Ignorant Savants

For all the benefits that come with our living in the Age of Information, human beings have yet to step beyond the great hindrance that is our personal bias. For over a century now we've lived with daily updates concerning our communities, our nations and our world as a whole - and yet we still cannot believe, standing upon the Great Inauguration of the 21st century, that the "world" we know through the media is any closer to reality than the one described a hundred years ago; and this, for the very simple reason that reporters have always preferred certain truths.

It's very easy for an individual to believe that the media is simply lying to us: all that person has to do is shut his ears and disregard everything reported. But for those with more refined tastes and intellects, the job is much harder: we have the job of digging, sifting and sorting, i.e. of interpreting the information we receive. The source from whence it comes, the audience for which it's intended, the form through which it is transmitted and the minuteness of its detail - all of these factors and more must be brought to bear upon the fact being considered, until it appears within and alongside the web and tissue of relations with other facts, points of view and situations, as "science," "journalism" or "propaganda" - in one word, until we get the fact situated in its proper context.

In short, a person who wants to really live in the world presented to him, who wants to go beyond the statistical abstraction and dry facticity that make up the landscape of the "global picture" - such a person must undo and thereby escape the influence of precisely that which got him access to the information in the first place: the purely individual bias that led someone to pluck it out of context and report it to the world at large. Not able to flat-out refuse the information received, unable to erase the existence of a fact experienced, he must nevertheless place it "in suspense" - and carry on about his day.

Indeed, the only drawback to the plethora of information today is that too many of us are so partisan with our use of it. We accept what we accept, reject what we reject, and then stand in full-fledged self-righteousness to praise or condemn that which we really know nothing about. The facts pile up beneath us, dry and gray, and the more we have the higher the soapbox on which we can stand - and still our lives are as dry and gray as the mountains from which we preach. We have lost the art of interpretation, the slow and ponderous skills required to transform empty assertions into colors, sounds and impressions - we have, my friends, lost most of the art of Living.

If you Americans want to use the word "democracy" as much as you do, you should probably know a few things about it.

"Democracy" was first brought into theory by the Greeks. The Greek theorists were familiar with, and put into words on many occasions, the idea that the majority of people were not capable of "running things" - but they were also familiar with the fact that the majority of people are prone to violent revolution when they feel they are being overtly manipulated (this being a matter of pride). So the most idealist Greeks came up with this idea of "democracy": a system in which a "bunch" of people - landowning Athenian males of reputable standing - established the laws that were to apply to "all" the people. It practically implemented the cherished idea of the Just Mean, and at the same time gave comfort and security (i.e. complacency) to those whose voices were not heard - because surely their opinion would be shared with someone in the aforementioned "bunch." Surely someone would represent their voice.

And here I have to stand up, my fellow Americans, and reiterate this tedious fact once again: that "democracy" is just as much an idealism as socialism or Marxism, despite what the British would have to say; that it was devised, and exists today, as a fig leaf under which can safely and undetectedly operate the mechanisms of despotism and unnatural aristocracy; and finally (and most importantly), that it promises equality where there is none, so that us individuals will fight against ourselves rather than take responsibility for the state of our Union.

This, my fellow Americans, is the state of the Union: you're all riled up and scared shitless. And you probably have "democracy" to blame.