The United States and the 21st century dark age
Note, I've included this narraration of this post for your listening delight (incase you aren't that into reading jk)
"There lay a great black gulf in human history, a gulf of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, and of wickedness. That time we call the dark or Middle Ages”-Howard Pyle
The Dark ages were a hard and wicked time for the western world, a time of societal decay. War and disease plagued Europe; egomania, tyranny, perversion, and human weakness poisoned the leadership of illiterate and backward people.
In its popular use, the meaning of the word dark as used in “dark ages” seems to be an amalgamation of ignorance and wickedness.
Darkness is a word widely used today in a metaphorical sense to represent ignorance but many of its uses infer both ignorance and wickedness (I.E. “the dark continent” “truth as a candle in the dark”).
The relationship between ignorance and wickedness or evil has been noted throughout the centuries by people whose virtue continues to inspire us, as well as some with interests less idealistic and more pragmatic like scientists and politicians.
The ancient philosopher Plato called ignorance “the root and stem of all evil”.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said: “Nothing in the
world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
William Shakespeare said: “There is no darkness but ignorance.”
Albert Camus the French novelist said:
“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
The causal correlation between ignorance and crime is obvious. A literacy report released by the National Center for Education Statistics exemplifies this claim.
• Illiteracy and crime are closely related. The Department of Justice states, "The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure." Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level
• Penal institution records show that inmates have a 16% chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70% who receive no help. This equates to taxpayer costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly doubles that amount for juvenile offenders.
In addition to its relation to immorality and inhumanity ignorance has social and economic repercussions.
• 3 out of 4 food stamp recipients perform in the two lowest literacy levels
• 90% of welfare recipients are high school dropouts
• 16 to 19 year old girls at the poverty level and below, with below average skills, are 6 times more likely to have out-of-wedlock children than their reading counterparts.
• Adults with ability to perform challenging and complex reading tasks made an average yearly salary of $50,700 in 2003. That is $28,000 more than those who lacked basic skills.
• Low literacy costs $73 million per year in terms of direct health care costs. A recent study by Pfizer put the cost much higher.
The United States leads the western world in high and elementary school education failure.
• About one in 20 U.S. adults in the is not literate in English
• 11 million Americans lack the skills to handle many everyday tasks
• 30 million adults may not be able to make sense of a simple pamphlet
Do you mistrust statistics? It’s a prudent thing to do, and perhaps there is something arbitrary about a literacy test, but these statistics don’t need to be very accurate to represent a serious problem, if the problem we face is anything like the one represented by these statistics then it is, I think, a serious problem.
A casual examination of world history warns that we ought to apply ourselves to learning.
Maybe right now you’re remembering stories you’ve heard of backward medical practices from ancient Egypt or medieval Europe; pagan rituals or traditions involving dismemberment, disembowelment or human sacrifice; bizarre criteria for identifying witches; the absurdly unjust trial, torture and execution of “witches”; ideologies of ethnic supremacy and ethnic cleansing.
The current state of many African countries is in part the product of ignorance. Brutal and savage conflicts rage; the value of human life is disregarded and diseases like aids continue to spread virtually unopposed.
The Middle Eastern conflict with its religious theme, political significance and western involvement amounts to little more than two very similar societies devoutly murdering and being murdered for the cause of wicked ignorance.
Because much of the theme of this post (In the 21st century dark age) is based in history I feel that it has been vastly understated.
I’m not qualified to do justice for the historical case against ignorance, that is to say, I’m largely ignorant of history. But I doubt that many people will fully disagree with me, so for the purpose of being able to post this essay now, I won’t do more research to properly represent this problem.
The problem of ignorance becomes more severe when the destructive power of our modern age is available, and when as a result of ignorance, “we the people”, are so easily manipulated and conditioned for cooperation.
The two term administration of President George W. Bush is a sobering reminder of the danger we face as a country and as a species. His remarks have featured in comics and humorous literature around the world but the risks we as humans faced while he governed the country with the world’s greatest military strength were not a light hearted matter. We are fortunate for a government designed with a great deal of checks and balance to disable a goofy warmonger from running off with the country, we may not always be so lucky. Our ignorance as the citizens of a democratic country has also played its role in our current economic downturn.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be” -Thomas Jefferson
The United States may be the best entertained country in the world. The content of our media industry is selected by the principle of supply and demand. It’s safe to say that what we see in our movie and television industry is what we as a culture want to see, even a reflection of who we are.
Much of the content of our American media is shameful, but in the spirit of American tolerance we wouldn’t have it any other way. So we’ll continue to enjoy our self solicited shallow, violent, egomaniacal, sexually deviant, ignorant, wicked, brain deleting vice until we can no longer do so.
But entertainment should not be a focal point in our lives when we have categorically denied ours ourselves real substance, and robbed ourselves of the rigors that facilitate understanding and wisdom; that teach us how to know truth from lies.
I didn’t want to include any more statistics in this post and most of you have probably already heard some staggering statistic about the number of hours Americans spend watching movies and T.V., or the dollar figures attached to the industry.--But if you haven’t I encourage you to do so. Maybe doing some statistics of your own hours wouldn’t hurt.
One last point on this topic I want to include is the dulling, mind fogging affect that excess amusement has on the mind. Insight about the nature of amusement can be drawn from the literal meaning of the word. The word muse means to think, or reason. When the letter a is used as a prefix it means something like un, or non. In the case of amuse, the word literally means to, “not think” or “avert thought”.
So what we need to ask ourselves is what will come of our ignorance? What will happen if we keep our eyes closed? History tells us that we are in trouble; a dark age is coming. We need to stop scoffing at intelligence. It’s time to ditch our pigheaded inhibitions about learning. We can’t continue to be content with our simple ideas and opinions. The Bible says; “Leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the way of understanding” Prov 9:6 . We could stand to be a little humbler about what we do know, and be more eager to learn. One of the reasons why ignorance is so successful in its occupation is that it thinks itself sufficient; it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
Can a 21ST century Dark Age be averted? Ignorance isn’t bliss, its oblivion. With the future at stake can we re-align ourselves with reality? May God help us.
Phil 1:9-10 (Jer) My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognize what is best. This will help you to become pure and blameless, and prepare you for the Day of Christ.
I think we are starting to look more alike :)
Happy family
Julie refusing to smile for the camera
Kori's photo pose
Austin Park and Pizza theme park
Kori's birthday, ( all the photos with Kori in them were taken with another camera)
waking up from nap and adjusting to the world
Jolene being cute
Julie sticks her tongue out whenever she is focusing on something
They are quite the artists :)
The gang (Marky is the only one missing)
Look! I'm not smiling :)
Rough love
Andrew's mini me
SHOPPING!! ...
Uncle Dan's class
My little stinker
