Worthy Criticism

In this day and age, with so many different people from all walks of life, different levels of education and practical knowledge, and of course, individual taste, opinion, etc, etc one must certainly ask if there is any such thing as informed disagreement? What I’m talking about here is the ability of two or more people to explore any topic without criticism becoming part of the central discussion? One only has to spend 10 minutes (if even that long) watching any news program, listening to talk radio, or any other form of publication and most certainly there will be the individual creators spin on “their opinion” and some critical comment against anyone that dares to question them or refute their opinion. Once more popularly called “Brain Storming”, it appears to be a lost art.

This came to mind this morning while I was reading US News & World Report and an article titled “What color should my pee be”? Now, before you positively explode in laughter understand that I thought to myself, how juvenile, what a waste of editorial space or journalistic talent …. Then it struck me; At 60 I know the answer, but when I look at how many 15, 20, even 30 year olds that don’t even know the name of our Secretary of State, Chief of Staff, or in some cases even the name of the President … I was a bit humbled. We spend so much time, money, and effort trying to discover the next mystery partial of matter that we no longer seem to get around to teaching the basics to our children, possibly in part because we don’t know many of them ourselves! Is it any wonder how many adults die each year simply because they haven’t a clue of the warning signs of pending decline in health? Or the importance of washing your hands regularly. If so, why are so many of us so terribly out of shape and over weight? We should know the dangers of obesity so the question remains: are we stupid or do we simply not care?

Eons ago when I was more involved in the intelligence community I remember a very simple philosophy that was taught to us as a simple “how to” overthrow a government and keep the population under control. It was and remains “keep them stupid and give them time for sex”. Sounds primitive and ludicrous, doesn’t it? The fact is that it works, in fact if you look at the overthrow’s of countries over the past 75 years, it’s there practically every time. Now, look at this country since the 1950’s ….. our department of education continues to dumb down educational requirements, no longer teaches hand writing, advanced civics’, etc.. All those things that expand the knowledge base and colleges …. Only the select ones truly advance the idea of knowledge & philosophy, instead apparently promoting more fraternity parties, keggers, basket weaving as a major ….. yes, yes, I am exaggerating but honestly, there are very few MIT’s left. And sex? Well, look at this splendid 40 hour work week that many corporations want to shorten to eliminate too many expensive benefits so everyone has lots of time to stay at home, run around and feed those basic needs.

If our worlds electrical system collapsed tomorrow, just how many people under 50 could still write out a readable sentence? Look around and see for yourself. How many could build a fire, hunt down game, skin it and prepare it as well as cook it over an open fire? Could they build a shelter or modify their home to continue to provide shelter? Grow crops? Yes, I know those are skills that aren’t really that necessary, but have you ever been lost in the woods, not sure if you would make it out tomorrow or the next day? Could you survive? If we had that big electrical outage, how else would you survive in that big concrete jungle?

With all the possible scenarios that could come out of this next election, good basic survival skills might not be so far fetched. It may be just that ….. a matter of survival.