Given that our ancestors have a multi-million year history of following their emotions, and that we only emerged from caves a few thousand years ago, and that science is only a couple of hundred years old, I would say things could be worse.

and religious fundamentalism is replacing fact based reality. Never would I have thought I'd see the return of the Dark Ages...

Doesn't seem like the enlightenment anymore, does it?

The new Antiquity--you can program more people at once now. Have we come full circle to where science/technology is the key to ignorance?

I know. In my lifetime it feels like the 60s and 70s were the enlightenment and now we're back in the dark ages. And for the same reason as the first dark ages--the church (religions collectively) purposely keeping information from the people. Information has become a dirty word. Look what's happening in our country--how hard our leaders are working to suppress information, to the point of flipping the bird to the Constitution. We've totally gone down the rabbit hole when it's harder to get correct facts when we have so much information available to us than it was when it was a chore to do discovery.

I still can't get over not being elected King of the World!

What is wrong with people today?!

You need 50 friends to appoint you.

I'd vote for him.*













*In exchange for a small fee.

Yeah, even a council of 50.

Sorry, but I voted for Leo DiC.

Oh, I can.

A lot of it can be understood by understanding how the brain works in people. It's not binary.

Prefrontal cortex and it's relation to emotions is interesting, and enlightening.

Human beings are not computers, are not robots.

That's a fact of life and will always be so.

Ignorance? I don't know the meaning of the word.

Superstition? My rabbit's foot has kept the Lava People at bay my whole life.

The problem is that one set of ignorance is replaced with another set of ignorance.

I think it's human nature to want to be "in the know".

It's often uncomfortable to say "I don't know." Many can hardly do it.

Being able to say those words honestly and often might be the first step in overcoming "ignorance and superstition."

Most humans have remained ignorant of acience throughout history. Most laymwn have only a light grasp of basic scientific concepts if that. Schools seem more interested in social engineering than advancing our species into a space faring and interplanetary species.

* Laymen - I hate this keyboard!

"Schools seem more interested in social engineering than advancing our species into a space faring and interplanetary species."

Really? Is that what public schools I am forced to pay for are about - playing around in space?

How about we get things right on earth first - you know, where there's oxygen and food and stuff.

Free Man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How about we get things right on earth first - you
> know, where there's oxygen and food and stuff.

That is an extremely short sighted view. If we hadn't developed weather satellites, we wouldn't be able to prove our damage to the atmosphere and ecological systems so easily.

By preparing ourselves to live in space, the Moon, Mars etc, we will learn how to filter/clean air, deal with toxins, create new ecologies, use less food & water, manage resources, recycle better etc which will all make life here BETTER.

This argument is probably somewhat akin to what the first ship builders encountered - "You can't go there, it's over the horizon."

Mother Nature doesn't care about silly lines on humans draw on maps. Things like borders and nationality and spheres of influence will become meaningless. The only thing that will matter is survival.

The hour is late and we've waited too long.

Given human nature I think our only real hope is atmospheric processing on a planetary scale. Even if that's possible we're still looking at least a couple of hundred years before we begin to turn things around if not more. Hopefully we can try to at least stabilise things.

Drought, floods, extreme weather and sea level rise are going to dislocate populations and that causes social unrest and wars.

Things will shift. Things will be hotter on average but weather extremes will become more commonplace at both ends of the spectrum -- too much rain, too little rain, too cold then too hot.

More CO2 helps plants grow but too much makes them have less nutritional value for humans. Trapped CH4 in the permafrost will leak out and make things worse.



Arctic areas will be come more temperate, temperate zones will be come more tropical, tropical zones will become more torrid.


We could have avoided all this. We were warned -- but too many of us didn't listen.

What I like about being a human being is that there are so many of us!

What I don't like about being a human being is that there are so many of us!



Having lived into my seventh decade, I remain optimistic that whatever will happen, will happen. How's that for facing the brutal nature of existence?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2019 04:22AM by Soft Machine.

Seventh decade or eighth? I thought you were just past 70.

Maybe this is the equivalent of a woman insisting she's 29?

Dog years, LW, dog years.

I see!

You are correct! Since I'm over 70, I have completed seven decades and am into my eighth decade! Johnny, what did I win?

I dunno, Pa. But you'd better talk to the pastor about it!

there needs to be an output of information and for it to be available for all people. Free internet service would be awesome! Or at least the ability to get Fox or CNBC news feeds and the stock market.

But as for ignorance, what horrifies me is that we are spending so much on public education yet getting such poor results. We as a society can't decide what's most important for teenagers to know, so they are stuck getting common core. Too many are graduating without any idea of what they are good at having spent all their time learning crap they'll never use, They don't know how to make life choices, what is right and wrong. They know nothing about American Exceptionalism and how to be civic, how to be independent.

Yes our tax dollars are funding institutions preparing kids to be ignorant and superstitious.

It seems to me that ignorance and superstition are a baked-in feature of being human.

Individuals may be informed and rational, and those individuals are our saving grace; but my sense is that group-think is, and always has been, at odds with individual thought.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2019 08:56AM by GregS.

Oddly, or, I guess not oddly, the more educated, the more intelligent, then--- the more tools one has to employ bias motivated reasoning--unconsciously.


Dealing with the facts consciously may foster cognitive-dissonance and cause discomfort, but dealing unconsciously aids bias motivated reasoning, which may allow a feeling of peace as in "ignorance is bliss."

So on the one hand you have the "smart" who are able to rationalize self-serving beliefs, as Society is becoming so dumbed-down, while demanding more and more that the world cater to them, that any day now we are going to be hearing some complain that they are the victims of "ignorancephobes."

I'm not as concerned about us still fighting it, as that we seem to be celebrating it.

Indeed.

That is the most distressing part.

What's really sad is that in many of our states - including both the state I grew up in and the one I am living in now - superstition is poised to become a major cause of birth defects in the 21st century.

Shudder. That is something I don't think a lot of people realize.

One more concern: There won't be any more money aliquoted to care for the potential rise in birth defects.

(I'll stop there before it goes off the rails.)


All we have to do to know superstition and ignorance is alive and well is look around and in the mirror. Stupid humans.