My friend Steve just started reading Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World from 1987. In an email this morning Steve shared an “interesting, but very dystopic, paragraph.”
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time–when the Unites States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key 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.”
Sounds familiar?
Carl Sagan had a noticeable disdain for all things “new-age.” You’d think the weed would have helped with that. For such a smart man, he sure had a lot of negativity in him.
I’m continuously encouraged for the outlook of this planet, whether the U.S. is a leader is completely unimportant.
Way too familiar.
In fairness to Sagan he was very optimistic about the human race – but only if we made an effort to think and choose wisely. He was an early scientist as scientific popularizer who managed to have real success even though he took a lot of professional flack.
Sagan was always ahead of the curve. Great book!
Sounds like a skeptic. There is power in everyone’s hands these days and if needed, a revolution comes through social evolution. Change is something that starts inside of each of us; with that we can change the world