I Think I Understand

This morning , while half asleep, some of the things I studied, particularly in the early 60s, came wafting into my mind. There came back to me, books such as: Eric hoffer's "True Believer," David David reisman's "Lonely cpCrowd," Aldous Huxley's "Brave new World," George Orwell's "1984," La Pierre's "Social Control." Classes around those books flooded my mind, as well as classes on philosophy, the great philosophers, logic, both Aristotelian logic and modern logic. We had amazing discussions and debates all around these things. We talked about the importance of character development and integrity, not only for the individual but for the society at large.

We had no inkling of course of what was going to happen — of the internet, social media, and now AI. So all those things we learned are like on steroids now.

 Instead of having to get people together in a crowd to control them, they could be controlled over the internet and social media and television, by people they never met, and be part of a group they never met. People can now be riled up before drawn together, so that when they come to an actual event, they are ready to fight.  And in some cases, they are being controlled not by another human but by a bot. The lonely crowd became lonelier. The prediction of the increased prevalence of being outer directed rather than inner directed came usual.

The once somewhat unbiased news people became propagandists for a certain point of view— either on the left or the right, either for or against a religion, either for or against other issues. No more down the middle, just the facts nothing but the facts.

In our wildest dreams, it would never ever have occurred to us that communism would be sold in America - that college professors,  college students, and the average person would see speak positively ,about communism, and that actual communists would run for public office and be elected. It is outlandish to think people would forget the horrors of communism. Back then that would have been considered science fiction, except for a fringe group around such people as Saul Alinsky and his "Rules for Radicals."

 If we continue to slide away from  the meritocracy that made it possible for people to dream and strive for excellence and be successful, if we slide away from capitalism that brought more people out of poverty than anything in the history of the planet, if we stop being the country that people aspire to come to— it is a sad sad day for the future. Who knows how long it would take to establish another place of freedom.

Let's join together to tweak things here and there, but to protect the general tenor of our constitution and our way of life. Let us refuse to be controlled from the outside and be strong, inner directived people.

I am reminded of my long ago Zen sensei who shouted ever so loudly, WAKE UP!