Brain Wracking

For the last two days, I've been trying to choose a good subject for this post.  It's a fairly critical one, since it's the first post that will really begin to define the style of this blog.  Therefore, it's the first one to either catch readers interest or drive them away.  For this project to work, people have to be interested enough to want to keep reading.

So, yeah. Kind of critical.

I have come to the conclusion that I may as well tackle the thing that has been bothering me most often, as of late, since it is something relatively insignificant on the importance scale and I can have some fun with it.  However, I believe that a bit of explanation is necessary first, since I don't want anyone to think that my life normally revolves around television, since it very much doesn't.

For the last five years, since the birth of our first child, I have been largely homebound.  I have worked outside of our home part of the time, attended school part of the time and had other adventures that did not take place in the house, but the majority of my overall time has been spent here, inside these walls.  The reasons are many, but they basically boil down to the inability of people in this area to earn a living wage.  (This is a subject I plan to tackle next week, but need to finish some research and get my numbers straight before I do.)

I live with a group of people who are not fond of silence.  For me, quiet is peaceful, welcome and often a relief.  For the people with whom I live, constant background noise is an absolute necessity.  Hence, the inevitable auditory presence of the television in my life.

Recently, my husband has been interested in a television program that is based on the concept that basically everything in human history, from religion to engineering, is in one way or another either tied to, or is a direct result of, interference from extra-terrestrial life forms.  Now, I am not going to get huffy about this one particular show, so please stay with me, even if you are a fan.  There is simply one thing that bothers me about the show, and some other programs presented by this and other such broadcast networks.  The complete disregard of historical and scientific facts under the assumption that the viewer will not know any better.

One of the pervasive themes in the aliens show is that people could never have accomplished what we have throughout history without some outside push.  Whether or not the thesis is in any way valid is difficult to argue, since there is currently nothing universally accepted as concrete evidence that extra-terrestrial personages even exist.  Yet, I am not trying to prove or disprove the theory at all.  I will, however, bring up a few points that show that it is ridiculous for this claim regarding humans being drooling, club carrying masses of hair and dirt, completely incapable of higher thought, to continue to persist.

1.)  Point:  The show states that people all around the world, without being able to communicate, often have images in their art, words in their language, types of building projects etc., etc., etc. that developed around the same period of time.  Explanation:  ALIENS DID IT!!!

Counterpoint:  There was both travel and communication between most of the people who existed on the earth.  Case in point: there exists a letter between Aristotle and Alexander the Great regarding Alexander's adventures in India, after chasing King Porus there after Alex had defeated Porus.  There are descriptions of many creatures (some real, some legendary and probably based on a frightening experience had by old Alex and his posse) and places of which most people in Greece had never seen nor heard.  This letter is only one concrete example of proof that ideas crossed boundaries that are widely accepted as having been insurmountable.

Furthermore, there have been recent discoveries in both North and South America proving the visitation of ancient people to this hemisphere far before Columbus and his contemporaries.  Most notably, there has been evidence of Viking visitations.  This at least proves the possibility that language, religious ideas and even knowledge of building constructs can have moved, very naturally and without the assistance of aliens, around the world.

2.)  Point:  The show more than implies that ancient people were a gaggle of morons.  There is no explainable way that we can possibly have progressed from where we used to be to where we are now.  Explanation:  ALIENS DID IT!!!

Counterpoint:  According to people who know, including Anthropologists, Psychologists, and those Scientist people who actually study the brain, people in our past were no less intelligent than we are today.  There has always been an intelligence range where some humans are more adept at some tasks, others at others.  Throughout recorded history there are examples of people who are amazingly talented in one are or another.  In example, Einstein, Shakespeare, DaVinci, Galileo, Plato, etc., etc.

Were these people the norm?  Probably not. Yet not everyone who lives today is a great thinker.  Also, not everyone today is an idiot on the IQ scale.  There is nothing that gives evidence to the idea that we are smarter and better than our predecessors.  In fact, there is quite a bit of documented evidence that says instead that the only real differences are resources and more universal education.  As far as raw intellect being the result of an alien or two with ray guns inflating our hunks of gray matter goes, completely ridiculous, again.

3.)  Point:  The show has made the claim that Pharaohs, Emperors, etc. were not organic creations of humanity.  (Let's say it together now...) Explanation:  ALIENS DID IT!!!

Counterpoint:  Aristocracy, in it's many ancient forms, were a creation of human beings which began as a device known as the "Big Man."  The Big Man developed as a result of the beginning of settled agriculture (as opposed to basic agriculture, which was really just nomadic people planting a few extra plants in some of the locations they visited regularly to hedge their bets a bit).  Strictly speaking, a Big Man was a person who curried favors from others by gifting them surplus food.  Creating an obligation for others to pay him back with ever increasing amounts of food, as he gave away more and more of the returned food, classed him in a position of great respect and, eventually, authority.

Once people moved beyond needing to all constantly work to eat, some stayed farmers, some grew into other professions and the Big Men became the people in charge of food distribution to the soldiers, artists, etc., who now made up the rest of the non-farming population.  This grew into people being manipulated into believing that the aristocracy was necessary and, eventually, divinely ordained.

So, to recap, it bugs the heck out of me that these broadcasting companies are able to make claims that are completely inaccurate and based on the premise that no one will check to be sure that what they are saying is true.  It bugs me even more that people don't bother to check!!!!  We are too trusting as a society in America.  I would even go so far as to call us gullible.  We remain purposefully ignorant because we have been trained to be lazy!  We honestly don't want to be bothered to do our own fact checking and so we simply accept that someone, somewhere is doing it for us.  The fact is: they aren't.  Or, when occasionally they might be, they seem to be doing a pretty crappy job of it.  It all boils down to this statement:

If purposeful ignorance, as a result of laziness, makes fools of us all in these simple and insignificant ways, in what other, more serious ways, is purposeful ignorance injuring us?

Point and Purpose

Often, while wandering through many parts of my life, I've noticed that there is a ton of negativity; the need for which is completely beyond my capacity to understand.  Simply put: people hate other people, are afraid of other people, try to control other people and have even been responsible for repressing, suppressing, oppressing, maiming, killing and otherwise injuring other people throughout history.  Furthermore, this behavior continues even today, in our oh-so-modern world.

This is unacceptable.

The conclusion that I have come to, after thirty one years of living, is that all of these things are either based on, or the affect of ignorance, in it's various forms.  Therefore, the point and purpose of this blog is going to be to define, point out, analyze, criticize, attempt to understand and, ultimately, rid the world of ignorance.

A lofty goal?

Perhaps, but so very worth doing.  Imagine a world where people truly understand.  Most especially one another, but also concepts, possibilities and most of all, human potential without the limiting influence of ignorance.

Will you help me?