Did Asimov predict humanity's collapse back into the Middle Ages where respect for knowledge is your knowledge and ignorance will take over? It turns out that the denial of science as it is expressed even more strongly justifies Asimov's fear. It turns out that conservative thinkers fantasize about returning to the Middle Ages. you have been warned
"This library will burn down one day, you are commanded to steal from it," said Harry Seldon to the girl Gal Durnik, the greatest mathematical genius in the galaxy, who came to work for him at the Imperial Library in Trantor in the first episode when he gave her the original manuscript of a centuries-old mathematical formula that she used to get hired .
Today the first two episodes of the series "The Mossad" FOUNDATION were released on the streaming service Apple Plus. As you remember, the series is based on the book series of the same name written by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, inspired by books about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The heroes of the order try to preserve knowledge in the barbarian age of battle, but Asimov didn't just mean the galactic empire in his books, he warned about reality. Of course, the producers of the series emphasized this risk even more.
Watching the first two episodes reveals a futuristic world - with faster-than-light spaceships, space elevators and a multitude of effects, but this world is actually a reflection of the past - more precisely, a certain process in the past - the fall of the Roman Empire, whose peaceful control of the world through the power of its army (as well as the galactic empire in the series) began to lose the exiles to the barbarians, who eventually conquered Rome.
Little of the rich culture that grew for hundreds of years in Greece and then in Rome survived the Middle Ages, some thanks to the copying of books in monasteries (while being censored), and some cultures that knew how to continue science - the Persians, the Arabs in today's Iraq, and finally the Muslims and Jews in medieval Spain - until they were expelled from there The next period was the renaissance which built on the ancient knowledge and the little that had accumulated on it in the thousand years of the Middle Ages. And of course we have to remember the burning of the library in Alexandria which caused a huge loss of the accumulated knowledge.
It is difficult to estimate the knowledge that has been lost. There were a lot of things that needed to be rediscovered. In Asimov's galactic version, Harry Seldon and his successors (in the continuation of the book series and probably also in the TV series) try to establish an institution whose role will be to preserve knowledge in a dedicated library, and protect it from the barbarians.
So much for the past - both the real and the literary (even if the plot takes place in the future). Asimov died on April 6, 1992, and witnessed the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the optimism that prevailed at that time regarding the future. But as with Harry Seldon, beneath the surface the empire begins to crumble.
The modern equivalent is, of course, the United States, which for a moment seems to be the only control in the world that has ceased to be bipolar, but the cracks have begun to erupt beneath the surface - and as in Trantor, they are both external and internal.
The collapse of the United States
The external threats to the existing order have been known for a long time - the religious violence - mainly the Islamist one that hit the US first with embassies and ships and finally on September 11, 2001 - also inside the US - the downing of the Twin Towers and the damage to the Pentagon, and then the ineffective wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, there is also a rising power - China, which in a few decades transformed its inhabitants from the poor to the middle class, and conquered the world through investments in infrastructure and buying companies.
The internal threats are less addressed, it is true that there are the alt-right and the Trumpists, who during Trump's reign were even encouraged, but they are only the picturesque face of much more serious deep processes, and in fact today we are already seeing the equivalent of the burning of the library in Alexandria (and Trantor for that matter) in hostility to science.
However, the hostility to science was not born in a vacuum. In the fifties and sixties - the period in which the baby boomers grew up - education was considered the best investment a family could provide for its sons and daughters. Public education created an educated class that later filled the universities, and served as the economic and political reserve of the USA.
Director of Public Education
Then Ronald Reagan was elected president, and turned every investment - certainly government into SPENDING. In the eyes of his followers, public service is a wrong thing, therefore the status of public education has deteriorated, and the question of whether children will be able to reach higher positions depends on the financial capacity of their parents. The universities were not harmed by this, they attracted students from all over the world. In the last decades these were mainly Indians and Chinese. While the educated Indians stayed in the US or returned to their country to promote it, the Chinese were there with one goal - to learn how to bypass the US. In the last twenty years, they have built a higher education system that does not embarrass the best prestigious universities in the world.
Those of the educated who returned to China did not only take care of their family members like the Indians who returned home and worked in the high-tech sector, but helped China build an economic, industrial and military empire. (Because the Chinese of course made sure to attract them to the government sector).
The demons have taken over the world
Carl Sagan wrote in his latest book "A Haunted World" that the combination of ignorance and power is a dangerous combination. If he were alive today he would be much more concerned about the fulfillment of his prediction. His successor, Neil deGrasse Tyson, also expressed concern about the abandonment of science, when he explained that the greatest achievement of science is standing on the shoulders of giants (as Isaac Newton said) and one should not agree with the current situation where everyone becomes a researcher without considering the accumulated knowledge.
The USA is full of ignoramuses who believe that education is an expense compared to China which encouraged education. This ignorance is the factor undermining the foundations of the American empire. Ignorant people tend to believe in every possible conspiracy theory, whether it's the flat earth, the claim that the Democrats run a pedophilia network from the basement of a pizzeria in Washington, through claims that the government implants chips while giving vaccines, to the claim that global warming is an invention designed to help establish a world government. By the way, many conspiracy theories contradict each other, but that doesn't bother me.
It might be funny if it didn't prove two things - one - that ignorance is much more widespread than you think. And the second thing is more important - the common denominator in them is that the demand from the believers is to stop believing in science, the media, the government and any other official body. And this is the big problem, the voluntary galloping into new intermediate days.
Insaid published in Nature in April 2021, the researchers are trying to get to the roots of vaccine denial, and they discovered, among other things, that the US and UK intelligence services revealed that these arguments are being aided on social media by Russian propagandists in the service of the leader. As we know, there is evidence of Russia's involvement in the US elections in favor of Trump in order to sow chaos, which would be convenient for them, and interference in elections in other democratic countries to undermine. In Britain it succeeded in the form of Brexit.
Changing the image of the Middle Ages
In recent years, it appears for example from an article published on the bigthink website in 2017 that in conservative blogs and websites a kind of longing for the Middle Ages has begun as a time when traditional values reigned, God was respected, masculinity was valued. Each settlement was homogeneous and not exposed to diversity as it is today and of course the traditional roles of the species.
A clear representative of this trend is Steve Bannon, former President Trump's controversial advisor who wrote more than once about the need for crusades against Islam but also against modern (so-called progressive) values. Bannon even emphasizes and claims that we are now in a dark period, where we usually call the Middle Ages.
Little by little, it is revealed that behind all the factors that undermine trust in science, the oil gods are hiding, who, according to research based on tax returns of associations, oil companies, and especially Exxon and the brothers Charles and David Koch (now only Charles after David died in 2019 - in 2018 they were the richest family in America, before Jeff Bezos) petitioned dozens of front organizations that allegedly represent civil bodies, so that they would deny the climate campaigncc.org/climate_change/sceptics/funders
But when climate denial is not successful and the public, academia and governments (at least in words, not so much in deeds) understand the dimensions of the disaster, they are now going hard to deny the authority of science in general. This is reflected in harmless beliefs such as the flat earth, the connection of governments with aliens, etc., but has gotten very worse recently, when a huge population believes that it is forbidden to believe in established science - medicine, because everyone is corrupt and the media cooperates, etc. Against the background of such belief in the industry, all science - and certainly climate science will be perceived as political and will cease to be an objective source in the eyes of the deniers. Then it will be possible to continue to pollute the streams near the factories, to build waste sites in areas where a weak population lives, and most importantly - to cast doubt not only on climate science as a legitimate science, but on all science to achieve this goal. If that's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, then what is?
And they are willing to do so even if the price is a return to the Middle Ages, and as it seems there are those who prepare the public opinion to want to love the Middle Ages.
Perhaps the fall of Trantor to the barbarians in the TV series will help warn today's decision makers to make sure we don't go back to barbarism and the Middle Ages in real life. We were not far from it on January 6, 2021.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Another Hollywood creation where the whites are stupid and evil and the blacks are smart and good when in the real world it's the opposite
The left's denial of science is much more difficult and deadly. The denial of IQ differences between the races and genders seriously harms the world of science and society as well as the denial of the superiority of capitalism over communism and more...
First, there is a recurring theme in Asimov's Madev stories, which is expressed quite a few times in the Mossad series. At its climax, a pair of heroes stand (human, or robotic, but usually human with a personality as thick as cardboard) and realize that everyone around them is stupid and wrong and doesn't understand, and only they have reached the one and only insight, and only they observe all the currents of past history and those to come, and only They are in the right place and at the only time possible to witness the impending doom of humanity in thousands of years, and only they can tilt the entire course of humanity's history for the next thousands of years, and all they have to do is press that beautiful big red button, or move the apple to the side The second of the shelf (as happens in "The End of Time") and history will change, and no one else will be able to do anything about it (like surfing to some third option).
So what is Asimov's desired future? The desired future is always authoritarian, some mighty empire should arise and rule the galaxy and humanity as a whole, and after the Asimob forces working behind the scenes no longer manage to feminize this crumbling carcass (of the first empire), an institution must be established, which will lead to a second galactic empire, or even more Good, to unite all humanity into one entity - into a mighty and inclusive galactic consciousness, which (among other things) will not allow an individual to express himself. Here Asimov fails in his historical vision, and his Celdon predicts that if the galaxy is not established, there will be 30 thousand years of "middle ages" of chaos and suffering. But as we know, the great metaphor of the institution is the collapse of the Roman Empire. Well, the Chinese empire was conquered several times but always rose again, under a new dynasty, and with the help of the old elite who always believed that empire was good. This was not the case for post-Roman Europe. There no strong and powerful unifying force arose for a long time, and all the various conquerors preferred to maintain their independence and this took on the decentralized feudal form and brought the Middle Ages we know. The Middle Ages are the exception, not the rule. It was the Middle Ages that finally led to the Renaissance and the creation of the European states and empires. This competition is what led to the breakthrough of Western culture towards scientific progress. This could not have happened if there was a central regime, which suppresses creativity in order to strengthen its control, and it could not have happened if there was no military and economic and artistic and religious competition and what not between the various nation states that formed in Europe.
It should be noted that in an interesting way precisely in "The End of Time" Asimov discovers the opposite and prefers to dismantle the ruling Dakhan establishment in favor of another option, perhaps more pluralistic. Although in his attempts to connect the unconnectable - always to the timeline of the Mossad, he knocks out even this possibility. Who does not.
So where were we? We have seen that Asimov is not a very successful teacher of history, and certainly not of analyzing the reasons for the rise of science and cultural pluralism. In any case, sometimes historical parallels are stretched until they are torn, and Western culture is possessed by some undeciphered obsession with the Roman Empire, and especially with the great story of the collapse of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Empire (around Julius Caesar) and the story of the fall of the Roman Empire. So we must remember that before the empire falls, it has to rise, that is, to go from a state of a Roman republic, with an order that allows citizens to determine their own destiny, to an all-embracing imperial authoritarianism that restricts freedom of expression and the possibility of man to determine his own destiny. In these authoritarian centuries, the pillars that hold the empire rot and its strength crumbles until one healthy push will bring about its complete destruction (and this was a Seldonian image). That is why those who try to link the USA today to the fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of the Middle Ages are wrong. It is better that he concentrate on the story of the fall of the republic, on the breaking of the "checks and checks" system that holds the American republic together, and on the seizure of power by a closed and limited elite headed by an almighty Caesar.
In order to understand the current move in the USA (and Europe, and Israel), which is indeed very worrying, perhaps it is better not to get hung up on Asimov, and move on to examining the Orwellian vision of 1984, and of Animal Farm, and it would not hurt to also get to know "A Wonderful New World" (by Aldous Huxley). Because while the left is busy screaming about "oil giants" who finance all kinds of things, in an incredibly Orwellian way they hide that the oil giants no longer have that much power, and their place is taken by a new elite, with a huge collection of billionaires and interests in the fields of social networks, the Internet, The online shopping and what not. They control the mass media and they align the Democratic Party according to their needs (and the Republican Party as well - until Trump came and ruined the celebration). Hollywood as a whole is aligned to the left and produces unwatchable movies that the average American vomits from the Woke level. Every Emmy and Oscar ceremony becomes a display of propaganda and the spewing of hypocritical signals of propriety from here until a new announcement. The entire American education system, from kindergarten to university, is now an Orwellian propaganda system that is not concerned with imparting knowledge, but rather with aligning children and students towards the "identity discourse" which states that every person deserves points if he is not white, not male, not Christian (or Jewish), And not straight, and even if he doesn't belong to the binary ("repressive") gender system, that's great. If he shares more than one such trait, it is called "intersectionalism" and it is a whole celebration of merit points for him. The situation is so bad that almost everyone is busy faking themselves parents from Kurdistan, from presidential candidates, like Ms. Pokhantas, to the candidates for the 2nd grade board in Nebraska.
In the current situation it is easy to shut up Republicans and kick them off social media, even if with an electronic microscope you can't find anything racist they said (and today everything is racist or offensive to someone). Even the former US president was kicked off the networks as soon as possible. It is easy and possible to imprison the majority of the population in the sound box where the messages of the big bosses and opinion leaders fly and splash from all sides - from the New York Times (a newspaper that hid the Holodomor for communist reasons, and the Holocaust for narcissistic reasons, and has not stopped doing so to this day), and from CNN (which is now under the control of a left-wing tycoon), from the tweets on Twitter (as above), from Facebook (as above), from MSNBC (as above) and from the Washington Post (which is owned by Jeff Bezos), from Google's search engine, and YouTube - and the list is long.
In this situation, very strange artifacts are created in the consciousness of those trapped in progressive consciousness engineering (which someone claimed means "advance" - just to remind, it's worth checking where you are progressing: these "progressives" are the ones who, for eugenic reasons, made up tens of thousands of Americans in the first half of the twentieth century). They are really convinced that they represent the progressive and enlightened side, and they don't exactly notice that before the elections the Democratic presidential candidate and his deputy were exactly the ones who claimed that it would be very difficult to get the vaccine created under the influence of the acceleration of the bureaucratic processes initiated by Trump. It was not "unscientific" then. Now, when they hold the presidency, they have no problem demanding mandatory vaccination (remember, this is still the exact same preparations developed during the Trump era by Pfizer and Moderna - they have not yet put into use an up-to-date preparation to treat more advanced infections under the management of the Biden administration). The masses of subjects have already been conditioned to ignore and forget that episode. Orwell also explained the importance of double thinking - the possibility of holding two contradictory opinions at the same time without noticing the contradiction between them. For example, the crowd has already been conditioned to support the green passport - which requires the American citizen to present a valid vaccination certificate in every economic transaction he will make, but at the same time to support the non-obligation to present an ID card when voting in the US elections "because it is racist", and because the poor blacks and Hispanics cannot (In 2021, yes?) Get an ID. The Democratic Party's interest in the issue is clear, and involves increasing illegal immigration to the US - so that more people can vote for them illegally.
So I definitely suggest getting out of the sounding board, and looking with concern at the closing of freedom of expression in the US and around the world, and the destruction of the higher education system in the US that began in the sixties and is now accelerating, to the point that the benefit they bring to their students is really negative, and see how An anti-democratic oligarchic elite (which operates under the auspices of the Israeli High Court and in an Orwellian manner insists on calling itself "democratic") takes over and destroys democracy.
It did not collapse, but the circumstances I mentioned - disdain for the education systems, China's academic superiority with the help of American university graduates, and more will cause it to collapse.
I see no connection between conservatism and ignorance. You can be both a conservative and a scientist. Both right-wing and scholarly. and to continue and nurture the ambition to acquire an education. There is no connection between the two things. It almost borders on a political debate. I don't like bickering related to the right to progressives and the left. My father also claims that the right caused severe cultural damage with its desire to preserve values, but since Lincoln there have been many right-wing administrations and it is a fact that the USA did not collapse due to ignorance and stupidity. And if we are talking about Israel... during the right-wing era everything flourished: the economy and high-tech are the result of education and not of failures. Confidence and its products are also the result of wisdom and not stupidity.
So from the amount of talk about Isaac Asimov's intentions it is impossible to know at all if he 'intended' what is attributed to him. I've read the entire 'Mossad' series - except for the fact that one can attribute one thing or another to every classic book - it doesn't seem to me that he meant anything other than the profits he would make from his books. Don't try to attribute philosophies to him that he didn't mean. It is possible to analyze each book and attribute to it a relevant philosophy of one kind or another. Stanislav Lem wrote about people with special powers, why didn't he rise up - a celebrated translator of intentions - to decide that Lem's philosophical intention was that the world would degenerate into a world of people with powers and that they would no longer have to learn and acquire an education or that the world would fall into the ignorance of people with special powers or that most people with special powers would not need work because it will be possible with the help of the special forces to achieve anything... Does anyone really want to start an argument? Not through Asimov's books which were devoid of philosophy... you saw what happened in 'I, Robot' the film based on a story by Isaac Asimov - where all the robots were neutralized at the end...
ravine. Separating science from values is also what I want, but the right has taken it one step too far - so if you are conservative you must also oppose science, and since they saw that it is not about one science, they attack the entire institution of science. The vaccines are only a third sign (the first - the opposition to evolution, the second - the followers of the flat earth) that shows the direction in which the world aspires. A world without science existed in the Middle Ages.
From its beginning (1870) the anti-vaccination movement was a religious movement
This is all missionary work under the guise of 'freedom'
Another battle in the centuries-old war between religion and science
You write:
"A clear representative of this trend is Steve Bannon, the controversial adviser of former President Trump who wrote more than once about the need for crusades against Islam but also against modern (so-called progressive) values"
And a paragraph below:
"Little by little, it is revealed that the oil gods are hiding behind all the factors that undermine trust in science..."
What is the connection?
How did you get from modern (progressive) values to trust in science?
If I am a progressive who thinks I am a woman even though I was born a man is this "scientific"? "Unscientific"? What is the connection?
Science is science and values are values, no scientific fact has any value meaning
It seems to me that the perspective of denying science as the sole or decisive measure of cultural barbarism is narrow and misguided, just as the evaluation of any given culture based on its "scientific" alone - is unfounded.
Science and technology are one, albeit important, aspect of culture, but they do not exhaust the cultural level of a given civilization. Indeed, in the historical past there were cultures that did not excel in "science" but were certainly not barbaric for their time, and surpassed - even to a large extent - cultures that excelled in "science" or technology, cultures that in other respects (values of morality, law, reformed social orders or literature and thought, art, etc.) Indeed, they were relatively barbaric. An example of this can be found in the Jewish culture of the Second Temple period compared to all the cultures of the Levant and even compared to the Roman Empire - which was an empire with unprecedented technological and military power but ruled by far inferior values of morality, justice and law. We are also familiar with such cultures in periods close to ours. For example - the Nazi German Reich. Soviet culture also generally excelled in the scientific and technological field, especially in the mid-twentieth century until the 70s, and even today there are areas in which its Russian heir excels. But in other cultural respects it tended, and still tends today, to dogmatic barbarism.
The problem is therefore a problem of total cultural barbarism. And precisely here it is impossible to make claims only to the conservative right. The West is undergoing a clear cultural degeneration process, and it seems that precisely the part of the postmodernists and progressives in this cultural degeneration is decisive. When relativistic ideas dominate the dome, when the social moral backbone is weakened by every postmodernist whim, and when social frameworks that have proven themselves to be the basic and essential cells of human civilization in all generations - collapse, a serious problem arises here. What's more, all this hashing is promoted in the name of concepts of individual freedom without any limits, nihilistic "freedom of thought", a value of technical "equality" that does not distinguish relevant and legitimate differences and gaps 'for the purpose of the matter', and in the framework of Donism and "rights discourse" that the overall social good is of no interest to us. In this situation, culture, including science and the prestige of science, degenerates and collapses, giving way to competing cultures, cultures that may be barbaric, despite being scientific and technological. They will be superior in that they are cultures that desire life, are consistent in terms of their organizational values and norms, and are highly scientific and technological, and in the current situation they may win - thereby perpetuating barbarism in its deepest sense.
Such a barbaric culture is today the Chinese civilization, which writes a very severe inscription on the Great Wall of the West. In this context, it is important and worthwhile to pay attention to the identity of the bearers of the degenerate power that currently position the West in its degenerate state. Some of them are extreme conservatives from the capitalist and libertarian right, but in the other part, and even more significantly, they are precisely the progressives of sorts. Indeed, they should be the main target for criticism of the type that the article raises.
I once read a hypothesis that man 30,000 years ago had a 15% bigger brain.
Various processes of civilization, tribalism and later permanent settlement, left such a large brain, and it was possible to survive even with 15% less.
As it stands now, the current culture and advancement makes it possible to function well even with a 30% smaller brain. Stupidity and idiocy are spreading like a wart.
The next stage - the collapse of Western culture, then, does not seem far off or impractical.
If there were those who thought that the corona was a severe epidemic
After all, it turns out that there is a more serious epidemic
which erupts and infects ever-growing populations,
The name of the epidemic is a disease infected with stupidity
For a long time I (dare) to respond in:
"Ignorance is not a flag worth waving",
It turns out that more and more ignorance flags
Raised to the top of the masts
and flutter with the pride that arises
Abyssal stupidity,
The book is indeed important and prophetic. The disaster he describes in the film also came in five minutes and not 500 years in the making. The same is true in reality. The climate crisis may lead to the end of civilization and instead of helping to solve the existential problem created by the oil giants, they are inciting public opinion against the scientists
Most of the supporting scientists are climate scientists.
Amazing, but the pike works for the progressives. Climate denial is suddenly against science when most of the scientists who support the progressive theory are scientists in the social sciences department. It's just amazing how you can take a serious and important subject, possibly the best science fiction book ever written and use it to change the truth
Yehuda - True, but what happens there affects the whole world.
Unfortunately what happens there affects the whole world and their fall will drag us all down. In addition, in recent years they have simply disconnected from reality. You can't give up on that.
You touched on an important topic, and the series sounds intriguing.
It just annoyed me that when it comes to the USA, the denial of science was attributed only to the right (extreme or not). This is, of course, against the backdrop of refusals to wear masks, get vaccinated, and resistance to closures.
It seems puzzling to me to ignore the denial of science that is done on the left there (extreme or not), and under its influence - even in Israel. Denial of science at the most fundamental and basic levels that until recently it was impossible to imagine that someone would come up with such statements.
Thus, for example, the denial of the existence of basic biological concepts, such as men and women (referring to outright assertions that there is no biological difference between the sexes), or claims that math studies should be changed, because the concept of 'one correct solution' is insensitive.
There is no problem with the fact that you identify with the progressive left in the US, but note: to attribute denial of science only to the right there, while ignoring an even more blatant denial on the left - is not decent.
In any case, thanks for a fascinating and enriching site.
The contempt for science in particular and all types of intellectual knowledge in particular, is more severe in Israel than in the US. True, there are many in the social chaos of the American melting pot who carry with them a primitive heritage alienated from all concepts of "education" or "enlightenment" created in Europe during the 18-19 centuries, but a conscious choice in primitiveness and the darkness of ignorance is even more prominent in Israel, both quantitatively and qualitatively . Only with us it is forbidden to talk about the regression that turned the nation of the "book" into the nation of the screen" and the ideal of the smart student into the utopia of the average person. We have an education system that fears excellence and praises "COOLs", who prove that a person is allowed to become a "celeb".
I don't think you understand the timetable, father.
Are the science and medicine corporations deceiving? Serve faithfully?
Is the earth round? Or were we transferred without noticing to a virtual space (like in a computer game)?
Was the holocaust a conspiracy?
All of the above somewhat loses relevance - when it's another ten degrees (Celsius), and all meat is cooked.
It's next summer, if not this winter. The institutions and corporations you mentioned? passe
Hoka Hi!*
*This is the battle cry of the Indians: "It's a good day to die!"
My father, you are the barbarian, you believe that it is permissible to steal from the public in order to finance what you see fit, you are the barbarian who believes that it is permissible to force medical treatment on the public against their will, you are a continuation of the traditions of dictatorships throughout history who see the public as a herd of sheep measured according to statistics who need the right leaders to rob or coerce About them according to their worldview, people like you are more dangerous to society than any religious/conservative/conspiratorial idiot, you are no different from those Danes who believe in agony for the benefit of society.
And before you preach about conspiracies, you are the main conspirator who thinks that anyone who disagrees with his world view is funded by the Cook brothers and is an idiot.
Want the world to be saved? Start by promoting values that prohibit forcing or funding things you like, because tomorrow things you don't like will be forced or funded with the same value justification you used in favor of.