We’re on the brink of a slow-motion apocalypse. A generation or two from now, humans may live in a world where they still have access to amazing old machines left over from a smarter civilization, but lack the brains to make new ones or even service the old ones. A generation or two later, after all the old miracle machines have worn out, feral humans may wander the burnt-out ruins of the civilization we left them, like barbarians gawking at the wonders of Rome.
From those ruins, merit will be rise again. Because merit rewards the meritorious. In the meantime, welcome to the new Dark Ages.
The Aspen Beat
Alex Epstein: There is a lot of conflicting "information" about the TX blackouts. Here's the bottom line: the root cause of the TX blackouts is a national and state policy that has prioritized the adoption of unreliable wind/solar energy over reliable energy.
This is what is going to happen everywhere if we stay on this course also known as the green new deal. California has been dealing with this for over 20 years now. They have regular and unnecessary power outages which they affectionately call rolling blackouts in order to hide the Cause of them which is their own policies on energy. Meanwhile they are watching their energy Costs go higher and higher and higher.
At the end of the essay, Sharansky applies the lessons he learned under Soviet communism to the United States.
He writes: The feeling of release from the fear and giddy relief when crossing the line from doublethink to democratic dissent is also universal across cultures. This understanding prompted the Town Square Test I use to distinguish between free societies and fear societies: Can you express your individual views loudly, in public, without fear of being punished legally, formally, in any way? If yes, you live in a free society; if not, you’re in a fear society.
In the West today, the pressure to conform doesn’t come from the totalitarian top — our political leaders are not Stalinist dictators. Instead, it comes from the fanatics around us, in our neighborhoods, at school, at work, often using the prospect of Twitter-shaming to bully people into silence—or a fake, politically-correct compliance.
Recent polls suggest that nearly two-thirds of Americans report self-censoring about politics at least occasionally, essentially becoming a nation of doublethinkers despite the magnificent constitutional protections for free thought and expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights To preserve our integrity and our souls, the quality of our political debate and the creativity so essential to our cultural life, we need a Twitter Test challenging bottom-up cultural totalitarianism that is spreading throughout free societies. That test asks: In the democratic society in which you live, can you express your individual views loudly, in public and in private, on social media and at rallies, without fear of being shamed, excommunicated, or cancelled? Ultimately, whether you will live as a democratic doublethinker doesn’t depend on the authorities or on the corporations that run social media platforms: it depends on you. Each of us individually decides whether we want to submit to the crippling indignity of doublethink, or break the chains that keep us from expressing our own thoughts, and becoming whole.
(Emphasis added) Increasingly and to alarming degree, America is failing the Twitter test.
Nathan Sharansky (Soviet Dissident)
