Tech & Biz

Could "Idiocracy" be Rooted in Scientific Truth?

by biverson | February 18, 2008 at 01:18 pm

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Examples of cultural approaches that are putting humans at risk include "everything from the economic incentives, industrial technologies and growth mentality that cause climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity, to the religious polarization and political ideologies that generate devastating conflict around the globe," Rogers said. "If the leadership necessary to undertake critically needed cultural evolution in these areas can't be found, our civilization may find itself weeded out by natural selection, just like a bad canoe design."

Or just like in Idiocracy.

China has an infrastructure with trains that go almost 300 mph. Ours are so poorly maintained and modernized that many can barely go 30 mph. Short-term goals and interests and profits have replaced planning for long-term objectives or problems. I was railing about Ben Heineman this morning, the man who gutted the Northwestern Railroad (now replaced by the Union Pacific in Chicagoland).

It makes me remember what the U.K. was like in the 50s and 60s. No more colonies, no more grandeur. Grey, insular, insignificant. The U.K. seemed to get a transfusion via immigrants from its former colonies and by using the intelligence of its populace. The London of today is not like the provincial back water it was in 1973. Something clicked with the Brits, though I am not saying it is a paradise there.

In the States, we are getting stingy and mean. Excluding anyone who seems different. We have no respect for the public infrastructures that at one time made us wealthy. (to be continued.)