I may have unleashed a massive storm of bloviation with my post, We Want the Traditional Order .
Yet it's true -- the appeal of both Tolkien and science is that they verify what we know to be true, a meta-form of common sense. Read your Herodotus. Read Plato. Think critically. Suddenly, you see we're asking all the wrong questions.
Society is not about the individual. It's about social order. It's not about judging others, or by sleight of hand, not-juding them. It's about social order. It's about putting people in the right place so they can function well and feel a sense of reward in belonging to the collective, because guess what, civilizations are by definition collectives.
People are afraid of their own obscurity so they make up lies to hide the plain old truth that very few of us are important, and those that are important -- a handful -- only are if our species survives.
I find it amazing that some people think this society is on its way to anything but ruin. Yes, we've got all this technology, but we're falling apart within and people are encouraged to be neurotic -- by each other.
While all the idiots out there are busy blaming government, religion, etc. for human problems, the simplest and most scientific answer is that we need to look into mass psychology -- it's probably where the error lies.
I have, and read a fair amount of history, enough to see that the situation in reality is never discussed in our society. That enough is proof of its delusional nature.
