5 Pillars of (Our) Culture
- Community and family
- Higher education
- Effective practice of science and science-based technology
- Taxes and government powers (directly in touch with needs and possibilites)
- Self-policing by the learned professions
- Failings, such as racism, profligate, environmnetal destruction, crime, voters' distrust of politicians (thus low voter turnout), and the enlarging gap between rich and poor (attrition of the middle class), are symptoms of the breakdown of the 5 pillars.
Future Posts to Come: More Dark Age Tidbits, the Search for Atlantis, A Library Greater than Alexandria's... and much, much more!
4 comments:
I couldn't agree more. I almost never like what the government does with my money (taken in taxes); I absolutely hate the Patriot Act, and I have become so frustrated with both reigning political parties that I have changed my political affiliation to a third party that I actually agree with, but unfortunately has no chance of winning any elections.
Yeah, I have some points of minor agreement with, but more points of major contentions with, both of the two dominant parties. I'm not sure how our political system can be made better other than through massive grass roots campaigns nobody in America will bother with because as a whole we're content, fat, lazy bastards and play arm-chair political experts so we have something to complain about every once in a while. Beyond that most of us don't want to do anything but try to maintain a comfortable existence under our existing government. I'd prefer our democracy work well and create a prosperous nation and world, but if that's not forthcoming and we're actually headed for a dark age, I really don't think I'd mind too bad. It would maybe allow us to start from scratch, and (hopefully) learn from the past. I also don't think I'd care because for some weird reason I've never really been a big fan of "luxuries" so I'd imagine I'd be perfectly happy hunting and gathering for a living. Or perhaps being a motorcycle bandit of the Apocalypse.
However, one thing remained - a lone, dusty highway. It had been built by a dedicated cult of post-apocalyptic Civil Engineers several years after the bombardment of Fort Pierre, and was now the lone testament to former civilization in the area... Soon he had come up to the bridge built where the mighty Missouri River had once run. The river here had been instantly boiled into nothingness during the nuclear holocaust, but the Civil Engineer cult had built another bridge anyway, just for the hell of it.
-Ninjas of the Apocalypse
Well, I better start preparing...
An interesting fact speaking of the few people in science/engineering: There are now about 77,000 bioscientists in the U.S., accounting for 0.00026% of the population. I can't imagine it would be any higher for computer and civil engineers.
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