The Demon-Haunted World

[kpete]

[Zoonart]

1. Just got a chill reading this.

Carl was a prophet.

[JudyM]

6. Same here!

Our descent...

[DENVERPOPS]

31. You both should humor me

And go get a copy of Animal Farm, a really easy and quick read compared to 1984. I took my copy from Jr. High off the shelf last year and re-read it. It would scare the living F*** out of everyone.....It's the Republican playbook for all we have seen, are seeing and will see in the near future........

WASF

[Bob Loblaw]

36. I save the following for threads like this

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-- H. L. Mencken

[PatrickforO]

42. Interesting. Mencken was talking about the dangers of direct

democracy, suggesting if we got rid of things like the electoral college and implemented direct democracy, we would then be subject to the tyranny of the majority, and if that majority is stupid, then we'd get a guy like Trump.

Ironic, isn't it, that it was the electoral college, designed by guys like Mencken to prevent a stupid popular vote, instead gave us Trump when the 'stupid' popular vote would have given us Clinton...

[Bob Loblaw]

44. Suffice it to say, "stupid" people voted for trump

[DENVERPOPS]

46. Love it......N/////c

[JudyM]

45. Definitely!

[DENVERPOPS]

47. Don't think that is going to happen

and now everyone should also be equally worried about separation of Church and State......

WASF

[Arthur_Frain]

52. That book is one of the reasons I keep hard copies of media I value.

When everything started becoming cloud stored, and everything, I mean everything, was being digitized, and then that was the only format it was available in, I immediately thought to myself

“but this is the part where the pigs start changing the words on the wall!”.

Life imitates art.

[FiveGoodMen]

26. And a prophet is just someone with enough sense to think ahead...

...and enough data to get it right.

It might help to be as smart as Sagan, but we all should have seen this coming.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. Here's my 2-second sound bite: Educate the electorate.

[Happy Hoosier]

5. You can take a horse to water....

I see this locally. I live in deep red Indiana. I see what gets taught in my daughters' excellent school. They learn the right facts. They are taught the importance of critical thinking. She is being well-prepared for university and beyond. But I see other kids in the same classes.... a lots of them are wearing MAGA hats.

[Wounded Bear]

7. Yep! It's really, really hard to educate the willfully ignorant...

[King_Klonopin]

54. The willfully ignorant -- Yes!

The Willfully Ignorant, indeed...

a.k.a. The Obtuse (Did you just call me obtuse?)
a.k.a. The Anti-Intellectual (Smart people are so dumb.)
a.k.a. The Celebrators of Ignorance
a.k.a. The "Contempt-Prior-To-Investigation" Investigators
a.k.a. The Trusters of The Gut
a.k.a. The "My ignorance is better than your knowledge" Self-Deceivers

Climate-change deniers are just the tip of the melting iceberg (Hey, look!
the planet ain't gettin' warmer 'cause I has a snowball in my hand to
prove it -- derp.)

Tax cuts will pay for themselves.
Tax cuts for the wealthy will trickle down (right down your leg).
Voter fraud is rampant.
Guns keep you safe.
Wind turbines cause cancer.
The economy is a-boomin' but we can't afford to provide health care to everyone.
The economy is a-boomin' but we can't afford to give govt employees a raise.
The economy is a-boomin' but we can't afford to raise the minimum wage.
The economy does better when Republicans are in charge.
Conservatives are more fiscally responsible than Dems.
We get nothing in return from NATO.
Trump has learned his lesson.
Trump was chosen by God.
Budget deficits don't matter (if Repubs caused them) ; they don't need balancing.
We need to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP to balance the budget.
There's no need for voter rights protections.
Banks need LESS regulation.
If it don't fit on a bumper sticker, then it's too complicated and it don't need knowin'.
Corporations are people, too, my friend.
Ukraine interfered with elections -- not Russia.
We have the best healthcare in the world.
Libruls hate our troops and they hate 'murica, derpy derpy derp . . .

It requires a certain predisposition: you hafta wanna believe the lies and the
bullshit before they are even spoken. An objectively seeking-mind would find these
claims to be beyond ridiculous. Reality does not support this belief system. The support
is sustained from a willful suspension of reality/fact/truth/evidence combined with
reinforced group think and propaganda.


The stupid hurts us more than it hurts them

[Hermit-The-Prog]

9. And as they get away from Ma and Pa MAGAt,

Stats show that the higher the education, the more likely to vote Democratic.

Those other kids wearing MAGA hats are reflecting the parents. Perhaps they have not yet reached the age of rebellion or perhaps they just need some more education to realize that they've been lied to.

There is a reason why the GOP has attacked education for decades.

[Happy Hoosier]

10. I hope so.

That was my experience. I grew up in a conservative household and college transformed my world view.

I hope that happens for some of these kids. Indiana does suffer a brain drain as well. Hoosier kids that get a good education tend to want to move elsewhere. I don't blame them. Fortunately, there are little islands of blue, but as a whole, this state really illustrates the bizarre attitudes in some red states. I grew up in a blue state that values investment in the public good. Here, way to many see crumbling roads, cracking bridges, and schools that desperately need repairs as "normal." And they can;t understand why anyone would want to live in a "high tax" blue state.

[Bob Loblaw]

35. Hi HH

It's not easy being a liberal in Indiana is it? Outside of a girl my first real heartbreak was when Dan (Ferris Beuhler) Quayle defeated Birch Bayh. I couldn't fathom the logic then, and I can't fathom it now why folks would vote against their own interest.

[Karadeniz]

27. I also like a takeoff on the horse saying, "You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her

Think. " I wonder if we can't recycle that one to something like, "You can lead Trump to knowledge, but you can't make him think." ...or a MAGAt..

[Hotler]

55. I gave up trying to educate them.

It is now more fun to just piss them off.

[BusyBeingBest]

3. Insightful, right up until he disses Dumb and Dumber.

I mean, come on. That's a classic. One of my favorite movies of all time. (I also liked Beavis and Butthead )

[blugbox]

33. Yeah, I mean even Lloyd Christmas can appreciate knowledge...

"NO WAY.... That's great!! We landed on the moon!!!!"

*Only Dumb and Dumber quote I could think of on short notice that also involved Carl Sagan in any way...

[BusyBeingBest]

57. Carl probably never saw it.

I would tell Carl to lighten the eff up, but that's not possible now

[soldierant]

38. Not everyone who likes a movie or TV show

likes it for the same reasons as other people who like it.

For instance, MAGAts watch "A Few Good Men" and come away thinking Colonel Jessup was the hero. The lonely, persecuted hero.

I'm confident you saw something - maybe several somethings - in "Dumb and Dumber" which Carl either didn't see or didn't find important or compelling. (Or he did see, but also saw too many people who didn't see.)

[smirkymonkey]

4. K&R

[bronxiteforever]

8. Kick & recommend.

[Mister Ed]

11. "A celebration of ignorance"

We are there.

[They_Live]

20. That jumped out

at me as well.

[Fla Dem]

12. Got a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach reading this. How foretelling.

[CaptYossarian]

17. It's from 1995. We just somehow survived Reaganomics and his

deep social cuts (including education). Add the same fiscal and social irresponsibility at the state level and here we are.

Prior to that Sagan passage, there was the Statue of Liberty scene in Planet of the Apes (1968) and a climate change song by Jeff Lynne, "Save Me Now" (1992). If anyone can remember anything earlier, please share.

Our world has had ample time to reverse the effects of carbon on our fragile planet, but rich and powerful forces wouldn't--and still won't allow it.

It's our world too.

[RVN VET71]

13. I wonder whether his reaction to cable TV stations like Science and History

I wonder whether his reaction to cable TV stations like Science and History, specializing in UFO's and Ancient Aliens, respectively would have been anger or just a sad, desperate sigh of resignation.

[CaptYossarian]

18. How about The Learning Channel (TLC)?

An electronic sideshow if there ever was one. Truly exploiting people who should be living with the same dignity as anyone else.

[RVN VET71]

49. All of them, except maybe the Smithsonian

It's part of the crumbling of the promise of the internet and cable TV. Both started out promising access to information, to education, to connections with old friends and family living in far away places. Instead we get schlock on the Leaning Channel, on Science, on History, and didn't "Tru TV" begin life as "Court TV" which promised public access to actual trials to show the workings of the justice system to any citizen who wanted to look and learn. And, of course, the information highway, the internet, is lined with hookers and pornography.

The 21st century was supposed to be the age of information and knowledge, of intellectual and cultural enlightenment. Instead, its become the age of access to the trivial and the lurid, of adolescent excess and self-indulgence.

(Don't misunderstand. I think mediocre TV programming has its place -- Fred Allen called it "chewing gum for the eyes"! And would not want the grubby little fingers of phony religious censors to start banning porn from the internet. I just wish there was more solid information and learning and less -- but not no -- Stormy Daniels.)

[CaptYossarian]

56. Fred Allen also said this:

"Television is a medium, because it's neither rare nor well done."

And I believe Bruce Springsteen has a song called "500 Channels and Nothing On".

You're right about the potential of it. On the bright side, if we didn't have a pig in the WH, I never would have heard of Stormy (or that lawyer either).

[dalton99a]

14. Kick

[Ingersollman]

15. One

of my favorite books by one of my favorite people.

[klook]

16. Thanks for posting a quote from this great book!

Sagan was very concerned (rightly so) about the decline in scientific understanding as pseudoscience like astrology, etc. gained traction. This quote is amazingly prescient.

[Dukkha]

19. I'm re-reading this book right now

Once of the absolute must haves for anyone's collection. Along with 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World.

[CrispyQ]

21. What an incredible human being.

I miss him.

"Demon Haunted World" should be required reading. "Contact" will always be one of my favorite sci-fi stories. It was a little difficult to read because of his extensive vocabulary—I was always looking words up—but man, what a great ending!

The movie sucked, big time.

[volstork]

22. Thank you for this.

Prescient!

[Hekate]

23. Thank you, kpete

[Mickju]

24. Totally agree!

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Sagan feared the influence of entertainment and pseudoscience

which has turned out to be part of it, but the bigger problem is the deliberate spreading of misinformation and distrust in science, experts or fact-based journalism, which has come from tobacco and fossil fuel companies, Putin, and the Republicans. With Zuckerberg a willing lackey.

[Karadeniz]

28. He left us too soon. We need thinkers.

[MythosMaster]

29. One of my favorite books

Maybe I should read it again.

[yonder]

30. A prescient scientist though that could be a contradiction in terms?

We could use many more like him today.

[BigmanPigman]

32. And this was before Twitter and Fakebook and after the film Network.

I wonder what Carl would add or change to his original statement in the present 2020 atmosphere.

[mopinko]

34. a life changing book for me.

so right on, always.

[Blue Owl]

37. 10-second sound bites -- a.k.a. "Tweets"

n/t

[erronis]

39. Snopes says this is accurate and the actual quote text.

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 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 whats true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America 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), the lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/carl-sagans-foreboding-of-an-america/

[Ilsa]

40. Two healthcare workers that come to my

Household really don't give a crap about learning anything about the world around them.

I have movies that dramatically retell historical events, but all they care about is trashy reality tv. One that I really hate is about people meeting each other at the altar for the first time to get married. They care nothing for news shows, even updates on the coronavirus. Totally incurious.

[StarzGuy]

41. Truer Words Were Never Written...

However, this has been in progress for my entire adult life. The continued dumbing down of the country will not serve us well over the near term. I fear some major upheaval coming down the pike and it can't be stopped. Trumpism and Trumpers are only the symbols of this malady.

I can only hope things will change but I'm not optimistic for the remainder of my lifetime.

[misanthrope]

50. Yup, it was going on in Sagan's lifetime

he lived in rarified company that kept him from seeing it in the same many of us have. Essentially, humans are no different now than we've been for thousands of years.

[PatrickforO]

43. Sagan saw clearly.

We really have been dumbed down. Purposely.

[coti]

48. Yes. Dear Carl.

What an incredible man.

He really called it with the "...celebration of ignorance" line.

[dchill]

51. Antidote: Elizabeth Warren.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

53. I read that book

Highly recommend it.