 |
Of Stars And Dumb Humans theme:mysticism |
We are living in a world wide village; we have more access to information
than ever in the history of the human species. We are so much bombarded with
these ideas that we take them for granted, along with the “fact”
that nowadays we are wiser and more rich(1) than
ever. Most people tend to consider the past as an era full of superstitions,
lack of, or false, knowledge comparing to the modern era dominated by the
infinite wisdom of science and the vast library of internet.
But as is usually the case, one has first to criticise and if necessary reject
the truisms of one’s era in order to seek any truth. So even if I was not
by instict defiant of all these facts that I am forced to believe, the first
cracks in my belief system of our wiser than ever era would appear two years
ago in a warm summer night in the beach of a greek island. Two people we met
there were with us — both around 28, both working in athens, one also
a graduate of a college, in a few words two common representatives of our
time — and as the mood was, we made some unpolite comments about the
stars and their insistency on spoiling the blackness of the sky every night
to receive the amazing question by these two people: “what are the stars,
by the way?”. They were not joking: they had no idea what are these
shiny points in the sky, no explanation whatsoever. And they were really surprised
to be informed that almost all of them are in fact suns like our bright sun(2).
It just happened that I mentioned the fact while travelling in Europe some
time later only to receive the same comment, “but what are the stars,
are they really suns, no, it can’t be”. And then it became like an obsession
to me to mention the fact around and ask people — people active in their
city, musicians, art-people etc — and mostly I was getting nonsense
like “then why are they not so bright as the sun?” or “then
why are they so small?”.
Try to think this: stars are something you watch almost every night, even
if you live in a city, you can see them hanging above you, they are part of
your everyday experience, people in love foolishly enough tend to offer them
in their beloved ones and still most of the people have no fucking idea what
are these lights! It is not that they have a false explanation, this might
be ok, if they were telling me that they are explosing comets, or even the
torchlights of gods, I would prefer it. What is worst is that most people
have never bothered to find an explanation, have never wondered about it.
This sounds more dumb than wise to me, wouldn’t you agree? In fact, it sounds
pathetic, infinitely sad and stupid. To never wonder what is reality around
you.
I was really depressed to explore a bit further this case of modern ignorance:
from that sad New York artist girl who when asked replied that there were
20 billion (I insisted, billion, not million) people living in New York (what
is more sad, she has never thought about it before), to the greek student
who thought the various races of dogs are created through breeding with other
animals (like bears and deers for instance), the vastness of human ingorance
for simple facts related to their everyday experience, was devastating. What’s
more, most of these people, ignoring vital information about their immediate
environement, would contain detailed knowledge about useless nonsense like
the new models of Sony, TV serials or new trends.
How this generalised ingorance, this undisputable social poverty, can be reconciled
for the supposed bigger-than ever affluence of information? Technology made
printing of books and magazines much easier and cheaper thus widely available
and radio, TV and lastly internet offer mass acces to information. But all
this ingorance still happens and it is because and not depsite of all the
technology of mass accessible information.
The modern man is bombarded by useless information. Every modern european
city is flooded with “free magazines” and for most people these
are the easiest things to read: and they don’t recognise the fact that all
these crap is just advertisement leaflets; any article or feature there exists
only to make you see the ads there and to trick you into calling it a mag
and not an ad leaflet and thus preventing you from just throwing it away.
Radio, television and — in a lesser extent — internet are means
of power: thus all the information available there simply accompanies advertisements
or has the only goal to keep the workers-producers calm and working and producing.
Very few people make information available to the wide public for the sake
of wisdom — most they do it because they are paid to do it and those
who pay them just want to sell their products and secure the condition of
the ever-repeating work-consume cycle.
People also tend to be conditioned to accept valid information only though
mediatised information; I myself have witnessed the sad fact that many people
after a riot in Athens are anxious to return home and see what the television
has to show about it. Thus, their experience is validated: it was true because
the TV showed it, no matter that they, in the first place were present in
the actual event. People are bombarded with so much useless information that
they reach a state of apathy towards their environment: their brain tends
to block most of the info leaving access only to the most canny and comfortable
means; mostly television news and advertisements.
Moreover, less and less people have the time or simply the ability to just
sit and wonder what is really happening around them — or take a walk
and observe things and try to find explanations for them. Walking in big cities
is a case of danger of being run over by a car and noise and air pollution
and besides, there is not much to see except advertisements, cops and shops.
Driving is even worse: everything outside the car screen becomes unreal, like
watching it from a TV screen. And anyway time is so fragmented and organised:
there is not really such a thing as free time anymore- the time one is not
working is spent on recovery from work or on consuming goods or experience
(like holidays for instance). You don’t need to know what is really happening
around you anyway; all you need to know is how to do what you are paid for
best and to be socially acceptable enough in order to reproduce and offer
capitalism some more workers-consumers (which you grow with your own cost).
Even when one’s studying something the spectrum of knowledge (s)he is bound
to aquire is far more narrow than before: we live in the era of specification
and one can be a really great expert in sub-atomic physics let’s say and still
being competely unable to write a simple thesis. Let alone to understand some
complex social relations and structures or philosophical matters.
So what passes for knowledge for modern people is some abstract knowledge
of facts completely unrelated to their immedetiate experience. Most people
know about the dinosaurs for instance but that is something that could be
as well a fabrication — but the same people are completely ingorant
of things happening in their own neghbourhood.
We live in an era of extreme information and extreme ignorance: an era of
generalised spiritual poverty. Modern human is maybe the poorest human in
history. In this aspect a primitive person of a let’s say hunter-gatherer
tribe of South America is far wiser: she has a detailed knowledge of his immediate
physical environment (plants, animals and their properties) and also holds
a detailed explanation system of metaphysics or social mechanics. And I am
sure that she will at least have an eplanation about the appearance and disappearance
of these tiny lights in the nigth sky.
NOTES:
(1) The issue of poverty exceeds by far the goal
and space capacity of this article, but:
a) poverty is mostly a social relation and not an issue of how many goods
one is possessing
b) if we want to discuss poverty (and affluence) as absolut values then the
only definition of richness/poorness we can accept is the amount of freedom
or control over one’s reality. A member of the aristocracy of the western
society of late 18th century was rich: (s)he could move free to vast areas
of experience with vey few things unavailable to her. A “rich”
manager of a multinational company of early 21st century is poor: (s)he has
to work and suffer countless social and political conventions and have vast
areas of experience completely restricted to him.
(2) Just in case: (according to the scientists)
stars are celestial bodies who produce vast amounts of energy through nusclear
fusion. Our sun is a typical rather small star. Stars appear small in the
sky because they are far-far away. Not every celestial body is a star though:
we see venus for instance in the sky despite the fact that venus is a planet
(like earth you know) because venus is relatively very close to earth and
because it reflects the light from our star (sun). But mostly stars are like
suns.
