UTOPIA!

ā€œI have a foreboding of an America in my childrenā€™s or grandchildrenā€™s time ā€” when the United 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 whatā€™s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.ā€ ā€“ Carl Sagan, 1995

ā€œOf all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.ā€ ā€• C. S. Lewis

Understand?

Obedience to Authority

Stanley Milgramā€™s studies on “Obedience to Authority”

It has been reliably established that from 1933 to 1945 millions of innocent people were systematically slaughtered on command. Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of appliances. These inhumane policies may have originated in the mind of a single person, but they could only have been carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people obeyed orders.

Milgramā€™s experiments on obedience have made us more aware of the dangers of uncritically accepting authority.ā€ (Peter Singer, New York Times Book Review)

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