“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 Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Random House, 1996
if he said that 18 years ago he would've been dismissed as a hater
ReplyDeleteI posted this on Facebook some time ago, and a number of my "friends" were quick to attack me for "using college language just to confuse everyone". And, yes, they were poorly educated folks, mostly my small town Hoosier family members, who are now staunchly MAGA. I recently convinced my very highly educated, erudite, retired attorney step sister to watch Idiocracy, and she repeatedly paused it, turned to me with her mouth agape and just shook her head. Le sigh.
ReplyDeleteThis quote pops-up from time to time. And it's worth reading every time. Few are in love with Ted Kaczynski's methods, but his message was not that far from Sagan's. And there are plenty of more peaceful souls that have tried to put humanity on a different, less materially addicted path; that which closely parallels this dumbing down: Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and E.F. Schumacher come to mind. Oh, and around Christmas, it might be worth thinking about the radically anti-material message in the four Gospels.
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