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.
Chapter 13:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Chapter 25:
In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
My only question is was this slide orchestrated or is it the natural tendency of humanity to slip back to ignorance when all their needs are met, like the Eloi in The Time Machine? Someone made lots of money from this slide, I just don't know if it was random chance or a scheme that worked.
This quote has always stuck with me and I think about it often, perhaps one of the main quotes that have steered my life.
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”
The answer is more often than not alternative c) all of the above.
Development may be a random walk, but there are plenty of people with interest in a certain outcome, and when they get the opportunity they will take it and try escalate the process. That's true in most things.
I also tend to believe that it is not a coincidence that so many societies right now flirt with authoritarianism, for example. We influence each other, even more so now that information is global and electronic.
Alan Moore is a deeply philosophical person who does a lot of research in general, and as part of his writing process. Here's the source for the quote,
However to fully put this into context you also need to understand that Alan Moore is an occultist, so he views both power and chaos (in the social context as well as the metaphysical context) through that lens.
It just makes me think he is a lunatic. I don't think the same person can be deeply philosophical and an occultist at the same time. I recently adopted a practice of reading the author's wikipedia page before reading the book, to make sure the author is an actual expert in the field, and not just a clown.
Say what you will about Moore (though he's the author of Watchmen, widely considered not only the greatest graphic novel of all time and a biting indictment of the entertainment industry and the military industrial complex... no small feat)
But -- I'm an occultist and a philosophical person, so I can tell you from first hand experience that occultism and philosophy are inextricably bound. Any pursuit of metaphysics is occult in nature. Occult simply means "hidden"; it is the domain of those things which can not be perceived directly, but have to be reasoned or intuited out via the mind.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean by metaphysics and occultism? Do you believe in mysticism, casting spells summoning creatures from other realms, etc? Or some other kind of occultism? It is my best understanding that Alan Moore is into this stuff.
My own views on these things have no bearing on the definitions of those words. Occultism is an extremely broad catch-all umbrella of domains of knowledge that all share in the essential trait of having to do with something that is normally hidden from us. The set of all things which lie outside of the realm of our direct apprehension.
Metaphysics, in that sense, is a subset of the Occult. Metaphysics itself is an extremely broad field, dealing with things like ontology, mathematics, physics, onieriology, cosmology, and so on.
One need not identify as an occultist to study a field which would fall under the label of the occult. Many things are occult and people do not realize it. Psychology, by virtue of the fact that our own psyches are largely hidden from our purview, is widely accepted as an asepct of the Occult, for example.
As for my own beliefs, I do not consider them beliefs, as once you know something to be true, does it make sense to still consider it an article of faith?
The "crystals and horoscopes" part is such a cheap jab that's going to alienate a lot of the population. Astrology is a harmless introspective process for most people, they just like having a framework to characterise their beliefs and feelings. You find very few people who feel that it's prescriptive and limits their life.
Contrasted with very rational people who are chasing magical, unmoored valuations in the stock market for instance. We buy and sell equity based not on future cash flows, but on confidence there will be a bigger sucker down the line. This untethering of "value" from any productive work is a greater contributor to the hollowing out of the US economy than anyone buying a piece of amethyst.
The verbs are not the issue. America has been hollowed out by political propaganda, offshoring and growing wealth inequality. Sagan fails to identify any of these and instead dunks on harmless folk superstitions. Show me where the Fed rate or IBM's quarterly earnings or a Fox News chyron were determined by a horoscope.
The real enemy is the belief that value can be created from nothing, such that an economy of infinite growth can exist. Once you've exhausted all the externalities - exploiting people overseas, domestically, pillaging natural resources - you're left in a zero sum game.
> Sagan fails to identify any of these and instead dunks on harmless folk superstitions. Show me where the Fed rate or IBM's quarterly earnings or a Fox News chyron were determined by a horoscope.
It's in the same paragraph...
> 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
Yeah he correctly identifies the outcome, but like I said he misattributes the cause. And his rhetoric is not helpful in getting "common people" around to his cause. It comes across as elitist and condescending.
