Junk Knowledge

Curiosity is the necessary first condition to wisdom, in the same sense that hunger is the drive that leads to nutrition. 

But hunger is also the first condition to obesity.  All depends upon how we satisfy the craving.  As with food, our society is rife with purveyers of ersatz low-fact junk ‘knowledge’.  When we choose these over more wholesome knowledge, we risk becoming mentally sedentary and lethargic. 

Unlike serious learning, junk knowledge is easy to digest, requiring no rumination.  Serious learning challenges us, and may detach us from our foundational beliefs and preconceived notions.  It is much easier to be spoon-fed predigested pablum – so easy that it’s addictive.  Once the addiction is set, the systems that process real knowledge atrophy, and it becomes nearly impossible to go back. 

The classical Greek playwright Aeschylus said, ‘He who learns must suffer’.  I would add that he who learns must suffer fools who opt not to. 

Unemployment and Entitlement

You know what bites?  Actually, lots of things bite, but here’s a big one.  The American economy (as measured by the success of American businesses) doesn’t need that many American workers anymore – and never will again.  Increasing automation—along with a doctrinaire free-trade agenda—have conspired to make a broad spectrum of American workers obsolete.   When times are bad, Americans are laid off, then when things pick up, workers are hired in China, India, Malaysia, etc. 

We’re told to ‘make ourselves matter’, and to stay relevant, but are given no real guidance as to what that means – because there is no way for the large population of displaced American workers to ‘matter’ again.  I welcome any INFORMED rebuttal of this point. 

Kurt Vonnegut’s 1952 book, ‘Player Piano’ postulated a fully automated US economy that didn’t need workers anymore – just managers and engineers.  The rest of the population were given make-work jobs in the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps.  It seemed bleak and dystopian at the time, but by contrast to the economy that has evolved in the US, it was actually relatively optimistic.  At least in the book, the displaced workers weren’t blamed for the overwhelming forces that displaced them.  And more importantly, they were cared for.  In today’s society, they are blamed for not making themselves ‘matter’.  Those who try to matter find a moving target of job skills which appear promising, but then are moved offshore, or made obsolete by technology.  The retraining is so expensive that, even when a job pans out, the burden of student debt is crushing. 

Those who have managed to maintain their status in today’s society are not called upon to do much to help those who’ve been cast aside – and are taught to scorn those who have lost everything, so as not to be troubled by their plight.  Basics, such as retraining, unemployment insurance, healthcare, and foodstamps are painted as luxuries, and treated as though they encourage dependency, and a sense of ‘entitlement’, when in reality, they only allow people to bounce along the very bottom of our society.  

The very companies who have moved cut jobs wholesale, and moved others overseas, are applauded as ‘job creators’, and rewarded with perks like the Foreign Investment Tax Credits, to help finance the transition. 

And those whose income is derived their investments in these businesses, enjoy a tax rate less than half that paid by those who earn their income from actually working. 

Entitlement, indeed! 

Wealth and Power - a Cosmic View

The attraction between wealth and power is no mere infatuation or passing fancy.  It is as perennial and as inexorable as gravity.  Each seeks to aggrandize itself, and to acquire the other. 

The drive to acquire wealth and power has very understandable roots; that being the desire to meet comfort, security, and/or ego needs.  But beyond some point, further accumulations of wealth and power serve no human purpose—taking on a life of their own, perpetuating themselves under their own inertia—consuming and controlling the possessor, even as they exploit others. 

As with gravity, the more massive an accumulation of wealth or power, the greater the force it exerts to draw in and accumulate even more.  Like a hyper-massive celestial object, it warps the very fabric of reality to achieve this end.  In the absence of a strong countervailing force, the inevitably result is a total consolidation of wealth and power within a single monopolistic/monarchical entity – a black hole which absorbs all nearby matter and energy, and from which not even light or truth can escape.   

The legal and regulatory institutions of government must be this countervailing force, balancing the drive toward plutocratic consolidation—like cosmic ‘dark energy’, (to strain the metaphor a bit)—promoting a just, sustainable socio-economic cosmos.  If it fails in this role, it loses its main raison d’être, and exists simply as an inert entity.  Worse, if these institutions become mere agents for the leviathan—promoting and accelerating the process of consolidation—it is worse than no government at all, and societal collapse cannot be averted.