As IF Times

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.

If you were an alien who just showed up on this planet and took note of the activity among all regions of the globe, you would make some very strange observations.

You would notice that a very large part of the population live in rather mean circumstances, that is to say, with barely adequate housing, marginal sanitary systems and simple, perhaps difficult regimes of food acquisition.  For many in the non-affluent parts of the planet, not having a dirt floor means you have achieved a middle class existence.

A smaller part of the world’s people live in relative affluence with access to shelter, education and mobility considered rightful entitlements. As far as food acquisition, it’s more likely to be a Costco run than setting traps in the tall grass. For the sake of discussion, we can characterize the divide as between East and West, but this labelling refers to political rather than to geographic situation.  There are of course many people living on the margins in the affluent West and there is ample wealth in the non-West.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to characterize the divide as that between the affluent and the poor, for certainly, the majority of the planet can be considered ‘poor’ by the simple yardsticks mentioned earlier.  We use East and West only because most of the looney ideas that drive world events these days emanate from the ‘West’. Woke-ism, Gluten-free-ism, LGBT-ism, CRT-ism, Global Warm-ism, Covid-ism, all creations of the enlightened West.

If you were to peruse the narratives from people living in the privileged part of the planet, you would think that the lives of everyone on earth are threatened with dire existential issues from virtually every quarter.  This is not hyperbole at all.  Just watch TV news for one day and you will conclude that the people for whom the struggles of daily existence are non-issues appear to be constantly on the edge of extinction…at least in their minds. There is a disaster ready to befall mankind every hour, on the hour.  Of course, some of these imminent threats can take decades to happen, if and when they do.  We’re waiting for the asteroid crashing into Earth scare to rear its head.

The astute alien would notice that the high priests of doom are always from the affluent segment of the planet and, despite their doom and gloom messages, live rather well and in direct contrast to the messages they spew.  People buying beachfront properties while warning of sea level rises may be a dead give-away. Someone pays for this and you guessed it, it’s the people who don’t have as much as the high priests and who in fact contribute to their wealth.  The most conspicuous of these hypocritical charlatans are such as Al Gore and John Kerry who have been flying around on jets for years telling the poor people to pay more taxes to save the planet while their own circumstances improve exponentially.  No one seems to notice that the solution to almost all problems is through paying more taxes and fees.

If there’s one person that personifies the mentality of the West, it would be Taylor Swift.  This singer has made her fame and fortune bleating about how bad her experiences with boys have been but meanwhile continuing to produce songs about ‘toxic’ relationships and crying all the way to the bank.  It’s all about them. Many of those who live in affluent nations are hopelessly naïve or just plain narcissistic.  Their sheltered lives have no resonance at all to the vast majority of people on the planet. No one would even care if not for the fact that their delusions influence social policies which makes life miserable for everyone else.  As if using paper straws and bicycles will be of any benefit to the people living in Mogadishu.

Nothing succeeds like success and thus imitators have popped up in other facets of people’s lives as well.  The pharma industry have been carving out their niche now, selling the fear of illness and death to the masses.  We’ve been witness to the terrible destruction this industry can wreak over the past 2 years.  Even while the majority of people on the planet are struggling to even marginally improve their lives, those fortunate ones above them on the ladder of life will find ways to prevent their climb.  Restrictions and prohibitions and drugs for all….you know, to save mankind.

In the entitled nations, there is preposterous discourse about which bathrooms to use, whereas in much of the world, having an outhouse that’s shared by less than 10 people is a luxury.  In the wealthy, educated parts of the world, they have to wrestle with a plethora of new genders that are suddenly available.  Yep, mysteriously, in the rich nations, affluence has produced a bounty of new gender categories while the rest of the world lives with a measly 2.  Wouldn’t you know, the rich nations get more choice again! Funny that through the millennia, with mankind managing to get along with only 2 genders, the appearance of new ones just ballooned in the last 5 years!  What are the odds?

Back to our mythical alien, he (not them, their) would notice that the population in the poorer parts of the planet are striving to improve their life conditions for themselves and their families.  Yet the affluent parts of the globe seemingly pursue every avenue possible to destroy the societies and institutions that they’ve successfully built, pushing their societies headlong into self-destruction. The poor are building and the rich are destroying.  As the famous alien Mr. Spock would say, ‘fascinating…’