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Edited on Tue Oct-09-07 06:31 PM by sleebarker
proves your point?
Fear and hate are emotions, unpossibles.
Have you read Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World? It's like Gore's Assault on Reason, except better because I haven't had to quit reading it yet because I couldn't stomach one more repetition of the phrase "marketplace of ideas". (And yes, I am a Gore supporter. See, it doesn't have to mean "purist", whatever that means - although as far as I can see it means someone with principles and empathy for fellow beings.)
We don't have cable and just use the TV for gaming and watching DVDs, but some of the places we eat out at have TVs tuned to 24 hour sports channels. It's amazing, the boring pointless dreck they'll show to fill time. I can imagine the same sort of thing on the news channels.
I had written lots of stuff about why people are all anti-intelligent people, but then I realized you were really aiming more for anti-intelligence.
I think one part of it is that intelligence is seen as a status thing rather than just another genetic difference. Although actually most of the examples I could think of are genetic differences that are used for status, so whatever - obviously it's a general human species problem.
Anyway, no one wants to be seen as egotistical or as trying to be "better than" other people. Like the other day on a local radio show the hosts and their producer were coming up with answers to the question "What are five things that make you happy?" The produce had actual thought-out answers, as opposed to "new shoes" or something. The hosts were like, "Oh, you're all like, 'I'm better than these people. I don't even know them.' Why are you trying to make us look bad?"
It's like intelligence is associated with class. Which I don't understand because it's been proven that IQ has very little to do with success in life, especially when compared to the financial status of your parents, but hey. I mean, yeah, maybe if two people with different levels of intelligence were both born to rich parents the more intelligent one might make more money, although probably not because three fourths of the gifted population are introverts and it's hard to network and get the big jobs and clients and things if you're not comfortable with a lot of social interaction, but it's not like being highly intelligent is an automatic ticket out if you're born into poverty.
And of course the American education system has been dumbed down all to hell to keep us ignorant.
We're sort of like a self-regulating herd, aren't we? If anyone starts learning too much and getting weird ideas about freedom and equality and truth and stuff, we smack them down ourselves. It's like we're all cows milling around outside of the slaughterhouse and any cow that tries to jump the fence gets pulled back in by the other cows.
The only solution I've been able to come up with so far is to do what you can in your own circle of influence to promote the idea that knowledge and reason and critical analysis are good things and hope it spreads.
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