Later the topic arose as indication of the superiority of more modern intellectuals as a form of derision toward their predecessors. Don't be fooled. The self appointed elite never ceased in such egocentric dialog.
{People forget just how rare freedom to improve one's lot in life was back in the pre-automobile, pre-electric, and pre-American Revolution times. You could probably get away with more in many ways because technology of official control and oversight was rather weak and ineffective. They couldn't afford to have government agents hiding in the woods hoping to catch speeding buggies, or horses with a missing shoe.
It has taken us a long time, but much of the ideology which switched us from being considered subservient subjects to being autonomous individual citizens did influence world thought, including ending slavery in most places. Though it is still prevalent in parts of Africa, the mideast and asia. Unfortunately, the basic premises of individual liberty have been lost or convoluted under the power structure which evolved in spite of the Constitution. (not because of, as some nincompoops claim)}
But we don't hear much about the people who accomplished the mundane things of life, like market the first toilet paper. We hear about the geniuses who could take a topic, like angels dancing on a pin, and employ very deep, complicated analysis to it, so that a normal person happening upon such a discussion would conclude that he was too ignorant and devoid of intelligence to even understand the topic, let alone venture an opinion. The topics may not be the same, but lawyers and doctors and academicians, among others, built much of their industries upon such linguistic and philosophical tactics.
And that has been the trick employed by manipulators of people and public principle, as well as academia, ever since. Had I not undergone extensive testing, for simple yet complex reasons, I would have forever believed that such people were far more intelligent than I. I always found the ones who convolute the issue at hand with a myriad of obscure, and often irrelevant bits of information highly annoying. Now I know why. They are annoying, and not as smart as they'd have you believe.
It is the vanity of many in academia, and people all over the internet, to swamp a discussion with alleged facts which avoid the principle at hand, and are half truths which really require a separate analysis on their own. Throw in some LOL, and reference to unhip political opponents, and bammo, you've won the day without making a single legitimate point.
Sometimes I see academic types who have to reference obscure literary works or other esoteric references when discussing things with which they personally have little knowledge; blue collar jobs, being poor, hazards of racial violence, running a small business, etc. But they know the answers, and how others feel. Their nonsense is so steeped in rhetoric that only masters of the expert level of Trivia would know, it tends to cause one to shrink away from commenting or disputing their marxian conclusions.
I have a lot of trouble using what intelligence I have. Maybe I'm too stupid to know how. It did open my eyes a bit when two separate, unaffiliated shrinks tested me about a year apart and exclaimed the same thing, which would indicate that these annoying academic types, insulated from real life, have absolutely nothing on me in capacity to know or learn. I do have my glitches, but that is another story.
The point is that much of the world is run by purveyors of fine print, and coded language which only serves to dupe others, feed egos, and generally steal and mislead. I observed a thread discussing the war on poverty, and why are there so many poor people?
They went into all kinds of mumbo jumbo, analysis of the lack of apprenticeship opportunities due to manufacturing moving overseas, and using words like "vector" and on and on. I envisioned a pompous pipe smoker, mumbling in a country club voice, sipping scotch, chilling out in the smoking jacket.
Obviously, these guys had never worked where I've worked, closely examined public schools, or been stranded in pockets of either white or black redneck areas. They never tried to legally go from homeless to self sufficient with their own transportation only to discover that fees and taxes and official hoops doubled the initial cost of existence. They, like most people, never considered those who really want to better their lot, but do not want to go to a government agency and be humiliated, second guessed, treated like a truant child, and lose what shred of self respect they have left.
How many programs and initiatives have to be lost in bureaucratic insanity before the dancing pin analysts figure out that their theories and misuse of the wealth of others has contributed, and still contributes to the problems they decry, and characterize as "somehow Kafkaesque", all the while maintaining a condescending, if not disdainful attitude toward those who attempt "pedestrian" enterprises like building a business, owning a gun, working without joining a union, speaking or writing in ways that most people can understand, raising a decent family, building a lifelong marriage, minding one's own business...things beneath the self appointed arbiters of social cost and greater good.
Funny how running a hardware store is considered somehow less elevated than being in advertising if one observes Hollywood's take on it. And, oddly, Hollywood and academia are largely on the same page, as far as what is revered and what is shunned. And being in acting or politics even trumps advertising. Some jerk spending public money in a way in which 49% disapprove gets labelled as a "great American"; great man or great woman. Give me a friggin break.
Let those leeches dance on a pin. The guy who used to run Miller Road Hardware in southwest Miami was a great man. And he didn't do it on money taken at gunpoint. You can have your huckster heroes posing as "public servants". I'll take a good hardware person over them any time.
I think much of what ails our country, and many others, is that they let the debate regarding angels dancing on the head of a pin serve as the model for making laws and reasoning through various problems as they've arisen. (Of course, behind the scenes, the unscrupulous make fortunes off the madness)
This explains why the more effort on the official level that has gone toward solving "crises", the more the crises have grown and multiplied. But we pretend it makes sense because they sound smart, and they claim all who disagree are idiots, bigots, fools, unAmerican, xenophobic, baby killers, warring against women, mean to old folks, for poisoning the children, racist, stoopitt, etc., and then they lol . Or even roflmao, and worse!
The emperor has no clothes and, it appears, he/she/it/they has undergone a sex change.
Aloha, you peasants and peons. Let's move, you obese subjects.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
First spouses shouldn't be seen or heard. Nothing but fodder for lazy journalists and a waste of tax dollars. You want royalty and nobility? Move to a goddam kingdom!!!update: the native part of me has still been successful in resisting the white devil's firewater.
The white devil in me is still resisting the red devil's evil killing smoke.
One, or two, must be ever vigilant, and it can be trying at times.
I'm repulsed by firewater most of the time, so that is good.
I'm hoping to find the evil tobacco as repulsive someday soon. We are getting there.
This inner conflict caused by my multi-cultural genes is tricky and potentially volatile.
Just imagine the foolishness of thinking it isn't equally volatile and dangerous in the outer world on the macro scale in society.
