It should surprise no one that the cleverest and most educated among us (the so-called creative caste) should proclaim that the solutions to the existential problems which confront mankind – climate disruption, resource depletion, economic dislocation of workers, even death itself – should comprise the very things which clever and highly educated people enjoy doing most:
• Governing (of course!)
• Making new scientific discoveries
• Inventing breakthrough technologies
• Creating new industries and markets
• Teasing man’s vices to bring forth ever-increasing desires for more and better goods and services
• Designing laws and regulations to elicit socially-constructive behaviors from corporations, consumers, and other amoral persons
• And (re-) educating worker drones who are constantly being displaced by the remorseless march of economic progress
We-the-clever and we-the-educated particularly enjoy these solutions when we can earn a salary in the process – or even better, acquire great fame, wealth and power.
No, the astonishing thing is that so many purportedly clever and educated people should actually believe these “solutions” are objectively legitimate – rather than blatantly self-serving.
Hans Noeldner
Oregon