“Mama may have, Papa may have, But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own…” Billie Holiday
The worldwide web may indeed possess the collected knowledge of the world. Google, Siri, and Alexa are standing by to answer our questions, and now AI is there to write the answer for us. I’ve always professed to being something of a quixotic oddball. So, it comes as no surprise that all that accumulated knowledge is not enough for me.
The old admonition of math teachers everywhere that we wouldn’t always have a calculator in our pocket has become the stuff of jokes. But I’d rather possess a knowledge of math and have math skills of my own than carry a thousand calculators. Possessed knowledge belongs to me, not some device. It is as much a part of me as my arms and legs.
I remember reading of an era in human history when knowledge was reserved for the elite, for kings, and nobility. Knowledge being possessed by the masses was considered dangerous. Common people were deliberately kept ignorant and under control. Some call it the Dark Ages.
How dark would this age be if all the screens suddenly went dark? No worries, it could never happen, right? We have too much technology for that. Do we have the technology to stop it from happening if it’s not an accident? I’m not talking about machines taking over like in the Terminator movies. What if greedy, power-hungry people shut off the computer screens, rewrite history, collect the phones, and close the libraries?
Why would they do that? If you need to ask beware of being governed by organic living, documents, and proclamations of new world orders. Resist redefining words. Take arms against unchallengeable science, and battle change for the sake of change.
About a hundred years ago, we were told life, and the decisions life demands we make had become too complex. Ordinary people could not comprehend the workings of the world. Experts were needed to solve modern problems. Those experts should be unelected, free from politics, to serve the greater good. Agencies, commissions, and boards manned by experts came to make our decisions for us. We silently consented.
This century, we are learning that thinking, remembering, and human expression are too burdensome. We have conquered nature with a thinking machine and cannot be bothered to think for ourselves anymore. We are not silent this time. We are celebrating in a rush to embrace another loss of a bit of our humanity.
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” Gustav Mahler
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