Mole
Permabanned
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2008
- Messages
- 20,284
As we say goodbye to civilisation and its discontents, we become nostalgic for the pursuit of truth and human rights.
Yes, our civilisation found a way to determine what is true and what is not true. It is called the scientific method based on evidence and reason. But tribalism replaces evidence and reason with lived experience. Under tribalism lived experience trumps evidence and reason.
Lived experience has the advantage of being intuitive, it does not require years of training, it can't be challenged, and must be accepted, just as revelations of old were accepted.
Looking deeper we see the foundations of civilisation are eroding. Civilisation began with the phonetic alphabet, and the Greco-Roman alphabet was spread throughout the world. This was rejected by the barbaric tribes just as Boko Haram rejects Western literacy today. And so we applied the phonetic alphabet by force of colonialism.
But under the onslaught of the electric telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the television, and the net, civilisation began to dissolve into electric tribalism.
There is no way back, the best we can hope for is the book will be retained as a status symbol, unread but proudly displayed.
Yes, our civilisation found a way to determine what is true and what is not true. It is called the scientific method based on evidence and reason. But tribalism replaces evidence and reason with lived experience. Under tribalism lived experience trumps evidence and reason.
Lived experience has the advantage of being intuitive, it does not require years of training, it can't be challenged, and must be accepted, just as revelations of old were accepted.
Looking deeper we see the foundations of civilisation are eroding. Civilisation began with the phonetic alphabet, and the Greco-Roman alphabet was spread throughout the world. This was rejected by the barbaric tribes just as Boko Haram rejects Western literacy today. And so we applied the phonetic alphabet by force of colonialism.
But under the onslaught of the electric telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the television, and the net, civilisation began to dissolve into electric tribalism.
There is no way back, the best we can hope for is the book will be retained as a status symbol, unread but proudly displayed.