I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds...

Apologies for not musing for a while. I have actually got some written pieces down; however, some of them are (were) very topical, others are of contestable quality (some of which are simply drivel), and I’ve simply not felt the impetus to write for quite a while. It may have seemed that the blog was dead, I assure you, it was merely undergoing a hibernation process.

What I want to talk about is the human thirst for knowledge, and the divide between those who do strive for it and those that do not. Whilst to some, particularly those who make their living through various forms of research, this may seem to be a natural part of people’s internal wiring, it remains that some simply do not care to expand their horizons, or at least in the direction that society expects them to. Indeed, there are still hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people whose idea of branching out into hitherto unexplored areas of knowledge constitutes watching a new Jeremy Clarkson/James May/Fearne Cotton/(insert prolific presenter here, I don’t know many) show, and having done so, feel enlightened.

These people are often alienated from or even vilified by the self-styled ‘intelligent’ society, a reaction which I personally feel is out of order and unjustified. For starters, to treat another human as inferior is an action so despicable that it often, somewhat ironically, makes the treater actually inferior to the person on the other end of the disrespect! I am unable to see (and if there is something glaringly obvious that I have missed throughout my life, please inform me) how anyone can place themselves above another human being, or indeed below.

The justification generally seems to be that they are making no ‘contribution’ to the ‘greater good’ of society, or indeed the world. To me, there appears to be no logic, or very poor logic, behind that statement. Tying in to the point above, how has it been decided what this ‘greater good’ is, and how to achieve it? And given that the above justification appears to have assumed that the one justifying themselves is convinced of the answers to the previous two questions, it can only be that the justifier has placed themselves, and their ‘brilliant’ mind, not only above the person or group that they are condemning, but above the rest of the world, including those that a rational person would view as their intellectual equals!

I would like to point out at this stage that I do not believe myself to be an overall better person than anyone else, including these people who I am discussing at the moment. Naturally, in my eyes, all men are equal (for the purposes of political correctness, when I use the word ‘men’, please assume I meant ‘humans’), indeed, to believe otherwise after what I have just said would make me guilty of hypocrisy of the highest order.

Whilst there is a lot to be said for a democratic approach to answering the previous question about what the greater good actually is, indeed, that is what our whole political system attempts to do, there are naturally problems. Believe it or not, everyone is influenced by the voices of those around them, and a fair representation of the populace’s opinions never occurs when it comes to election time. Furthermore, it is often a great struggle to find out what you actually think about a matter – I have found the answer to be so elusive in the past that to this day I am unaware of my opinions on certain matters; not necessarily because I find them unimportant (anything that is held dear by one person is naturally important to the human race as a whole), but either because all sides of an argument have equal strength to my ears, or because I simply do not know.

Finally, there is the unfortunate fact that participation rates are at their lowest ever, possibly not because people do not care, but because the differences between the choices offered, which is essentially now a three-party system, all straight down the middle, are not sufficient to tempt people into going down to the polling station and casting a vote when they feel that the difference between middle-left, middle-right, and plain middle is negligible anyway.

We also have to consider whether those who pursue knowledge are actually doing a favour to society anyway. It has been the case over the years, that researchers who set out with the best of intentions often open up, in their field, the scope for something inherently evil. Consider this: with the dawn of atomic physics came the scope for the creation of the atom bomb, and essentially the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention unfortunate disasters like Chernobyl; with the advent of new materials, right back from the Stone Ages, there has always been new weapons for men to hurt and kill each other with; with the beginning of industrial processes came not only greater availability of consumer goods, but also the destruction of the land, the sea and the sky; with the modern political system came fascism, nationalism and patriotism, war, conservativism… (okay, the last one was a joke).

Thus, we have to consider whether we have really improved the standard of human life over the years, or whether it is actually the so-called ignoramuses who do a real service to society by learning nothing aside from just how obnoxious Jeremy Clarkson actually is.

I leave you today with words from the mouth (or pen) of Robert Burns that I believe to be particularly apt to my point here:

‘The best laid plans of mice and men
Gang aft agley
And leave us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy’