As IF Times

From our history lessons in school, we learned (or used to learn) about the various epochs of mankind.  First there was the pre-historic age, wherein no one wrote anything down, so there really was no record, hence, pre-historic. From this period of unknown duration, man figured out how to make tools out of stone and thus animals could be hunted and hostile neighbors put at bay. This was of course, the Stone Age.  Once people starting posting graffiti on cave walls, the era of the caveman was underway.

Then, someone figured out how to harness the power of fire.  This enabled people to not only achieve better tasting food, but also created the ability to make weapons by using fire to melt metal.  Hence the Bronze Age came into being as people created armies with weapons and shields.  Now, societies could go about taking over other civilizations that were less advanced. Thus, civilizations spread through military technology.  As time went on, human ingenuity invented means by which life could be more productive and thus the age of iron and steam emerged which enabled heavy industry.  By now, things started to really take off for mankind.

As industrialization matured, more advances in technology occurred including the discovery and harnessing of electricity, the Electrical Age and all the way up to the very recent Computer Age and the related, Information Age.  All of these advances in human knowledge were created to make lives easier, less costly and more enjoyable for all.

Oddly, at this juncture, civilization seems to have paused, if not actually regressing, into the era that we’re in now; the Karen Age. In a throwback to a time when information and knowledge were the purview of the religious sect to be doled out in a manner beneficial to them, we appear to be regressing to this era once again.  Lives seem to be harder, more costly and less enjoyable.

This time, the self-appointed distributors of knowledge aren’t necessarily even educated….in anything.  The common denominator is that they profess their expertise and righteousness in pushing some narrative dear to their particular sensibilities. They cannot prevent themselves from sharing this worldview with others because of their own inflated sense of self-worth.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  We were supposed to be in the Age of Aquarius: harmony and understanding, enlightenment etc. Instead, we’re in the age of Karen, the time of people telling us what to think and how to behave.

Someone like Al Gore may come to mind, but he’s not quite the profile of a Karen. Gore goes about his climate change nonsense honestly; that is, he’s in it for the money.  He doesn’t personally believe in the hoax that he pushes any more than he believes in walking to all of his conferences.

No, the Karens of this era are those fanatically pushing their worldview and will upon others because of their sense of entitlement and notions of social piety.  They are the exact opposite of the liberal notion of live and let live.  They have appointed themselves guardians of what is (in their minds) acceptable behavior. I read somewhere that these people believe that they’re the gatekeepers of one giant HOA.

Given that the majority of popular media is their soapbox, virtually any issue can be Karen-ed. It would be impossible to list all the ways that this oppressiveness has affected our daily lives since most people aren’t even aware of their effects.

From demonizing plastic straws, gasoline engines and gas stoves to red meats, paper cups, shopping bags and unethical coffee, people’s lifestyles are adversely affected by the zeal of the entitled set. It is the large scale life equivalent of ‘you can’t park here’.

We are convinced to accept that sexuality is a social construct in humans, not a natural one as occurs in 99.99% of nature’s creatures.  We are told that accepting a certain level of crime in our lives is all part of living in a civilized society.  In fact, it’s not even permissible to defend ourselves against crime.  Classic books are banned regardless of their literary merits because some offensive words or situations depicted, by today’s standards, are offensive.

And who exactly defines what’s offensive? Well, the Karens of course, because only they possess the moral compass by which we must all comply.  We could all easily ignore the bleats of the Karens in our daily lives if not for the fact that they’ve come to be fully represented in our governments.  Now it’s not just a matter of choice, it’s a matter of state edict as to your compliance with their worldview.  Cleverly, all edicts are framed as in the “best interests of the public’.

Ironically, when confronted with the nonsense of their edicts, they cling to their insistence that they are doing good for their subjects.  The very recent, and in fact ongoing vaccination and restriction edicts were prime examples of this mindset.  Governments are supposed to manage the moving parts of a nation, not determine what foods to eat or what cars to drive. They would be offended if their actions were compared to those of the totalitarian states they profess to abhor…even as the parallels are unmistakable.

It might do good to remember that the oft despised Nazi regime used this phrase as justification for many of their actions; “Fur Ihre Sicherheit”, which translates into, “It’s for your safety”.  Given that today’s compliant populations have boundless tolerance for inconvenience, I suspect that the Karen Age will last quite a bit longer until the willingness of people to go along to get along runs out.  History shows that when this happens, the culture changes severely.

I’ve spilt plenty of virtual ink discussing the evolution of the accessibility of information to the masses over the course of history.

There have always been those in any given society who had preferential access to knowledge, or at least information, that they used to great advantage over those less in the know.  For the longest time and even up to present day, religious practitioners were the arbiters of information and truth.   Entire civilizations were founded and run by those with the power conferred upon them by a religious hierarchy and this continues to this day.  Thus, access to information and knowledge was the key to population control.

This model works pretty well since being the ultimate authority on information and truth means that it wasn’t necessary to actually prove anything.  To paraphrase the utterance of Al Gore, the truth is like gravity….it just is.  Of course we know what happened over time.  Some of the great thinkers of humanity decided to take more objective measures on truth and reality.  Men of great intelligence and bravery dared to challenge the established truths of their time and thus their revelations laid the foundation for modern education. Men such as Da Vinci, Copernicus and Galileo showed that knowledge can be empirically achieved and not just by taking someone’s word for it.

Most of everything which we consume and from which we benefit in our daily lives depends on empirical science.  Observations are made about our environment, they are measured, there are experiments and then there are conclusions which become universal truths.  Notwithstanding that in modern times, the notion that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is a racist construct to some, this does not change the fact that 4 is always the answer when 2 plus 2 is the question.

The entire point of education is to spread the ability to think and act rationally via legitimate processes of thought.  It is therefore of the greatest irony that despite mankind having the greatest access to information ever in human history, that populations are as clueless as those who used to depend on the town gossip for their truths.  The modern purveyors of ‘truth’ are often the most vapid.

Part of this paradox lies with what actually constitutes an education.  Whereas once rational processes were taught at schools, now we see more and more squishiness on topics of knowledge.  Relativism is as important in education as are the lenses through which education is transmitted.   At the end of the process, we get people who are pretty sure that 2 plus 2 equals 4, but we also have those who think that this result has an asterisk.  Both of these constituencies have the same nominal degree, but both operate under quite different realities.  Thus, entire populations emerge, notionally ‘educated’ populations, who can never agree on a plainly evident logical construct.   You cannot easily make good policy decisions if there are those who think 2 plus 2 contributes to Global warming.

Unfortunately, in a free society, such people can, and often do, rise to positions of political influence which detrimentally affects everyone.  Anyone who was perhaps a drama teacher or part time snowboard instructor, could impress their version of 2 plus 2 upon a population vastly more educated and qualified than them to make big picture decisions.

So it appears as if we’ve come full circle on the distribution of information and knowledge.  The only difference is that this time people actually know the truth and are able to verify thus for themselves….should they choose.  Oddly, large numbers don’t.  They instead rely on the utterances of those unable to give an answer to a simple 2 plus 2 question.  Entire societies have been run like this for the better part of two generations.  They have allowed the least qualified to make policy. Given the tack taken by governments of many nations on numerous favored woke issues,  we can easily see the day when we don’t even need schools, the government will just tell you all you need to know in official pamphlets….or they could employ a national broadcasting corporation.  As is already true in nations such as China, we can see the circumstance when disagreeing with the official narrative is made illegal; but at least they help to ‘re-educate’ you if you so stray.  Or Canada, where they close your bank accounts down if you don’t agree with their positions.

I mentioned some of the great thinkers of history above as being foundational for rational thinking and education which led to the creation of great civilizations.  But it’s also thanks to authors such as George Orwell and Ayn Rand to remind us that the natural inclination of man to control others by information or misinformation is always at work.  Julian Assange has proved this. There may be the equivalents of Da Vinci and Galileo somewhere today, great thinkers who may yet lead civilization again, but in the meantime, the mental midgets…er, little people,  are running the show.