Carl Sagan wrote that early scientific and academic discoveries did little to benefit the societies in which they were being made, outside of military applications, which contributed to the downfall of the Library of Alexandria and may be partially responsible for the Dark Ages, or the roughly 1,000 year period where religion and fear ruled Western societies. I fear we are on the precipice of this again. Logic is being replaced with feelings and science and government do nothing to educate the populace while ignorance, true ignorance, runs rampant through our communities, begging the question: what will be lost this time when the mob, bereft of all logic and ignorant of the progress being made inside its walls, comes for Alexandria again?
The continued violence in the world brings to mind my hopelessness for civilization at large and disdain of the radical evangelicals running everything (I include America in this statement as well because we absolutely are being led by radical Christians -even the “liberal” ones are radicalized- despite our society’s claim of separation between church and state). The bombs we use to heedlessly murder citizens of the world are powered by the same technology that launch our spacecrafts into orbit and beyond, and we are at a pivotal time where the focus needs not be on building better bombs to kill more efficiently, but more stable rocket technology to take our society into the cosmos and beyond. Humans are at our best when we are exploring, and if only the scourge of capitalism were removed we could stop dominating other countries for fossil fuels and collectively move toward a better future for our planet once reparations are made for the centuries of destabilization Western cultures have spread across most of the world.
Look out for each other, friends.
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