A long time ago I was I read a book called "The Demon Haunted World." It was written by Carl Edward Sagan, a guy that liked looking at stars, smoking weed, and getting other people into looking at the stars.
When I first read the book I admit I didn't get it. I got the thesis, which was basically people are getting dumber and meaner and somehow more ignorant. That was why I didn't get "The Demon Haunted World" the first time I read it. Some scientist gave it to me while we were both camped in a flophouse in the east bay for about a week. She sold me on this quote:
“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 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...
The dumbing down of American 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), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
I figured, "Ok, but what kind of facts are those?"
I was a sixteen-year-old burnout when I read it. If you are what you do every day at the time I was a professional at running away. Running away from human connection, running away from my feelings, running away from understanding, running full speed from consequences. It's all I did.
The best part was that every part of my life enabled the sprint. My friends were not friends, they were tools best used at arms distance. My feelings were muted through drugs, my understanding learned through information was just a map to help navigate escape. I had it all figured out.
I didn't know much about Sagan at the time except that he wrote "Pale Blue Dot" and did science, so I thought there was another guy in an ivory castle calling everybody stupid because instead of ripping and running coming up he got to go to university and had access to all this stuff and all these other smart people.
I was like, "Fuck outta here, goofy ass. Cause when sun falls and these so-called demons come to haunt your actual world and you can't protect yourself or adapt to this new dumb, mean, ignorant, world those same dummies you talking shit about are gonna be your only hope because you were too busy pointing out the obvious instead of doing push-ups or learning to handle a bolt action rifle.
So I didn't finish the book. I gave it back to the scientist and told her I appreciated what the book was trying to say but there wasn't anything in it that could help me get rich get over get high or get off today. Twenty years later I picked it up again, got to this part:
“The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.”
This Sagan cat wasn't a half-bad guy.
What's all this fuss about Devotion anyway oooohhhh the bear thing ok I'm staying the fuck away from that, good luck folks. rip TB rip TC rip Tall-T. Love is a jar of honey, hate is a Tigger that won't stop bouncing. Don't think about it too much, just get out there and do great things. We believe in you. Also, Jobz.
