Leave us Chuds alone.

This little light of mine.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” 

CHRIS HEDGES
American Fascists
The Christian Right and the War on America (2007)

The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those they dismiss as "nominal Christians," and those they brand with the curse of "secular humanist," are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms and ultimately our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice.

CHRIS HEDGES
American Fascists
The Christian Right and the War on America (2007)

Because fundamentalist followers live in a binary universe, they are incapable of seeing others as anything more than inverted reflections of themselves. If they seek to destroy nonbelievers to create a Christian America, then nonbelievers must be seeking to destroy them. This belief system negates the possibility of the ethical life. It fails to grasp that goodness must be sought outside the self and that the best defense against evil is to seek it within.

When people come to believe that they are immune from evil, that there is no resemblance between themselves and those they define as the enemy, they will inevitably grow to embody the evil they claim to fight. It is only by grasping our own capacity for evil, our own darkness, that we hold our own capacity for evil at bay. When evil is purely external, then moral purification always entails the eradication of others.

CHRIS HEDGES
American Fascists
The Christian Right and the War on America (2007)

The difficult task of learning how to make moral choices, how to accept personal responsibility, how to deal with the chaos of human life is handed over to God-like authority figures. The process makes possible a perpetuation of childhood. It allows the adult to bask in the warm glow and magic of divine protection ....

It is important for us to realize that emphasis on conformity and the fear of spontaneous living can have an effect almost as devastating as the totalitarian’s deliberate assault on the mind. Trained into conformity the child may well grow up into an adult who welcomes with relief the authoritarian demands of a totalitarian leader. It is the welcome repetition of an old pattern that can be followed without investment of a new emotional energy.

CHRIS HEDGES
American Fascists
The Christian Right and the War on America (2007)

When facts are treated as if they were opinions, when there is no universal standard by which to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship, or in the reporting of events of the day, the world becomes a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe, where there is no possibility of reaching any conclusion not predetermined by those who interpret the official, divinely inspired text.

Well, it's a good thing the rapture happened during the eclipse or I might be doubting some of these lunatics.

OLAF STAPLEDON
Last and First Men

There used to be a saying “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” But as the world became networked first through newspapers, then radio, television, and then the Internet mass neurosis spread more and more rapidly until a generation into the internet the average neurosis level of young adults was the same as mental patients had been in their grandparents time. 

The popular consensus was that knowledge was available for all, but the trade-off had become that intellectual rigour was lost and all knowledge regardless of veracity become regarded as the same worth. What was more, in the West a concept came about that knowledge should be free. This rapidly eliminated the resources which would have allow talented individuals to generate intellectual property rather than be wage slaves. The anti-intellectual trend which stemmed from the origins of universal free education expanded and insulting terms were applied to intellectuals confabulating intelligence and knowledge with poor social skills and inadequate emotional development. 

While this was attractive to the masses who felt that everyone had a right to equal intelligence and that any tests purporting to show differences were by definition false this offset any benefits that broader access to knowledge might have brought deterring many of the more able from high levels of attainment in a purely intellectual sphere. Combined with a belief that internalization of knowledge was no longer necessary – that it was all there on the Internet reduced the possible impact substantially as ideas on an external network could never cross pollinate and form a network of concepts in the minds of those whose primary skill was to search rather than to link concepts already internalized.

OLAF STAPLEDON
Last and First Men

There is much in this vision that will remind you of your mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of our thought. For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect, we are sure only that it is very beautiful. While they pass to their conclusion without the aid of intellect, we have used that staff every step of the way. Thus, even when in respect of conclusions we agree with your mystics rather than your plodding intellectuals, in respect of method we applaud most your intellectuals; for they scorned to deceive themselves with comfortable fantasies.

Currently Reading

Simon Schama
FOREIGN BODIES
Pandemics, Vaccines, and The Health of Nations

THOMAS BRACKETT REED

(In a 1914 letter describing two fellow Members of Congress)

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

____________________

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

DORIS LESSING
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
____________________

Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, "How could you have believed that?" because events will have taken place that will have banished the said mass emotions to the dustbin of history.

SAMUEL R. DELANY
The Jewels of Aptor

____________________

Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions. 

It was the old adage: Convince a slave that he’s free, and he will fight to maintain his slavery.

MADALYN MURRAY O'HAIR

____________________

Religion has ever been anti-human, anti-women, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason, and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind, but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education, and science to take over.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook
____________________

I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to think when we are reaching our for happiness.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

____________________

I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hate in the world is religion and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of that. And I think it should be - religion - treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt.

So when I say that I think religion poisons everything, I’m not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle. I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity.

It says we can’t be moral without “Big Brother,” without a totalitarian permission. It means we can’t be good to one another without this. It means we must be afraid.

We must also be forced to love someone whom we fear - the essence of sado-masochism, the essence of abjection, the essence of the Master/Slave relationship. And that it knows death is coming, and can’t wait to bring it on.

I say that is Evil.

And though I do, some nights, stay home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and this ultimate stupidity.