alliance for Mystical Pragmatics

Harmonizing Evolutionary Convergence

Glossary Menus

stultify

The verb stultify entered the English language in the 1700s as a legal term, meaning ‘to allege or prove insane and so not legally responsible’. In the 1800s, it came to mean ‘to cause to be or appear foolish, ridiculous, or absurdly inconsistent; to reduce to foolishness or absurdity’, following the literal meaning of the word. During that century, reinforced in the 1900s, a further meaning of stultify came into practice: ‘To render useless, inoperative, ineffective, or futile; to deprive of freedom of action or originality; to frustrate, to stifle, to neutralize’.

In these times of unprecedented rates of evolutionary change, it is thus insane and extremely foolish to try to suppress creativity and our innate intelligence in order to preserve the status quo, as education systems endeavour to do. This is especially tragic, for intelligence is the ability to see both sides of any situation. And when intelligence is stultified, the result is inevitably conflict and suffering.

Etymology

Late Latin stultificāre ‘to make foolish’, from Latin stultus ‘foolish, silly, fatuous’, from PIE base *stel- ‘to put, stand’, in sense that it is foolish to be unmovable and uneducated, and French -fier, from Latin -ficare, from facere ‘to do, make’, from PIE base *dhē ‘to set, put’.

Common ancestor(s):