Being an eternal student means being an eternal thinker<\/b>. And thinking is not always a welcome thing in this world, as it leads you to question things. In fact, a lot of human endeavors in the world today are based on the idea that most of the participants should not do any thinking or questioning. Only a select few should be allowed any leeway to use their minds, and only after they’ve been successfully brainwashed not to question the basic assumptions behind the organization and its leadership. In other words, you’ve got to earn your right to do any thinking these days, and even then you only get a limited license. If you think too much about what your organization is all about and ask too many questions about why it does what it does, you get into trouble.<\/p>\n
I used to watch some of the Star Trek<\/b> spin-off shows (The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space 9, etc.), so I know that in the post-Kirk era, the most fearsome enemy of the Federation is no longer the Klingons or the Romulans. Instead, it is the dredded Borg<\/b>. The Borg aren’t particularly slimy or hideous or anything. It’s just that they are well-organized. Too well organized. Organized to the point that no individual member of the Borg needs to think. Everything is pre-programmed. All of the necessary thinking had already been done. The only thing for any good Borg citizen to do is to unthinkingly carry out their assignments, for the greater good of the collective. And that involves conquering other planets and assuming their civilizations into the Borg, so as to end any retrogressive fascination with thinking and individualism.<\/p>\n
Yea, that’s a lot like what many of workplaces and houses of worship are like these days. From what I’ve heard, even the colleges, the supposed bastions of critical thinking and liberal attitudes, aren’t what they used to be. The places where we come together, such as the suburban shopping malls, are now looking more and more like bee hives. There doesn’t seem to be much room left for thinking and discussion in American life these days, especially given our on-going fear of terrorism. Too bad; our worst nightmare<\/b> about Middle-Eastern terrorism<\/b> is that it seeks to promote a Borg-like way of existance. But to the degree that our defensive reactions convert our American way of life into something more Borg-like, then terrorism is winning, even when it seems to be losing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Being an eternal student means being an eternal thinker. And thinking is not always a welcome thing in this world, as it leads you to question things. In fact, a lot of human endeavors in the world today are based on the idea that most of the participants should not do any thinking or questioning. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}