A 27-Year-Old Warning We Should No Longer Ignore
In 1994, Carl Sagan published an article in The Washington Post in which he revealed, "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when we're a service and information economy; when nearly all the key 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 people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and 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."
His 1995 book, The Demon-Haunted World , contained a very similar passage.
Looking back 27 years, one might conclude that we are now paying the price for being too superficial for too long. Sagan was tremendously uneasy with the notion of 30-second sound bites dominating our media, only to be replaced by ten-second sound bites.
Social media has made the situation even worse, where sound bites not only come from mainstream media, but also from millions of people who just make stuff up.
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Sagan continued, "We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements -- transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment and protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting -- profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. We might get away with it for a while, but eventually this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
Substance matters.
We can't reverse this decline by screaming louder or getting angrier. As Sagan argued, we need to value science over superstition and to move past sound bites toward true substance. Please think about that the next time you respond to a point of view with which you disagree.
Bruce Kasanoff ?is a social media?ghostwriter ?for entrepreneurs. He lives on the side of a mountain in Utah.
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3 年Carl Sagan is correct we cannot abandon science for superstition. This whole economy destroying, life destroying, superstition of climate change has to go. Yes we need to have a sustainable society, but we must not yield complete power to an unseen totalitarian government who has no interest in us, but only interested in a dangerous ideology, no matter what. Where the leaders of the unseen government tell us to do what we tell you to do, and not what the leaders of the government do.
Ranch Hand
3 年So sadly and very true,,,,
Chief Culture Sculptor
3 年Timely!! Ty Bruce .. Thought provoking
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3 年I have felt for a while that we have had it as good as it will get and that from here it is down hill… we are a blinkered species focussed on our immediate well-being rather than the future. The minority loud voices prevail and dominate, whilst the majority (for now) sane and reasonable folk find it harder and harder to respond and be heard by the loud minority.
WorkSource (Workfirst) Pierce
3 年A sad story but true, and I have to accept it in order to survive. The world has change so much that we just have to agree even if inside there is a glitching pinch that we don't want to feel. I have change the way I view the world, it is such an unbelievable mesh and the sad thing about it is I cannot do anything about it. If I change my way of life, change my thinking and even change my looks, maybe that is one way I can show that it is possible that the world can change, it has to start with me.