The human species is capable of both discovering wisdom, and of ignoring it. We’re busy with the latter right now in the U.S.
“We sneer at experts,” observed David DeWitt. “We spit epithets like ‘academic elites’ at professors dedicating their lives to pursuing discovery that benefits humankind. And we worship flashy internet hucksters selling lifestyle scams.
“We mock intelligence and glorify egomania and materialism. We worship spectacle and are voyeurs for anger, confrontation, and violence. We live in fantasy worlds where what we want to believe is true regardless of whether it is true, because what we want comes first no matter what, certainly no matter any facts, this decadence of mind and body only afforded to us by modernity’s remarkable luxury and technology.”
“It is in these ways that I regard a very great many adults as simply overgrown children.”
Michael Bell wrote, “With the accumulated knowledge of all history at our fingertips, willful ignorance still wins the day.”
“Anti-democratic forces benefit from ‘post-truth politics’ because in the absence of truth, truth is defined by power,” as Chrissy Stroop observed.
And that’s why accepting lies as facts is a snake pit out of which all other evils crawl.
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