Eerily accurate prophesy
Originally shared by Tim O'ReillyA sobering quote from Carl Sagan
+Dewayne Hendricks runs a very interesting mailing list that includes emails forwarded from various interesting people. The other day, he forwarded a piece from one of his readers, Steve Crandall. Crandall wrote:
"In searching for some kit for the storm yesterday in the basement I came across Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World from 1987. I never got around to reading it, so I just started it this morning to see if it works 25 years later."
An interesting, but very dystopic, paragraph:
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time--when the Unites States is 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 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."
(p.25)
+Dewayne Hendricks runs a very interesting mailing list that includes emails forwarded from various interesting people. The other day, he forwarded a piece from one of his readers, Steve Crandall. Crandall wrote:
"In searching for some kit for the storm yesterday in the basement I came across Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World from 1987. I never got around to reading it, so I just started it this morning to see if it works 25 years later."
An interesting, but very dystopic, paragraph:
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time--when the Unites States is 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 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."
(p.25)
Stan Friedman on Sagan and science
As for the USA becoming a service economy, in order to understand why this has happened, you need to understand what money is and Economics. I guarantee you, without knowing, that Sagan believed that money comes from the State, and that, "we need the government for X". Keynesianism is not scientific, and is (along with Statism) the cause of these problems. People like Sagan support both absolutely, as matters of faith.
Manufacturing has not 'slipped' away, it has been pushed away by the State. This is a fact. There are awesome technological powers in the hands of a few because the State makes it so. Even taking this into account, an iPad would have seemed like "awesome technological powers " or even fiction to Sagan. His ability to underestimate man was boundless.
There is no such thing as, "the public interest". It is collectivism and Statism like that which is the cause of all the problems people lament today. People cannot set their own agenda because the State is blocking them at every turn.
Note also that Sagan says, "Clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes". I do not do either; who is this 'our' that he is talking about? He talks about no being able to distinguish between what feels good and what is true, but refuses to accept that man is not alone in the universe, or that there is a creator of the universe. Muddled thinking at its worst.
I put it to you, who is the one in darkness? Clearly it was Sagan, and today is all the believers in Scientism, that false religion that is no different from primitive superstition We are not sliding back anywhere Mr Sagan; there is no 'We'.