Shut-up Stupid Sunday: Short-Term Thinkers

“The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.” –Don Marquis

Whenever some one talks about a big science goal, CERN’s Super-collider, returning to the Moon, switching to Alternative Energy ect, their will always be nay-sayers who say the money should be spent on projects in here and now. Things like bombing brown people in the Middle East, or giving money to the banks so they can pay bonuses to the guys who crashed the economy.

For the last 30 years this type of thinking has been actively encouraged by the corporate controlled media and government, who view George Romero’s classic “Dawn of the Dead” not as a horror film but an utopian vision. A glorious world where hordes flock to the malls not thinking of their fellow man, only mindlessly consuming whatever they can find. Those few people who might band together and realize that they can make a better world by working together, and value what someone can do to help the others to achieve a common goal over how much they can consume, are quickly destroyed by the hordes that only want to consume more and more.

Working to make a better world and a brighter tomorrow has been demonized. If you watch the propaganda machine (TV) you would think that a person’s sole worth is how much of the planet they can destroy by mindless consuming, not how they treat others or work to make the lives of the generations that will follow them better.

Forty years ago people watched breathlessly as the US and other countries around the world banded together to expand the human frontier out to the Moon. A remarkable feat that showed the power within us when we dare to dream of a better world.

Now, people watch breathlessly to see who will betray who on the latest Reality TV show. Showing how we now value people’s willingness to treat others badly in order to get what they want over working together.

In this quest to see who can consume the most, the mindless zombies have waged war on anyone who might not share their mindless desire for shiny things.

Science and Education budgets have been slashed so that the government can give billions of dollars a year in subsidies to Wal-Mart so they can bring useless trinkets to the masses. Under our new system helping Wal-Mart is more important than making sure the next generation is competitive in the global economy.

In the news people aren’t referred to as citizens but as consumers. The focus of the recovery isn’t how we can rebuild the lives of the people who were devastated by the Great Depression 2.0, it’s how can we get them shopping again.

So to all those people are against pushing the limits of knowledge so our children and our children’s children can live a better future, to all the people who are against expanding humanity’s presence in the Solar System, to all the people who think we should increase our reliance on dwindling fossil fuels that the most insanely optimistic estimates indicate will be gone in 50 years, to all the people who would let our basic infrastructure decay and think the energy should go towards the “here and now” so they can buy more shiny things, to these people I say: “Shut-up Stupid”.