The Cosmos and Our Future

This post is dedicated to all my nieces, nephews, my granddaughter and all the children of world. They are the future.

We are made of star stuff and in the end we will rejoin the stars. The universe is a growing, expanding and changing. You might say evolving, just like all the creatures of the earth or the creatures in other galaxies. It is foolish to believe we are alone in the universe and/or that we are the center of the universe. Science and thought are the light of the world. Without it we would not know the beauty of universe. We would not know how to see it or learn from it or calculate great distances. We would not know how to calculate the speed of light or that the light waves travel. We would not have sent men to the moon or probes to Mars. Science and technology are the building blocks of human society and knowledge and it has grown and been built upon from the beginning of time and hopefully that will continue. Science got us this far and science is the key to the future.

There are two things that are holding us back: Business and religion. Neither institution has a vested interest in moving humanity forward. Both institutions are interested in keeping us ignorant and controlling our activities to suit their agendas. Many times these agendas go hand in hand. There is not a god that wants to keep us ignorant. “God” does not care what humans are wearing or who they sleeping with or what color your skin is and if you worship or not. Religions are man-made and so are the books used to teach about these religions. There will be no “Rapture”. There is no Messiah who will come back and make everything right. Even if there were a Messiah, what would make us worthy of salvation? We support death and destruction en masse with everything we do or don’t do. The only way to save the world is by using our minds and changing our actions.

Despite the pervasive, insidiousness of religion, business is even worse. Corporations spread ignorance through media and greed through marketing. They will sell anything, even if it is dangerous, useless, or deadly. Child labor is no problem. Wars that allow them access to resources and markets, no big deal. Poisoning the water, land, air is just another day at the office. Research and development only have value to business when they can sell it. Business exploits us all without shame or remorse.

We do not need more business people; they will only hold us back. Business wants slow, small, incremental changes that they can sell to you. Business wants changes that they can market. They want to hold on to the old and sell it to you as new and improved. We need more scientists and mathematicians.  We should encourage all of our children to appreciate science and do well in math.  We need to encourage children to study science at the University level. Image if we had 10 times the number of scientist we have now. How much more would we know? How much farther along in our development would we be?  What if every person in America or the world for that matter was well educated? Image if young people over the last 30 years had been devoted to science, invention, critical thinking, building and developing new technologies? What would our world be like? What ideas are inside of people lying fallow, waiting and wanting to come out? I imagine the world would look a lot different and we would not have the problems that we have now after 30 years of everyone concentrated on business. 

Most inventions and discoveries have been made by a select group of people because most people have not had opportunity for education and/or the ability to think about anything other than survival. Things do not have to be the same in the future. Education and discovery should be our priority. Standardized test do not expand our children's minds, they eliminate critical thinking and decrease imagination. Not teaching evolution will not help the future. Believing that the world/universe is 6,000 years old is not just wrong, it’s holding back whole segments of the population from moving forward with us, with the universe. Teaching children to be drones for the system does not even help the system in the long run.  We are meant to learn, to change and to go to the stars. If it can be conceived, then it can be achieved. We just need to keep imagination, knowledge, and progress alive.

Every person knows something you don’t know. Educated people should not be shunned or berated just because they know things that you don’t know. The great thing about humans is that we can always learn. If you don’t know much about science, you can learn more about it at anytime in your life. Science has the potential to change your worldview and it is suppose to do this. New information should change what you think and feel.

The building blocks of the future are scattered around the globe inside the imaginations of unknown people who live in many different countries, speaking different languages, dreaming different dreams.  Who is the next great mind? Which person has the next great invention or discovery just waiting to get out? As long as we do not educate all children to highest the level possible, we will never know. 

Demand more money for education from your government. Demand more money for research and development. Demand an end to wars that are killing our future. Demand to move alternate energy sources. Demand the future we deserve.

Keep reaching for the stars,

Fobbsie

P.S. It would be great if anyone who read this post would share it, whether you liked or not. And as always comments are always welcome.

Aliteracy: I’m not aware of too many things

This blog is dedicated to my mother. Thank you for teaching me to read and giving me my love of learning, reading and inquisitiveness.  Love you Mommy.

Aliteracy is defined as the quality or state of being able to read but uninterested in doing so. The lyrics of the 80’s song “What I Am” by Edie Brickell illustrate the effects of aliteracy: “I'm not aware of too many things, but I know what I know if you know what I mean. Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box. Religion is the smile on a dog.” In other words, I don’t know much and I’m not trying to understand anything and this is one the biggest problems in America today. It underlies 99% of our political and societal problems. Without reading, your knowledge of current events, politics, history, science and everything else is very limited and probably incorrect.

Mark Twain, "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them”.

Fun Facts about reading in America (Source: Some startling statistics)

•  1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.   
•  57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

"What aliteracy does is breed illiteracy.”If you go through school having learned to read and then you leave school not wanting to read, chances are you won't put your own children into a reading environment." Dr. Kylene Beers, Professor of Reading at the University of Houston

When you don’t read but you can, you only know what you have read in school (maybe). For many of us, school was a very long time ago. When you don’t read books, all the decisions you make are based on old information. You might think you know what you heard on television but it leaves you at a disadvantage because you have no way to verify what you heard. Reading is critical to intellectual development; your ability to understand, reason, draw correct conclusions, and in general not be taken for a sucker and used by every person who spouts trash on television, the internet or on the radio. In addition to being pawns, people who don’t read, also probably don’t write well. 

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”, George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

If you have never read about the past, the future is a constant surprise. You will fall for everything, because most bad ideas have been done in the past and there is always someone out there who wants to resurrect an old, failure because this time it will work, for sure. If you don’t get any new information you might be tempted to believe that the sun revolves around earth, like almost 20% of Americans actually believe.  Without information, all new things are scary; all changes create chaos. Our democracy depends on well informed citizens.  The current level of general ignorance in the United States is a lot higher than it should be at this stage of our development.

TV shows and movies on history are not a substitute for reading and knowing actual history or in the case of Sara Palin or Glen Beck just making things up about about history. One of my favorite examples of just making things up about history is the television series The Tudors on Showtime. I liked this show but I knew it was not an accurate account. Tudor England is one of the subjects I have read extensively about. History is really one of the most interesting subjects you can read, there is no reason to embellish. There are lots of things that have happened in the past that are fascinating. The producers of the Tudors decided to make stuff up to make the show more interesting and to play better on TV; I read this on the show web site. Books made into movies fare no better. Most of the time a book is more interesting than a movie based on a book. Additionally, the producers and directors of movies leave out whole segments of a book usually making the movie somewhat dumb and incoherent. Books often discuss topics that are considered taboo by our screen media.

If you have never read about the past, the future is a constant surprise. You will fall for everything, because most bad ideas have been done in the past but there is always someone out there who wants to resurrect an old, failure because this time it will work, for sure. If you don’t get any new information you might be tempted to believe that the sun resolves around earth, like almost 20% of Americans actually believe.  Without information, all new things are scary; all changes create chaos. Our democracy depends on well informed citizens.  The current level of general ignorance in the United States is a lot high than it should be at this stage of our development.

TV shows and movies on history are not a substitute for reading and knowing actual history or in the case of Sara Palin or Glen Beck just making things up about bout history. One of my favorite examples of this is the television series The Tudors on Showtime. I liked this show but I knew it was not an accurate account. Tudor England is one of the subjects I have read extensively about. History is really one of the most interesting things you can read, there is no reason to embellish. There are a lot of things that have happened in the past that are fascinating. The producers of the Tudors decided to make stuff up to make the show more interesting and to play better on TV; I read this on the show web site. Books made into movies fare no better. Most of the time a book is more interesting than a movie base on a book. Books often discuss topics that are considered taboo by our screen media. Additionally, the producers and directors of movies leave out all whole segments of a book making the movie somewhat dumb.

The aliteracy problem is only increasing; students are not reading they are skimming for facts and information. If you don’t establish the habit when you are young, you will become lazier and lazier about reading. Many people and businesses come up with ways to get around the fact that lots of people won’t actually read anything. They add pictures, charts and graphs, use bulleted text, make instructional videos, talk in sound bites and slogans and a host of other methods. The world is a complex place and 9 times out of 10 a bullet point cannot explain things in a way that makes sense. Think about your own life, if you had to explain it using one power point slide with 5 bullets, do you think people would know anything about you. Speaking for myself, no definitely not! Everything can’t be boiled down into one or two points. If you don’t get the details you are missing a lot. Reading gives you the details you need to function well in a complex world. Reading gives your brain more control because it causes you  to imagine and contemplate.

Aliteracy  is a condition that can be cured just by reading. Earlier this year I was at a bookstore with my family. I discovered that my partner’s son did not like to read, which as you can imagine was very shocking to me since the rest of us were gathering up books to purchase at the speed of light. We talked about why he did not like to read and I asked him if there was any book he would like to read.  He actually wanted to read Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The store did not have it but his father and I found it at another bookstore, bought it and presented it to him. After a time he started to read it, enjoyed it and now he is finishing book three and eager to read books four and five. The best part of this story is that we did not buy the other books; he bought them himself without prompting. I think he just needed some encouragement to read; he also needed to know we thought it was abnormal not to read books (and it is abnormal).

Just read something, a book or a newspaper.  Encourage your spouse, partner, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the neighbors’ children and your friends to read. You will be amazed at the results.  Ignorance it not bliss. Knowledge is power.

Ciao for now,

Fobbsie

P.S. I am currently reading: