Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

There has been a lot of talk lately about the growing gap between rich and poor in America, but no one seems to be paying any attention to the tremendous technical competence gap growing between segments of the population. Recent surveys show that nearly 50% of adults in America today lack the basic language and math skills to deal with such simple tasks as balancing their checkbooks or writing a business letter. And to someone who can't cope with simple tasks, a computer becomes an incomprehensible and uncaring thing that knows more about him than he knows himself, seems bent on making his life even more difficult, and against which he has no effective defense.

Worst of all, as he gets pushed farther down the economic ladder, the intimidated can't help but come to see technology as yet another unfair advantage others have over him. As long as he's convinced he can't come to terms with technology, his only alternative is to view technology as his enemy.

Every major dark age humanity has suffered was precipitated by the rejection of the technology of their day by the bulk of the population. Often this rejection was more a rejection of the power structure the technology empowered than the technology itself, but the end result was the same. In each case, libraries were burned, rational thought was suppressed, and the bulk of scientific knowledge and technology accumulated over centuries of hard effort was lost.

The technical competence gap and resulting alienation of portions of the population are being expanded by a number of factors - some intentional, some accidental. The greatest threats appear to come from trends in employment and business economics, crime masquerading as civil unrest, governmental social engineering, and pseudo-religious manipulation. Each of these factors contributes to the disfranchisement of a segment of the population, and altogether create an environment that is increasingly hostile to the science and technology that supports our civilization. The combined effects of all these factors could have serious impacts on all of us if not reversed soon.

"Jobs" is a recurrently popular buzzword in politics today, but the topic is always discussed without any consideration for trends in employment and the hard realities of business. The common joke today is that flipping burgers will be the growth industry of the future for all those who can't deal with technology. The truth is robot burger flippers have already been developed, but have so far been forced to wait in the wings until humans price themselves out of this job as well.

Accelerating the elimination of low level jobs for new and/or untrained marginally productive employees, the government and unions are actively engaged in artificially raising the cost of employing humans. Emotionally appealing but destructive measures like raising the minimum wage, forced employment of comparatively less-qualified applicants through affirmative action, and the threat of expensive lawsuits over perceived offenses, all impact the cost of accomplishing any task using human labor. Legislatively mandated leaves and employee controlled time offs attack the basic need of business to match staffing and labor demand. These artificial distortions decrease the reliability and availability of human employees, lower their productivity, compromise their cost effectiveness, and create monumental scheduling difficulties that ripple through the entire economy.

Economic history indicates that a demand for human labor will only exist in those untrained labor jobs where humans can offer a cost or performance advantage over machines. The most reliable way to guarantee an investment in automation has always been to raise the costs and restrictions of using human labor.

Our government and labor organizations continue to operate on the basis of the last century when production line workers were largely perceived to be easily interchangeable cogs in the great machine. However, the current reality is that over 80% of workers are employed by small companies that are critically dependent on the performance and reliable availability of each employee.

When it comes down to it, the business of business is still business. Any employer that tries to ignore this fact rapidly becomes irrelevant to the problem by going out of business. Every additional cost and restriction imposed on business in the name of social engineering just provides additional motivation to replace expensive and troublesome human employees/adversaries with compliant machines.

Regulations and agreements officially intended to protect and improve jobs almost inevitably become primary contributing factors in their elimination. And everyone who loses his job to a machine focuses his resentment on the machine, absolving himself completely from his own failure to maintain his value as an employee in a dynamic ever-changing economy. The alarming growth in modern day Luddites is fueled by the growing segment of the population that has allowed itself to become disfranchised by what they see as "human hostile" technology.

All of the technology related problems facing humanity today are in reality the result of the inappropriate or even malicious use of technology. Science and technology are absolutely neutral and have no self motivation. In the same way that a firearm is inert and harmless unless someone picks it up and pulls the trigger, the humans who misuse technology are solely responsible for their actions, not the underlying science and technology that made the misuse possible.

Unfortunately, truth and reality are unknown commodities in the popular media today. Scientists are portrayed as malevolent monsters or venial criminals destroying the "good people" around them for personal gain. And while science and technology are vilified, outrageous acts by the disfranchised are encouraged and glorified by the media treatment of public exhibitions of anger and destruction.

Most disturbing are the increasingly specious justifications used for mass violence and looting. Too many people now consider mobs not as statements of social protest but rather as protection from responsibility for murder, vandalism, and base thievery. Consider for example the recent riots supposedly justified by the alleged killing of a young black man when he attempted to run down a cop with a stolen car.

In the past, horse thieves were automatically hanged by a society that recognized the harm done to the victim and the need to eliminate such socially destructive behavior. Now we are told to elevate this human failure who died while actively engaged in multiple crimes including attempted murder, into an urban martyr. The rights of the car thief's wholly innocent victims have been callously voided by those with an interest in aggravating the delusion of injustice festering in the minds of those wanting to hear only that message.

To the extent politically correct thievery in the guise of looting by protected minorities is the major if not only component of most recent social disturbances, one has to suspect the actual motives of most rioters. Most importantly, the fact that masses of the population are willing to break down the social contract over such inappropriate causes as the killing of a car thief indicates a growing lack of understanding and support for the social contract that forms the fabric of our society. The willingness of the rest of us to tolerate such behavior reinforces and validates the participant's flawed justifications and conclusions. The locally ruinous dollar damages of each riot are insignificant compared to the damage done to the social fabric across the nation.

Valid or not, major portions of our population have already convinced themselves that they are unable to succeed in our modern technological world. They increasingly see greater potentials for themselves in a broken society than in our current system. They would tear down our world in the blind hope that if they can pull the rest of us down to their level they will be personally better off. Wealth is after all relative.

The actual existence and nature of one or more superior beings is outside the scope of this dissertation, as are those religions that focus on spiritual issues and don't attempt to impose their beliefs on the secular life of others. However, the temporal actions and intentions of the myriad groups claiming special rights and powers due to some unproven connection with a superior being must be judged by their temporal effects on the human condition and advancement of civilization.

Accelerating the slide into the abyss, the media and major sections of the government and private sector are aggressively promoting centuries old myths and unfounded concepts that further distance the believer from any rational understanding of the world around them. Many of these myths started out as hallucinations resulting from electrochemical or neural malfunctions caused by self-induced malnutrition or other physical and biochemical abuses in the name of "religion". Over the centuries these myths have been enhanced and expanded by various groups attempting to use them to justify their claims of special privilege or power over other "less godly" unfortunates. Many times these enhanced myths have been used to justify atrocities and appalling crimes against humanity.

Today, after a relatively brief period of enlightenment and rationality, the teaching of truth and scientifically provable facts is again under aggressive attack. Seeking to promote their particular brands of perversion, various groups are demanding that their favorite unprovable delusions and myths be given equal treatment and be presented as possessing credibility equal with proven facts. It should concern everyone when those promoting various competing exploitive "religions" demand that we vilify the scientists that made our modern world possible while lauding as saints the proponents of anti-science myths.

The morally and ethically bankrupt high priesthood of corrupt politicians and false prophets who currently seek to regain control over our lives have always needed an uninformed and easily manipulated subject population in order to preserve their power. We've become much too dangerous and well armed during our all too brief flirtation with freedom to be openly abused when we know what's being done to us. However, the offenses perpetrated by these power hungry vandals in trying to restore the old order are having far greater effects than they can ultimately control. The destruction and/or subversion of the public educational system is accelerating the division of the population between the intelligentsia and the untidy hordes of those increasingly unable to function within our modern technological society.

The result of these efforts on the rapidly expanding segment of the population that is already disfranchised by their inability to cope with complex technology is a growing anti-science movement. This movement sees the destruction of science and technology - and the intelligentsia who are perceived to be unfairly benefiting from science and technology - as the answer to their problems. They are increasingly willing to use violence to achieve their goals. Isolated outbreaks of this lethal insanity have already occurred around the globe - Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Mao's Cultural Revolution in China, Idi Amin in Uganda, etc.

If science and technology are not made accessible to a much wider segment of the population, the technologically competent intelligentsia is in ever greater danger of a violent backlash from the masses of the disfranchised. It may take a great deal of technology to design and build a weapon, but no intelligence is required to pull the trigger. Every time the forces of regression have destroyed the technological foundations of civilization, humanity has been plunged into a dark age. While the European dark age is the most widely discussed in western literature, the same catastrophic pattern has occurred in Asia, Africa and South America. The greater the advancement before the fall, the deeper and longer lasting the resulting dark age.