Hannah Arendt speaking to this moment

Nothing is more dangerous to nature and humanity than an inability to think.    This inability to think is deliberately, mindfully fostered by those who make the most money, and seize great power, when  people can’t think.  Without critical thinking it is impossible to choose wisely between complex alternatives or to accurately identify the problems in the first place. 

A populace that can’t think is ideal for manipulation, they are ready to tolerate or commit atrocities for an incoherent “cause”.  The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, as Francisco Goya the painter observed.   Here’s Hannah Arendt, who clearly identified this central villain of human history, from a few generations ago.  

American children raised watching TV, and devices, see more than 10,000 hours of advertising before they are five. Today attention spans are shattered, and brains rewired, by constant smartphone notifications from people trying to sell something, push some idea, inoculate the “user” against critical thinking by amplifying their own prejudices and likes and silencing opposing ideas. The algorithms that cater to our personalized prejudices are making a small number of neuroatypical men unlimited billions of dollars as they intellectually immiserate billions of human beings.

We are at the “mercy” of psychopaths at the moment. Only we, by acting together and thinking as critical problem solvers, can stop these merciless, insane bastards who would have everything. Even if it takes destroying the earth itself, the biosphere, all the animals and all but a handful of specially selected humans who will live on militarized luxury islands, in outer space or in well-furnished spas under the ground. Fuck those putos.

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