John Wise

I feel overwhelmed by the awareness that we are squandering the resource of knowledge by pandering to a majority we dare not ask to abandon their primitive base nature. We are rewarding behaviors incompatible with a species at the cusp of ever-greater enlightenment. This is a burden that weighs heavy in my mind and upon my heart.

Every day, I witness and am nearly forced by proximity to listen to banalities that groupthink and pop culture have qualified as legitimate aspects of a mature human being. By and large, we are hardly an inch away from the worst characteristics of our distant Neanderthal relatives: we are warlike, brutish, wasteful, and barely cognizant of the fertile grounds we carry between our ears. While we are certainly capable of modern communication and commerce with the wider world and have specialized skills, the same may have been said for the Neanderthals in that they were utilizing their own advanced modes of communication that were distinctly different than those of their animal neighbors. They were likely aware of the extent of their world as far as they understood it to stretch to and practiced specialized skills, be it for raising children, going on the hunt, gathering food, or entering battle.

Strength is still the largest measure of power, with its manifestation being ensconced in physical prowess or in the ability to gather money and weapons to cast the shadow of overwhelming fortitude and superiority. As a society and species, we are marginalizing the better half of our potential found in caring, thinking, sharing, and cultivating a culture that has largely been relegated as being secondary to a perceived constant threat from the “other.”

We are once again warming up our vulgar, angry selves, the part of people that starts a war and hinders human potential due to the need to cull the lower classes, who may present too much competition for resources that the powerful covet. While these epic battles have the ability to lay waste to the combatants, they also act as a filter to hide the simultaneous removal of activists and intellectuals who would otherwise try to rein in the abuses of power and give voice to those who do not have one.

This has been repeated time and again during the thousands of years of our evolution, and rather than learning from it as we have from agriculture, writing, math, and science, we continue to nurture this primitive Stone Age person found deep within and take pride in putting it back on a pedestal from time to time.

Suspicion of the other still lives on within our species, and those who would encourage this mistrust by stoking the flames of xenophobia are most likely preparing for battle. To fan the tinder of intolerance and breed this volatility is giving context to the justifications that are about to be unleashed for the pretext of a solution that, in an instant, will seem viable to those who will be set up for doing the bidding of attacking the other.

We’ve seen this specter of hostility following World War II and the perceived threat of communism when we invaded those we felt were leaning too far left. Today, we are trying to contain our rage against Islam and those countries that are producing refugees. In both situations, we identified the evil perpetrators and collaborators who became the new targets, and then, while making maximum noise about their threat to the internal stability of the republic, we entered into hostile conflicts. McCarthyism and islamophobia allowed us to focus our existential anxiety on enemies outside our borders who might otherwise corrupt our way of life. Today, we are taking aim at liberalism and intellectualism by attacking social programs, the news, and those who would protect gays and immigrants and who might change our gun laws under the pretext that once these lefties seize power, they will alter our way of life. The primitive and angry solution would amount to civil war; even if the battlefield is in other lands, our crisis is right here within our own minds.

I had once believed that America would not have a black president in my lifetime, and so it is my thought today that we will not reach escape velocity from the anchor that is the stupidity of our own doing. We carry the tribe of Neanderthal deeper within than our relatively recent adoption of racial hatred. I hope I’m wrong that the primitive dolt inside all of us is not going to rule the day.

I have a theory (probably not original) that words and numbers are the symbolic DNA that plays a large role in our intellect and has a significant influence on our personalities. While our social environment and economic situation during our formative years also impact our character, I believe it is our vocabulary and ability to form complex strings of words that are likely shaping the path of our potential.

While the double helix strands of DNA are the foundation of the genetic materials that dictate our physical being, I’m suggesting that strands of words form our mental being.

If a young person is surrounded by people with a limited vocabulary and half-functional intellect during the early years of development, how does he or she find mentors to benefit from and get inspired by? If no such person exists among family, educators, or circle of friends, can we rightfully hope that the young person finds inspiration on their own? At one time, television shows such as Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers offered a one-size-fits-all blanket of conformity that tried to impart positive messages and improved vocabularies, but those shows have given way to apps that play on instant rewards, thus satisfying the dopamine wishes of the player, but rarely providing intellectual linguistic exercises.

If we had word games that offered more verbal play between the software and player, then maybe we’d start to see a general increase in vocabulary and, ultimately, in intellectual ability. The challenge would be how to involve parents to be part of the game or simply get them to start reading.

I thought I was done with this blog entry with the previous paragraph, and then I started thinking again about the roles of educators and was considering a teacher 50 years ago. They would have had a classical education without the influence of all-pervasive media. There are times when I’m listening to casual conversation in public, and if I don’t see the people who are talking, I can easily believe that the cackle I’m hearing is from some high school girls. Then I look over and see some youngish 30-year-olds, and as I continue listening I learn they are teachers. Their gossip is insipid nonsense that would have been of similar gossipy tripe when they were 14. Yet these are the people we have entrusted with raising young minds for the work of the future.

Education, I believe, will have to relegate its role of using people to bring learning to our populations to artificial intelligence that can be responsive to the immediate and near future demands of a workforce able to deploy greater knowledge. The very DNA of the intellect will shortly be forced to undergo a rapid evolutionary leap forward, or humanity will suffer the consequences of producing ever greater numbers of people ill-equipped to compete with smart machines.

The extraordinary peculiarity of listening to adults talk seriously about God and Jesus in public never fails to strike me as being childlike; forgive me for the overt condescension. How does the 30-60-something-year-old find the enthusiasm to speak so fervently about a deity none of us have ever seen? How can two adults, before eating a meal stop to pray? I know the answer is faith, but I can’t relate to religious people who are otherwise apparently well-educated.

When I encounter middle-aged recovering drug addicts or alcoholics who are finding themselves in the hands of God, I understand that they have returned to the emotional age of when their addiction first took root. Listening to well-off adults discuss their spirit and baptism sends me reeling that they are seeing themselves as rational people steeped in reality. These very same people are quite content being dismissive of other religions as fantasy but find it sacrilegious when others challenge their own flavor of holy deity.

Worse is when listening to a group of older adults carry on about a pastor who they didn’t gel with at church earlier in the day. Their disdain and sanctimonious tone seem to me to be the most unchristian of ways to practice their religion. When I hear god-fearing people dismiss the homeless or less fortunate, I wonder what part of their dogma their dog ate for breakfast. And when I think I’ve heard it all, I find myself listening to the guy at the next table tell a young person how he’s operating with greater spiritual maturity than the kid due to his greater experience through his relationship with God. The hypocrisy of these numbskulls is simply not constrained.

So much judgment, wrath, and pride among people who claim to walk with Jesus. Tragic that they cannot fathom their own ugly bias but are prone to cast aspersions towards someone like me who is comfortable in his atheism. Then again, I suppose all they have to do is confess their sins to Jesus, and they can continue their own wicked ways while I, not having accepted Jesus as my personal savior, will be forever condemned.

The idea of punishment on the astral plane seems to be a relic of primitive people who never really matured much beyond their childhood. This reigning spirit in the sky playing the angry father figure who will deliver retribution for our transgressions is probably borne out of a need to give weight to authority, as contrary or disobedient persons can be threatened with the holy father who has jurisdiction over their soul.

We are, to an extent an archaic people wielding the advanced tools of exploration which allow us to peer into our own genetic building blocks and have looked back in time to interpret radiation spreading through the universe that helps explain the origins of matter. Yet we persist in carrying forward dated mythologies with no basis in anything that resembles facts.

How primitive we are that we have lofted so much irrelevant meaning not only on the symbols of religion but on the very tools we use on a daily basis. Many a person find a kind of holy affirmation when acquiring wealth and use their purchases as validation that they have achieved something that sets them apart. The car, house, designer clothes, and jewelry are nothing more than accessories that humanity has given false value to. The intangibles of intelligence, passion, empathy, and sharing play second fiddle to the outward glorifications of the self. I find this to be one of the greatest contradictions of the semblance of piousness from those who believe. When do we as a species transfer value from the unseen symbolic spirit world and objects of wealth to the demonstrable actions that arise from our work and efforts? In the modern world, beauty is not only skin deep it is the totality of our reality.