Rafael "Ted" Cruz wins in Iowa. China releases startlingly clear pictures from their moon rover and Facebook erupts with comments like "where are the stars" and "why do we see tracks where there's no air or water" and "what if China pushes the moon out of it's orbit and it kills us all." We're reminded that our moon landings were all faked. And then of course comes the prizewinner: "How come they can do this and not us?"
People are stupid. People are barely more informed than chimpanzees and the United States Economy and Leadership thrive on making these people unaware of the magnitude of their ignorance and cognitive disability. These are the people who choose our leaders and legislators. These are the people who demand to force their demented, mean and superstitious beliefs on all of us. These are the people who wield a huge influence on the most powerful military the Earth has ever known.
The medium that lets you read these words serves more to place the ideas of idiots, madmen and deceivers in the same shop window as enlightened and informed truth than it does to educate us. I spent my formative years with the idea that nuclear and military technology was going to kill us all. Now I'm not so sure that we even need it as we find a way to destroy civilization and make Mankind great again - as we were when we spent our days wandering the rift valley, eating carrion and picking lice.
We were never great. We've always been a mean, cruel,larcenous and murderous lot of apes and our greatest ability is to ignore our idiocy while it's killing us.
It is the human curse. A curse that apparently has no chance of being broken.
ReplyDeleteIt is the perpetual struggle pitting evil against good. Ignorance against knowledge. Faith against reason.
Through it all humankind has managed to survive and advance and the odds are it will continue to do so.
Good, or virtue as I like to think of it, is to be found in ample quantities. If one looks for it.
Perhaps the effort has become too painful? Negativity breeds more negativity and it feeds off irself.
"It's just a few IQ points ... it's not the end of the world," said a state official to a mother in Flint, Michigan, whose child had tested for high levels of lead (source). Just a few IQ points and a few kids!
ReplyDeleteWhat is the difference between broccoli and snot, you ask? Hint: Kids don’t eat broccoli. A tissue can wipe away rivulets under a child’s nose, but how do we remove the soundbites, the spin, and the snots of depraved indifference from our public life?
Looking for virtue and acknowledging it exists is not indifference, depraved or otherwise. Every news cycle, every news publication, many internet weblogs spend more time in wallowing in the negativity of life than affirming that which is virtuous and good. What we need a a f*cking balance, if for no other reason than to maintain sanity. Such balance is SEVERELY LACKING, in my nwver humble opinion anyway.
ReplyDeleteYou have a point there. We may have too much happy talk news, all about trivia and pop culture and the latest offerings at McDonalds and from Apple, but since it's about ratings and because sex and scandal and political outrage drive ratings, we see and hear those things. Pissed off people leave the news on all day.The money gods are not served by enlightening and educating us.
DeleteI just now watched a video where college students were asked who won the Civil War. Only one knew. All the others didn't know when it happened, even the century it happened in or who was involved. They all recognized a character from a TV show and who Brad Pitt's wives were. Pop culture has eaten every other form of culture and I still think we're doomed.
Sigh.
DeleteI blame the educational system for the ignorance of college students who cannot answer the type of questions you pointed out. Most of us could answer those questions by the time we wer in 6th grade.
The dumbing down of America, at least when it come to history , the social sciences, and much more.
Atlas Shrugged quite some time ago methinks.