From: ankara@baynet.net
Date: Sun Aug 17 2003 - 09:31:47 MDT
Hi Samantha and EOL,
>> Religions are good at filling or seeming to fill this void. Add to
>> this
>> increasingly rapid change and economic uncertainty and new post 9/11
>> levels
>> of fear and you have a very potent brew.
Is American 'culture' mind-numbing escapism for the dumbed down? Which
came first, the hungry 'void' or the predigested pap? The consumer or
the goods? The 'shock and awe' or the religious revival?
Is school where one learns to not-think: how to be a good citizen (a
member of the virtual herd of mindless consumer servants)? Are
intellectuals 'bad' citizens, a danger to the established order?
>> Polls of the lack of knowledge about the world among Americans, even
>> very
>> simply knowledge your average 6th grader would know, are commonplace.
There's an enlightening essay "Against School How public education
cripples our kids, and why" by John Taylor Gatto. [Sept issue of
Harpers]
Where reason wilts, religion sprouts. Religion is a massive cerebral
arrest at reason's dead end. If spirituality is an endless solo
evolution of reason, isn't religion its antitheses?
Fear, (ensuring one cannot understand), seems a most potent tool of
control and exploitation.
>> And yes, it also tends toward distrust of and anger toward the
>> intellect as much of the imbibed intellectual fashion of the day
>> taught fundamental meaninglessness and subjectivity and arbitrariness
>> of all values and value systems. The distrust of the intellect is
>> because of what
>> the intellectuals tell them and because using the intellect would
>> seriously
>> threaten the new found comfort memes.
>> - samantha
Fear of looking stupid, feeling stupid.... crippling, demoralizing
lesson learned at school, re-enforced at home.
~ankara
Look Ma, I'm testing newly integrated circuity!
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