“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…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
What Elon Musk has done to Twitter, what Newsmax does to “News” on TV, what “meme life” seems to do to all of social media with a constant stream of “now down to 10 seconds or less” celebration of quickly recognized patterns and media references. In 1995 he was basically saying we would slip back into what we had pre-science in some form.
It isn’t just 2023 with Elon Musk and Twitter to X that “lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority” like Musk or even the leaders of Reddit… people meme and spam and say curse words to spez, but that’s not really “knowledgeably question those in authority”… people are reluctant to create something better in a sense of goodness. And Sagan with his Pale Blue Dot book and poem was not afraid to define goodness.
It’s like clickbait journalism, people complain about it, but a platform like Reddit or Lemmy front-ends the news, people can write better headlines and organize the news in sincere descriptions… but it doesn’t happen. People react to the clickbait and mock it, and that’s sort of celebrating it.
I think the metaphor of a candle in the dark was pretty good, candles are subject to rain and don’t really give off that much light. When you read the book you are left with the impression that we haven’t accomplished as much as we hoped. “when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few”… technology isn’t science, and understanding. We had the technology power of vaccination but we had so much disinformation and misunderstanding. “unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true”…
I think that speaks for his concern, the general population, the audience, the everyday people who aren’t in some massive concentration of power. And how scientific method was a kind of super-democracy, and his Pale Blue Dot perspective on people fighting wars and dominating each other.
The full book Pale Blue Dot is well worth a read too. Humanity can choose to do better, but since 1995 we haven’t really strived for it. We have way more technology, but we seem to lack a concept or choose leaders of ‘goodness to share’. Our trends in political and business leaders and teachers says a lot about us.
The full book Pale Blue Dot is well worth a read too.
there’s an audiobook read by Sagan himself
yes, I’ve heard it, recommended!
Great post - well said
I feel like you’re focusing too heavily on Twitter and Reddit. Twitter definitely has a world influence nowadays, but the problem is much larger than Twitter or any social media.
It’s a societal problem, one that has been cultivating for years while capitalists were shaping a world to fit their needs. There’s way too much information, a severe lack of people having enough education, time and critical thinking in order to filter through it, so many distractions and people falling too hard for “individualism”, failing to see that we need each other in order to thrive. It’s a culture where everyone is on their own, it’s expected of you to be competitive and constantly strive for more, celebrities and millionaires are seen as gods and an army of desperate people idolize them in the hope that someday they’ll become like them.
We live in a time that it’s normal to ignore the bad things, pass by homeless people daily without being affected emotionally, discarding them as human beings and labeling them as drunks or addicts to excuse our apathy, conveniently ignore what’s going on in the third world and who is making the clothes you wear.
Any attempt at proposing something different, changing the world in a positive way, will be called futile by everyone around you, who are so accustomed to this life that they think that it’s human nature to live like this and that there is no other way. Competition and greed are followed religiously and they’re seen as the axioms of society, thinking beyond them is simply living in a utopia.
I feel like you’re focusing too heavily on Twitter and Reddit. Twitter definitely has a world influence nowadays, but the problem is much larger than Twitter or any social media.
I’m merely trying to give relatable examples of 2023 huge changes… ChatGPT, Twitter, Reddit, Lemmy… and how they relate to the 1995 examples. When Sagan cited specific films like “Dumb and Dumber” as VHS rentals in 1995, people too objected. I remember it back then. I could have given 5000 examples and been exhaustive, such as adding Apple TV, Disney+, but they aren’t festering at the level of Twitter right now. Donald Trump just got put back on Twitter today… within days of me using as an example. If anything, that’s evidence I used a good example.
We live in a time that it’s normal to ignore the bad things, pass by homeless people daily without being affected emotionally
Those sort of things are the topic of the 1995 book. And I can recall a song from Phil Collins about that… 1989, “Another Day in Paradise”.… the video of which opens with a picture of Earth, much in the theme of Sagan’s 1990 “Pale Blue Dot” theme.
It’s the clarity in which we are making these trends concrete and what Sagan was saying about his grandchildren’s time… that was what I was highlighting.
