I am sure this is going to appeal to many here in Paradise because in it, Sagan predicts and describes with eerie precision the state of the world today. It's mind blowing. Almost all the things we discuss here regarding the nature of this current society, the frustrations and criticisms we level on nearly every thread, Carl Sagan predicted 25 years ago. I mean, I recently ranted on the vaccine thread to the effect, can't anyone think any more? Could anyone EVER think?
The first bit is about Star Wars where he shares keen observations that most of us probably never thought about. Just keep going until you get to the predictions.
I read the quote mentioned in the video a few years ago. One of my favorites:
Carl Sagan wrote:I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization.
- Will Durant "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist."
- Edwin Land
I read the quote mentioned in the video a few years ago. One of my favorites:
Carl Sagan wrote:I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
Yep, that's it and we're living in it.
LIGHT HAS A NAME
We only get stronger when we are lifting something that is heavier than what we are used to. ~ KF
I read A Demon Haunted World when I was just a wee lad of 26 or 27 years-old, while stationed at Fort Irwin, CA. It was the book that made my ‘shelf’ grown under the weight of my own misgivings about Mormonism. It was around that time I stopped attending church with any sort of regularity, because what I knew to be a sort of rational world view couldn’t jibe with my magical one. A few short years later I found myself on exmormon.org and that was that. Around the same timeI read Global Paradox by John Naisbitt and I had the sinking feeling we were headed toward A Brave New World, except much more dystopian. The sad and terrifying reality that the Internet hasn’t elevated most of humanity, but rather compartmentalized it into a thousand factions of insanity is something I have a hard time wrapping my soul around. Our human egos are such that we’d rather surround ourselves with enablers than people who challenge us, but I suppose that kind of tribalism is baked into our dna. Perhaps the few Black Swan events we’ve experienced recently, like Trump, or the pandemic, or UAPs, or record heat, will push us toward a more rational and pragmatic consciousness, but I’m not so sure. We’re pretty stubborn.
Circling back around to the paradox of the Internet and cloistered groups, one of the main problems in the world right now isn’t lack of information, but too much bad information - whether that's purposeful misinformation or just things that are wrong and get passed on without being checked depends on how jaded you are. Once people believe they can get solid and sourced answers from a certain source, they don’t really go beyond that level of effort to find out if the methods of information gathering are solid, or if algorithms are being adjusted by agenda-driven groups, they just default to it as a way of getting the answer to the specific question or questions that they want to ask. In other words, we’re all being manipulated by all sorts of people with all sorts of motivations to do so, and because we’re awash in a sea of BS, and because most of us lack the critical thinking faculties to even do competent research on a topic, even the best of us succumb to information fatigue and our own biases generally take over.
