@hypostase Your shared thought reminded me of this:
https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
@pwloftus
It's not only a US disease, even if there are perhaps one or two citizens I may think of that suffer for it. So does my brother, a "European New Zealander" who will not suffer the word pākehā, or at a more public scale, Michael Gove's "The people of this country have had enough of experts" during the Brexit campaign.
Asimov, too, suffers from that particular US approach to the relationship between "rights" and "freedoms" though.
@hypostase I'd agree it's more of a global issue.
Thank you; I learned a new word today: pākehā.
I also do not understand the mindset but I'm always happy to learn something new including if it doesn't conform to what I previously did.
@pwloftus
The sad thing is that Asimov wrote that in 1980, when he was just a little older than I am now, and we've really not gotten any better.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, I trace it back to 1987/88, when university students were required to pay some fees towards their education, and, practically overnight, went from I'll do my degree, travel a bit, come home and give back to the community, to fuck! I have to pay for this, how do I get out quickly and make lots of money.
Ignorance doesn't get in the way of making money, especially if you can farm out the consequences in others.
@hypostase It's disheartening to see that historically some people have been able to articulate issues and problems but it never seems to me that the ratio of problems to solutions is ever balanced. (I certainly don't have answers or solutions to societal issues)
Same problems exist and seemingly more prolific.
Was education free in Aotearoa New Zealand prior to then?
@pwloftus
Yes, University education was. Schools still are, but even then to get good schools you had to pay, either directly with fees, or indirectly buy having an expensive address.
We were supposed to be a classless society, but many of us were really white middle-class colonisers. We drank the free market koolaid, just like everybody else.
kit
Patrick Loftus 🖖