8 ms·

Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

152 points by rcarmo 2y ago

Gibbon1 2y ago
My current joke is we've overshot the point where nepo baby political and business leaders are smart enough to maintain our technological civilization.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  I think the people are capable, given the right environment. I think what destroys it is not letting people in Congress write laws in relative secrecy. When the most powerful, including the political parties, can monitor how every Congress person votes in committee, they can micro-manage and micro-terrorize them into doing what they want. Let them deliberate without us watching over their shoulders (because it's mostly just the powerful who do) and we might get back to writing laws that solve problems. Check the work at https://congressionalresearch.org/ https://congressionalresearch.org/ for a lot of evidence on this topic.
  - vlan0 2y ago
    Bernie said it best. Get money out of politics. Full stop.
    - mingus88 2y ago
      Honestly, I don’t see how that is compatible with a capitalist society. Money is power and politics is the exercise of power.
      - asacrowflies 2y ago
        Considering how NEW citizens United United is...and how every other democracy seems to be able to handle this somewhat sanely... Why is it so hard to imagine? It wasn't like this even in 1995...
        Gormo 2y ago
        Well, 1995 was seven years before Congress passed the statute that the FEC was misinterpreting in the Citizens United case. The Citizens United ruling had essentially noting to do with "money in politics" and was just a bog standard first amendment ruling against a federal agency attempting to read the power to regulate political speech into a statute that had been passed a mere eight years earlier. Contrary to the misinformation spread through the media, the court did not rule that "money is speech", but ruled almost exactly the opposite: it was the FEC that was attempting to argue that "speech is money" -- that using resources to speak in a way that might persuade voters was equivalent to donating those resources directly to a candidate -- and therefore they had the right to restrict the publication of "electioneering communications". The court ruled that no, speech is not money, and is protected by the first amendment under all circumstances. So the ruling put things back the way they were in 1995, before the FEC had ever gotten the idea that they had the power to censor speech.
        asacrowflies 2y ago
        This is just lying by ommision or gaslighting.... Yes citizens United opened the floodgates to money in us politics overturning nearly A CENTURY old precedent and allowing something unlike anything that had happened in that previous century.... And to downplay it as just going back to status quo is absurd .
        vlan0 2y ago
        This is a good point. No matter the intent, we must also focus on the real world outcomes of said policy. The Citizens United ruling didn’t just clarify the FEC’s authority, it fundamentally reshaped the landscape of American politics by allowing unlimited corporate and union spending on elections, which critics argue disproportionately amplifies the influence of wealth. While the Court didn’t explicitly equate money with speech, its decision enabled the flow of money into the political system in a way that is effectively treated as free speech under the First Amendment. Far from "restoring the status quo," Citizens United created a system where the wealthy can now spend unlimited amounts of money to sway elections, a shift that has drastically altered democratic representation.
      - kennysoona 2y ago
        The answer is regulation.
        Gormo 2y ago
        Regulation doesn't work. It's usually co-opted by the very parties it's intended to regulate, and used as a means to entrench rather than limit their power. In the worst case, it actually makes things far worse by allowing established interests to manipulate regulation to create barriers to entry for competition, produce collusive outcomes that would otherwise be illegal, and replace common-law liability for the actual consequences of their behavior with prescriptive rules that they can comply with performatively.
        kennysoona 2y ago
        Regulation works fine - you can observe it working fine in every other first world country directly mitigating and resolving many of the problems still present in the US.
        Gormo 2y ago
        I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances -- I can't see behind-the-scenes corruption or measure superior alternatives that were suppressed in favor of locking in a marginally mitigated version of the status quo ante. I can, however, see the some of the unintended consequences of regulatory interventions in other countries. For example, Germany's ban on nuclear power made them dependent on Russian oil imports, inadvertently propping up Putin's regime.
        kennysoona 2y ago
        > I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances This sounds like you are observing much of that, and then dismissing the results as superficial appearances. Dismissing regulation here would be like dismissing a comparison of a correlation between laws against murder and a low murder rate and a correlation between no laws against murder and a high murder rate.
      - arp242 2y ago
        "Capitalist society" can have many different meanings. Pure 100% capitalism does not exist and has never existed, and no serious capitalist thinker has ever argued for it.
        Gormo 2y ago
        I'd argue that what critics of "capitalism" use the term to describe is essentially a straw man that has never accurately represented any real-life economy.
    - AbstractH24 2y ago
      I increasingly thing most of what Bernie says is right, it’s just too soon for such views to be mainstream successful. But someone has to seed them
    - Gormo 2y ago
      That's a vague slogan, not a meaningful strategy to accomplish anything of consequence. Money is just a tool. The resources and incentives that the money is being spent on already exist, and it's being used to further ambitions and goals that were always present. Getting "money out of politics" in a formalistic way will just lead to corrupt ambitions being facilitated via some other means. Bernie's ideas are very dangerous, because he offers simplistic, pat solutions to risks that are fundamental to politics itself (at the expense of the much more nuanced safeguards we've developed over the ages) while proposing to make the political state far more central to people's immediate lives and livelihoods than it has ever been before. Getting politics out of civil society is much more important than getting money out of politics.
      - ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
        > That's a vague slogan, not a meaningful strategy to accomplish anything of consequence And "Make America Great Again" is as well, but over 70 million people rallied behind it
        Gormo 2y ago
        Yep. The number of people rallying behind superficial nonsense without any substantive policy positions backing them up has never been higher. Trump and Sanders are two sides of the same coin. If there's any evidence of a decline, it's definitely found in the extent to which people are both (a) looking to federal politics to solve their local and personal problems for them, and (b) supporting incompetent sloganeers as the people they want managing federal politics.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - vlan0 2y ago
        >That's a vague slogan, not a meaningful strategy to accomplish anything of consequence. Of course. The vast majority of America needs "sound bites" of info. Wish this wasn't the case. But it's worked for decades. >Money is just a tool. The resources and incentives that the money is being spent on already exist, and it's being used to further ambitions and goals that were always present. Getting "money out of politics" in a formalistic way will just lead to corrupt ambitions being facilitated via some other means. You're not wrong. But there is a happy medium. Super PACs/Citizens United....this is what he's targeting. Those are dangerous. They are not in the interest of all American people. They benefit the few. And we cannot have hypocrites at every level. The insider trading that occurs due to politician privilege is insane. But not Bernie, his actions match his words. He lives by his principles. That cannot be said for many politicians. >Bernie's ideas are very dangerous, because he offers simplistic, pat solutions to risks that are fundamental to politics itself (at the expense of the much more nuanced safeguards we've developed over the ages) Is that's how things have played our for the folks in Vermont? I grew up in that area. I've watched his policies shape the landscape for decades. But his policies aren't why he's a great candidate. While his policies are a big part of his platform, what really resonates with a lot of people is his unwavering commitment to first principles values like fairness, equality, social justice, and democracy. These principles drive his entire political career, and they shape his policy proposals, but they also make him stand out in a political landscape where many politicians change their stance based on what's politically expedient or donor-friendly. Bernie's character and consistency are arguably just as important as his policies in defining who he is as a politician. >while proposing to make the political state far more central to people's immediate lives and livelihoods than it has ever been before. This is a concern of mine as well. It's the ultimate balancing act. Provide just enough support for folks that they still hold agency in their life. As Fred Rogers put it, "There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it."
    - JohnBooty 2y ago
      I think the only way to do this is to pay members of Congress extremely generous salaries and then have a large agency whose only job is to monitor their finances like a swarm of starving animals with zero tolerance for outside influence. If any one of these motherfuckers or their neighbor or third cousin accepts so much as a fucking cup of coffee from a lobbyist they can forfeit it all, go to prison for ten years, and pay their salary back. Pay them each a million bucks a year, for fuck's sake. That's $535 million dollars -- but remember we immediately get a lot of that back in taxes. Fuck, round it up to a billion dollars to include the cost of the agency to watch them. A whole team for each congress-critter. Half of the salaries go into escrow and the escrow money gets paid out after they leave office. And they can't work for 5 years after they leave office -- none of that indirect bribery where "cooperative" congresspeople get cushy jobs at the companies they helped during their tenure on capitol hill. That's still only like a tenth of a percent of the total US Government budget. Anybody who thinks that this won't improve the functioning of our government by at least 0.14% is welcome to tell me why.
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    Let them deliberate without us watching over their shoulders That’s a recipe for disaster. The Founders came up with a Constitution for a reason. Public debate is not our problem. Any more than freedom of speech is our problem.
    - jimkleiber 2y ago
      Please check the link and read some of the articles. They have many many quotes from the founders on voting and deliberating in secrecy, even for the creation of the Constitution itself.
      - bilbo0s 2y ago
        So they considered it, and then left it out of the Constitution. I wonder why? /s I'll concede, in the US, just as in everyplace else, we have a long list of issues with which we need to deal. However, things like public debate and freedom of speech are not present on that list. I, personally, would go one step further, and caution everyone to carefully consider the possible motives of anyone calling for the elimination of public debate and discourse in government.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        He's not calling for eliminating public debate. He's calling for eliminating lobbyists by making them stay in the lobby and not be privy to committee meetings and committee votes, not final votes. Some interesting articles about how previously citizen votes were public and how it led to intimidation, and the push for secret ballots for citizens.
throwfgtpwd234 2y ago
There was a much more thorough treatment for the reasons and causes in the body of work of Chalmers Johnson. Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope was recommended reading at the CIA. And here's an hour video from May 2004: https://youtu.be/oOjYteh-ZRs https://youtu.be/oOjYteh-ZRs
yaya69 2y ago
[flagged]
- zecg 2y ago
  About as salient as the style of shoes he preferred.
- prawn 2y ago
  “Carl Sagan married three times. His first wife was legendary biologist Lynn Margulis, who discovered mitochondrial endosymbiosis, then went off the deep end and became an AIDS denialist and 9/11 truther. His second wife drew the Pioneer plaque. His third wife was one of the women who designed the Voyager golden record.”
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  so what?
- pcardoso 2y ago
  People and personal relationships are complex, and completely irrelevant to the topic in discussion.
  - geremiiah 2y ago
    I don't think they are completely irrelevant. I certainly hold in much higher esteem, people who have long lasting marriages, compared to people who keep switching partners. At the same time, people are complex and nobody is without flaws.
    - pcardoso 2y ago
      From the outside we can see longe marriages as cute, but that is only that. Better switch partners and seek hapinness than to live in a bad marriage. People change and so should relationships if the people in it don't find them suitable. My views, which, again, all this discussion is not relevant to article.
smitty1e 2y ago
"Nah, we'll rise again like some mythical bird," said a voice in Arizona.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Oh God. Don’t say that. Nothing says “thoroughly defeated” quite as well as people lacking in self-awareness running around shouting, “The South shall rise again!”. Let’s just put our heads down and come up with some ideas on how we can better operate in the newly leveling global context.
  - Gormo 2y ago
    Where did you get a reference to "the South shall rise again" out of the previous comment?
WiSaGaN 2y ago
The demon haunted world was my favorite book back in my college years more than 20 years ago.
resource_waste 2y ago
Broken Clock is right twice a day. A civilization declines? If I didn't read history, I'd be shocked. Isnt America still number 1 in GDP and the only regional hedgemon? "I predict that America will decline." Someone write an article, I will be correct at some point. And on the comments about superstition... religion is at an all-time low... So, I suppose that isnt perfectly correct.
- louwrentius 2y ago
  I feel using the GDP as a metric to assess how a country is doing, is unreasonable. If you look at wealth distribution, housing, cost of living, future prospects for young people, actual policies, you get a better picture. The picture the USA is showing looks like a horror show to me. Carl Sagan was right and the Right understood him well. Buying up radio stations, media to mold the larger public into a state where you basically have inoculated them against any form of nuance or reason gains you the power to overthrow democracy.
- Zealotux 2y ago
  Superstition doesn't have to be religious; we live in a so-called "post-truth" era where everyone gets to pick and choose their reality of choice. The magical thinking is still alive, we just don't pray to the same churches anymore.
  - bundie 2y ago
    Exactly.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > Isnt America still number 1 in GDP and the only regional hedgemon? No, GDP has a few ways to measure it, China beats the US on some of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) I think China is also as much of a *regional* hedgemon as the US. Might argue the EU as well, the Brussels effect etc., but that's less clear. Even after Brexit, the GDP-PPP is very close to the USA, though it is also definitely behind the USA.
wslh 2y ago
From a geopolitical perspective, the real concern isn’t just whether America is in decline, but whether we are witnessing a broader cycle of decline across Western civilization, or even globally. While competition between nations is important, it isn’t enough on its own. What we truly need is a world where the average person has more viable options, economically, politically, and technologically. If our current systems are stagnating, the focus should be on creating new pathways for individual prosperity rather than just shifting power between competing states.
- maypeacepreva1l 2y ago
  I personally believe that we do have unprecedented number of tools in our disposal to be successful, compared to any other time in our history. The problem is somewhere else.
- osigurdson 2y ago
  We also still have all of these undemocratic, authoritarian regimes in the world. Hopefully Earth will move beyond that one day.
- cardamomo 2y ago
  > The focus should be on creating new pathways for individual prosperity rather than just shifting power between competing states. I'd argue that the focus should be on creating prosperous communities, of mutual benefit to their individual members. But maybe that's just a "pathway" to individual prosperity.
  - zmgsabst 2y ago
    Communities should exist because they benefit people, who in turn should support the continuation of something that benefits them. But people don’t exist for the benefit of communities.
  - Gormo 2y ago
    Communities form among individuals seeking mutual benefit, not the other way around. The way to create prosperous communities is to maximize opportunities for individuals.
croes 2y ago
Don’t forget to read the comments of the article.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  roger. >February 4, 2025 at 11:07 am >In the immortal words of Ghandi “When an idiot is elected to power, the people who voted for him is well represented.”
  - throw0101b 2y ago
    "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.* — H.L. Mencken
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
wow "when the United States is a service and information economy; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues"
- kristianc 2y ago
  On the other hand, people losing the ability to think critically, being concerned at power being concentrated amongst the few and thinking the next generation is more ignorant are perennial concerns since forever.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    Yes. Example, late state Roman Republic, power concentration into a few Generals with armies. This lead to a dictatorship. But this time, current time, with technology, it seems different. Even though you could make same arguments that the printing press had similar effects and criticisms. Hence this is just another cycle of technology change. But really, does seem different in scale this time around.
nimbius 2y ago
Americans may not think of themselves as an “empire,” but much of the world does. The average age of empires, according to a specialist on the subject, the late Sir John Bagot Glubb, is 250 years. After that, empires always die, often slowly but overwhelmingly from overreaching in the search for power. the US is 249 years old.
- mc32 2y ago
  So time to retrench and look inwardly instead of projecting power? Maybe instead of meddling in international affairs via cover NGOs, let those people work out their own problems like we did in our early republic. We don't have to be captain save-a-hoe for the world.
  - Jerrrry 2y ago
    [dead]
- zmgsabst 2y ago
  Uh — Roman Empire lasted in part something like 1500 years and imperial China around 2100 years. Average implies that it’s not a hard and fast rule they die at that particular point — as the following sentence implies.
  - icegreentea2 2y ago
    That's true, but those empires also had periods of traumatic decline and upheaval. Given if you grant those entities continuity for those time scales, there were absolutely periods in the middle where everything went to shit. Using a 1500 year number for Rome includes having half the empire drop off and die. The more important idea isn't the 250 years (I agree), the idea is that it's not unreasonable to model aspects of America as an empire.
    - zmgsabst 2y ago
      I’d argue that the US is experiencing the transition from republic to empire that Rome did — also during a period of decline and political corruption. My point was that decline and regrowth, or even political transition as with Rome, happen frequently — not just decline followed by collapse (or “death”).
chmorgan_ 2y ago
Carl Sagan may very well be correct, however he didn't make predictions about when such an event might occur, and his predictions were aimed at avoiding it occurring at all. I've seen this article appear several times in two distinct time periods, one was after Trump was elected the first time, and the second is now. Why is it popular now? Because people opposed to the present political party want to portray it as a decent into darkness and superstition. It's being used as a tool and it's hyperbole. Don't fall for the trap, things in the US at least appear to be improving tremendously in just a matter of weeks. Border security is improving, cutting off trafficking and drugs. Middle East peace is advancing. Ukraine might be settled. Significant waste is being cut from government spending etc.
- edoceo 2y ago
  Threatening to close the Dept of Education and blocking scientific research is not an improvement. And nothing has changed on Border, Drugs, ME or UKR - same as it was. Bro just talked a game and some believe without evidence
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  > Middle East peace is advancing Trump just announced what amounts to a genocide on Palestinians and occupation of Gaza as American territory. This won't be a lasting peace.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Yes, my crystal auras suggest things are getting much better too so I don't see what people are worried about.
kennysoona 2y ago
I think the only people denying the decline of the US are the same people that think the US can be as powerful and respected as it was in the 50s, i.e. not the most well informed crowd. It really is crazy to see the way the US is going. I remember reading every time in history an emerging superpower was replacing a declining power, the declining power got antsy and shot first, leading to them getting whooped by the emerging superpower, cementing them as a superpower. I wonder if that will happen with the US.
- guerrilla 2y ago
  The latter is called Thucydides Trap.
- MangoCoffee 2y ago
  Who is going to replace US? China? Its economy is on the decline with deflation, debts, real estates problem...etc. Europe? Japan?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - matteuan 2y ago
    Behind this there is the wrong assumption that there must be a replacement for all. For sure there will be gaps filled by other powers, but it's not necessary, we just got used to it.
  - the_clarence 2y ago
    The problem is that China is still self sufficient. Huge country with a single timezone and great infrastructure and now has the expertise to produce for itself and enough people to buy its own products. Sure there's going to be some instability but even then the dictatorship is helping in preventing people to go too crazy. There's a reason musk is pushing for babies: the US is mostly empty land with a few large cities.
    - CAP_NET_ADMIN 2y ago
cess11 2y ago
Another succinct view from roughly the same point in history that I return to every now and then is Deleuze's Postscript. "It’s a capitalism of higher-order production. It no longer buys raw materials and no longer sells the finished products: it buys the finished products or assembles parts. What it wants to sell is services and what it wants to buy is stocks. This is no longer a capitalism for production but for the product, which is to say, for being sold or marketed." 'The conquests of the market are made by grabbing control and no longer by disciplinary training, by fixing the exchange rate much more than by lowering costs, by transformation of the product more than by specialization of production. Corruption thereby gains a new power. Marketing has become the center or the “soul” of the corporation. We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world. The operation of markets is now the instrument of social control and forms the impudent breed of our masters.' "There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons." https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-posts...
nothrowaways 2y ago
Yet, 30 years later America is on the lead, large and sound. Until it decides to go on a mission of self fulfilled prophecy, trying to undo everything overnight.
- physhster 2y ago
  Soundly the laughing stock of the entire world.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - lttlrck 2y ago
    Why? Is there something funny happening?
- whizzter 2y ago
  You mean like randomly firing tons of people from the National Nuclear Security Administration? (The agency in charge of maintaining the nuclear arsenal)
MangoCoffee 2y ago
the Chinese have been saying, 'The East is rising and the West is declining,' but China's current economy is on the decline, and Europe is no better. That leaves the U.S. still standing with economic growth. I guess we'll see.
- rcarmo 2y ago
  Economy is not a game of absolute value--it is a game of _relative_ value and scale, and the US having economic growth _by itself_ is a mirage.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
  The claim that the US has "economic growth" and that China does not is a strong claim, and does not seem to be supported by any real-world facts. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/17/china-economy-hits-growth-target-but-rate-among-slowest-in-decades https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/17/china-econo...
  - MangoCoffee 2y ago
    the China 5% growth in the article...is it believable? the real world fact that you cited come from China. which stop reporting youth unemployment when the numbers is bad back in 2023. only to restart reporting the number with new method. Can you trust Chinese's numbers when its real estates, foreign investment drop, deflation...etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JYWFUI5kEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JYWFUI5kEc https://apnews.com/article/china-youth-unemployment-slowdown-321cd96377ee066915fc39232b9477c3 https://apnews.com/article/china-youth-unemployment-slowdown...
    - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
      So your argument is that "nobody knows anything"? It's hardly an argument that you know something. It's also a straw man to nitpick the number, as your claim "That leaves the U.S. still standing with economic growth" - was that China was not growing, at all.
suraci 2y ago
Arguing about the decline of the US with idealism is just as meaningless as arguing about the prosperity of the US with idealism.
b3lvedere 2y ago
Predict eh? I think Mr. Sagan saw a seemingly endless cycle. Cycles are kinda predictable because of their nature. However we might have a few chances to modify the cycle until the next giant civilication wants to dictate it all, because they think their way is the best way. Some would call that evolution. Try try try and try again until something works. And if it doesn't anymore. Try again again.
FiniteField 2y ago
Carl Sagan died the year after this quote. With the greatest respect to him as a science communicator, he has not lived to see an entire generation of politics. When he died, the liberal capitalist post-historical consensus was in full swing. World leaders believed that all notions of identity and nationhood would gently fade away, to be replaced by a world of fungible, peaceful shoppers, administered by an all-knowing, all-loving class of technocratic managers. The election of Trump (especially Trump 2.0) is a ground-up repudiation of this consensus by ordinary people, who have a completely different life experience to the managerial cosmopolitan class (of whom this website largely represents). Trump, and various other right-wing ascendants throughout the world, are a statement by the common people of the belief that a desire for identity, sovereignty and representation does not disappear the moment a McDonald's appears in their home country. The (understandable!) lamentations of the academic class towards the current actions of the Trump administration have, to my mind, a deficit of self-reflection and theory of mind towards the people supporting these actions. For decades, the stage of "democracy" has been increasingly garnished with explicitly non-democratic embellishments. NGOs, panels of "experts", bureaucratic oversight, international "obligations" and so on. This is the exact same situation that motivated the people of Britain to vote for Brexit 9 years ago. Michael Gove, while I have very little time for him as a politician, made a point in a news interview that was condemned for years, but that I think was an accurate capture of working-class sentiment in that time. The soundbite form was "Britain has had enough of experts". And he was exactly right. For decades, academia has been part of an ongoing anti-democratic, elitist movement to effectively take control away from common people. Health matters are deferred to "listening to the experts", and ordinary people were made to feel as if they didn't deserve a say on if they should be allowed to leave their own homes in 2020-21. NGO-funded academic studies serve to tell normal people that despite their own experiences, mass immigration has been an unambiguous good in their lives, and they have no right to express otherwise. This idea of deference to unelected experts peaked when normal people started being told that it was not within their jurisdiction to define for themselves what the words "man" and "woman" mean -- these two words that are foundational to human civilisation and the language spoken in it were to become the domain of a sect of largely self-appointed modern-day clerics, who expected the public to believe that they were completely rational, objective, and blind to ideology. This is what the conversation on "anti-intellectualism" very often misses, when being discussed by those in the intellectual classes. While criticising the "uneducated" masses for being so unenlightened, they fail to notice that they also have biases, incentives, and ideological motivations, and it is these that the public are pushing back against, not the noble pursuit of objective knowledge.
culanuchachamim 2y ago
-Sagan’s 1995 predictions are now being heralded as prophetic. As Director of Public Radio International’s Science Friday, Charles Bergquist tweeted, “Carl Sagan had either a time machine or a crystal ball.” Prophetic, time machine, crystal call. That's exactly the lenguage of darkness and superstition...
- gopkarthik 2y ago
  They acknowledge the irony in the very next sentence: "Matt Novak cautions against falling back into superstitious thinking in our praise of Demon Haunted World. After all, he says, “the ‘accuracy’ of predictions is often a Rorschach test” and “some of Sagan’s concerns” in other parts of the book “sound rather quaint.”"
wakawaka28 2y ago
He's no prophet. Outsourcing of everything was well underway even in the 90s with no sign it would stop short of a catastrophe. As for the ignorance and superstition aspect of it, that's his whole schtick. I don't think people are necessarily a lot more ignorant about science than they were in the 90s, despite the decline of US industry. What might strike some people as odd is that it took like 50 years for people to start to panic about the future of our economy. And even that is probably inaccurate. I think people did panic in the 70s and 80s, but we have so far to fall and nobody expected it to take so long.
Anotheroneagain 2y ago
I began reading the book (The Demon Haunted World) and it shocked me how casually Sagan states that he hallucinated, and it gave me an epiphany: The schizophrenic doesn't understand that other people are sane! Suddenly, it makes perfect sense - a schizophrenic (or perhaps a group of them) somehow came up with science. And for them it was a world changing event, as they could disprove their hallucinations one by one. It turned them from something that was barely surviving on the outskirts of society into somewhat functional beings. But, for the same reason why he was insane in the first place, sooner or later he corrupts his science as well. However the schizophrenic doesn't uderstand that others are sane. So, when he was convincing the sailors that scurvy isn't from the lack of fruit, he fought their insane belief, like when he believed a leprechaun stabbed him. When he is convincing you that there are more genders than men and women, he is fighting your insane delusion, like when he disproved that there were fire spitting dragons flying in the sky! He's merely trying to bring you out of darknes, just like he did himself.

152 points by rcarmo 2y ago

My current joke is we've overshot the point where nepo baby political and business leaders are smart enough to maintain our technological civilization.

jimkleiber 2y ago
I think the people are capable, given the right environment. I think what destroys it is not letting people in Congress write laws in relative secrecy. When the most powerful, including the political parties, can monitor how every Congress person votes in committee, they can micro-manage and micro-terrorize them into doing what they want. Let them deliberate without us watching over their shoulders (because it's mostly just the powerful who do) and we might get back to writing laws that solve problems. Check the work at https://congressionalresearch.org/ https://congressionalresearch.org/ for a lot of evidence on this topic.
- vlan0 2y ago
  Bernie said it best. Get money out of politics. Full stop.
  - mingus88 2y ago
    Honestly, I don’t see how that is compatible with a capitalist society. Money is power and politics is the exercise of power.
    - asacrowflies 2y ago
      Considering how NEW citizens United United is...and how every other democracy seems to be able to handle this somewhat sanely... Why is it so hard to imagine? It wasn't like this even in 1995...
      - Gormo 2y ago
        Well, 1995 was seven years before Congress passed the statute that the FEC was misinterpreting in the Citizens United case. The Citizens United ruling had essentially noting to do with "money in politics" and was just a bog standard first amendment ruling against a federal agency attempting to read the power to regulate political speech into a statute that had been passed a mere eight years earlier. Contrary to the misinformation spread through the media, the court did not rule that "money is speech", but ruled almost exactly the opposite: it was the FEC that was attempting to argue that "speech is money" -- that using resources to speak in a way that might persuade voters was equivalent to donating those resources directly to a candidate -- and therefore they had the right to restrict the publication of "electioneering communications". The court ruled that no, speech is not money, and is protected by the first amendment under all circumstances. So the ruling put things back the way they were in 1995, before the FEC had ever gotten the idea that they had the power to censor speech.
        asacrowflies 2y ago
        This is just lying by ommision or gaslighting.... Yes citizens United opened the floodgates to money in us politics overturning nearly A CENTURY old precedent and allowing something unlike anything that had happened in that previous century.... And to downplay it as just going back to status quo is absurd .
        vlan0 2y ago
        This is a good point. No matter the intent, we must also focus on the real world outcomes of said policy. The Citizens United ruling didn’t just clarify the FEC’s authority, it fundamentally reshaped the landscape of American politics by allowing unlimited corporate and union spending on elections, which critics argue disproportionately amplifies the influence of wealth. While the Court didn’t explicitly equate money with speech, its decision enabled the flow of money into the political system in a way that is effectively treated as free speech under the First Amendment. Far from "restoring the status quo," Citizens United created a system where the wealthy can now spend unlimited amounts of money to sway elections, a shift that has drastically altered democratic representation.
    - kennysoona 2y ago
      The answer is regulation.
      - Gormo 2y ago
        Regulation doesn't work. It's usually co-opted by the very parties it's intended to regulate, and used as a means to entrench rather than limit their power. In the worst case, it actually makes things far worse by allowing established interests to manipulate regulation to create barriers to entry for competition, produce collusive outcomes that would otherwise be illegal, and replace common-law liability for the actual consequences of their behavior with prescriptive rules that they can comply with performatively.
        kennysoona 2y ago
        Regulation works fine - you can observe it working fine in every other first world country directly mitigating and resolving many of the problems still present in the US.
        Gormo 2y ago
        I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances -- I can't see behind-the-scenes corruption or measure superior alternatives that were suppressed in favor of locking in a marginally mitigated version of the status quo ante. I can, however, see the some of the unintended consequences of regulatory interventions in other countries. For example, Germany's ban on nuclear power made them dependent on Russian oil imports, inadvertently propping up Putin's regime.
        kennysoona 2y ago
        > I'm afraid I can't observe any of that. All I can see is superficial appearances This sounds like you are observing much of that, and then dismissing the results as superficial appearances. Dismissing regulation here would be like dismissing a comparison of a correlation between laws against murder and a low murder rate and a correlation between no laws against murder and a high murder rate.
    - arp242 2y ago
      "Capitalist society" can have many different meanings. Pure 100% capitalism does not exist and has never existed, and no serious capitalist thinker has ever argued for it.
      - Gormo 2y ago
        I'd argue that what critics of "capitalism" use the term to describe is essentially a straw man that has never accurately represented any real-life economy.
  - AbstractH24 2y ago
    I increasingly thing most of what Bernie says is right, it’s just too soon for such views to be mainstream successful. But someone has to seed them
  - Gormo 2y ago
    That's a vague slogan, not a meaningful strategy to accomplish anything of consequence. Money is just a tool. The resources and incentives that the money is being spent on already exist, and it's being used to further ambitions and goals that were always present. Getting "money out of politics" in a formalistic way will just lead to corrupt ambitions being facilitated via some other means. Bernie's ideas are very dangerous, because he offers simplistic, pat solutions to risks that are fundamental to politics itself (at the expense of the much more nuanced safeguards we've developed over the ages) while proposing to make the political state far more central to people's immediate lives and livelihoods than it has ever been before. Getting politics out of civil society is much more important than getting money out of politics.
    - ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
      > That's a vague slogan, not a meaningful strategy to accomplish anything of consequence And "Make America Great Again" is as well, but over 70 million people rallied behind it
      - Gormo 2y ago
        Yep. The number of people rallying behind superficial nonsense without any substantive policy positions backing them up has never been higher. Trump and Sanders are two sides of the same coin. If there's any evidence of a decline, it's definitely found in the extent to which people are both (a) looking to federal politics to solve their local and personal problems for them, and (b) supporting incompetent sloganeers as the people they want managing federal politics.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - vlan0 2y ago
      >That's a vague slogan, not a meaningful strategy to accomplish anything of consequence. Of course. The vast majority of America needs "sound bites" of info. Wish this wasn't the case. But it's worked for decades. >Money is just a tool. The resources and incentives that the money is being spent on already exist, and it's being used to further ambitions and goals that were always present. Getting "money out of politics" in a formalistic way will just lead to corrupt ambitions being facilitated via some other means. You're not wrong. But there is a happy medium. Super PACs/Citizens United....this is what he's targeting. Those are dangerous. They are not in the interest of all American people. They benefit the few. And we cannot have hypocrites at every level. The insider trading that occurs due to politician privilege is insane. But not Bernie, his actions match his words. He lives by his principles. That cannot be said for many politicians. >Bernie's ideas are very dangerous, because he offers simplistic, pat solutions to risks that are fundamental to politics itself (at the expense of the much more nuanced safeguards we've developed over the ages) Is that's how things have played our for the folks in Vermont? I grew up in that area. I've watched his policies shape the landscape for decades. But his policies aren't why he's a great candidate. While his policies are a big part of his platform, what really resonates with a lot of people is his unwavering commitment to first principles values like fairness, equality, social justice, and democracy. These principles drive his entire political career, and they shape his policy proposals, but they also make him stand out in a political landscape where many politicians change their stance based on what's politically expedient or donor-friendly. Bernie's character and consistency are arguably just as important as his policies in defining who he is as a politician. >while proposing to make the political state far more central to people's immediate lives and livelihoods than it has ever been before. This is a concern of mine as well. It's the ultimate balancing act. Provide just enough support for folks that they still hold agency in their life. As Fred Rogers put it, "There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it."
  - JohnBooty 2y ago
    I think the only way to do this is to pay members of Congress extremely generous salaries and then have a large agency whose only job is to monitor their finances like a swarm of starving animals with zero tolerance for outside influence. If any one of these motherfuckers or their neighbor or third cousin accepts so much as a fucking cup of coffee from a lobbyist they can forfeit it all, go to prison for ten years, and pay their salary back. Pay them each a million bucks a year, for fuck's sake. That's $535 million dollars -- but remember we immediately get a lot of that back in taxes. Fuck, round it up to a billion dollars to include the cost of the agency to watch them. A whole team for each congress-critter. Half of the salaries go into escrow and the escrow money gets paid out after they leave office. And they can't work for 5 years after they leave office -- none of that indirect bribery where "cooperative" congresspeople get cushy jobs at the companies they helped during their tenure on capitol hill. That's still only like a tenth of a percent of the total US Government budget. Anybody who thinks that this won't improve the functioning of our government by at least 0.14% is welcome to tell me why.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Let them deliberate without us watching over their shoulders That’s a recipe for disaster. The Founders came up with a Constitution for a reason. Public debate is not our problem. Any more than freedom of speech is our problem.
  - jimkleiber 2y ago
    Please check the link and read some of the articles. They have many many quotes from the founders on voting and deliberating in secrecy, even for the creation of the Constitution itself.
    - bilbo0s 2y ago
      So they considered it, and then left it out of the Constitution. I wonder why? /s I'll concede, in the US, just as in everyplace else, we have a long list of issues with which we need to deal. However, things like public debate and freedom of speech are not present on that list. I, personally, would go one step further, and caution everyone to carefully consider the possible motives of anyone calling for the elimination of public debate and discourse in government.
      - jimkleiber 2y ago
        He's not calling for eliminating public debate. He's calling for eliminating lobbyists by making them stay in the lobby and not be privy to committee meetings and committee votes, not final votes. Some interesting articles about how previously citizen votes were public and how it led to intimidation, and the push for secret ballots for citizens.

throwfgtpwd234 2y ago

There was a much more thorough treatment for the reasons and causes in the body of work of Chalmers Johnson. Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope was recommended reading at the CIA. And here's an hour video from May 2004: https://youtu.be/oOjYteh-ZRs https://youtu.be/oOjYteh-ZRs

yaya69 2y ago

[flagged]

zecg 2y ago
About as salient as the style of shoes he preferred.
prawn 2y ago
“Carl Sagan married three times. His first wife was legendary biologist Lynn Margulis, who discovered mitochondrial endosymbiosis, then went off the deep end and became an AIDS denialist and 9/11 truther. His second wife drew the Pioneer plaque. His third wife was one of the women who designed the Voyager golden record.”
s1artibartfast 2y ago
so what?
pcardoso 2y ago
People and personal relationships are complex, and completely irrelevant to the topic in discussion.
- geremiiah 2y ago
  I don't think they are completely irrelevant. I certainly hold in much higher esteem, people who have long lasting marriages, compared to people who keep switching partners. At the same time, people are complex and nobody is without flaws.
  - pcardoso 2y ago
    From the outside we can see longe marriages as cute, but that is only that. Better switch partners and seek hapinness than to live in a bad marriage. People change and so should relationships if the people in it don't find them suitable. My views, which, again, all this discussion is not relevant to article.

smitty1e 2y ago

"Nah, we'll rise again like some mythical bird," said a voice in Arizona.

bilbo0s 2y ago
Oh God. Don’t say that. Nothing says “thoroughly defeated” quite as well as people lacking in self-awareness running around shouting, “The South shall rise again!”. Let’s just put our heads down and come up with some ideas on how we can better operate in the newly leveling global context.
- Gormo 2y ago
  Where did you get a reference to "the South shall rise again" out of the previous comment?

WiSaGaN 2y ago

The demon haunted world was my favorite book back in my college years more than 20 years ago.

resource_waste 2y ago

Broken Clock is right twice a day. A civilization declines? If I didn't read history, I'd be shocked. Isnt America still number 1 in GDP and the only regional hedgemon? "I predict that America will decline." Someone write an article, I will be correct at some point. And on the comments about superstition... religion is at an all-time low... So, I suppose that isnt perfectly correct.

louwrentius 2y ago
I feel using the GDP as a metric to assess how a country is doing, is unreasonable. If you look at wealth distribution, housing, cost of living, future prospects for young people, actual policies, you get a better picture. The picture the USA is showing looks like a horror show to me. Carl Sagan was right and the Right understood him well. Buying up radio stations, media to mold the larger public into a state where you basically have inoculated them against any form of nuance or reason gains you the power to overthrow democracy.
Zealotux 2y ago
Superstition doesn't have to be religious; we live in a so-called "post-truth" era where everyone gets to pick and choose their reality of choice. The magical thinking is still alive, we just don't pray to the same churches anymore.
- bundie 2y ago
  Exactly.
ben_w 2y ago
> Isnt America still number 1 in GDP and the only regional hedgemon? No, GDP has a few ways to measure it, China beats the US on some of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) I think China is also as much of a *regional* hedgemon as the US. Might argue the EU as well, the Brussels effect etc., but that's less clear. Even after Brexit, the GDP-PPP is very close to the USA, though it is also definitely behind the USA.

wslh 2y ago

From a geopolitical perspective, the real concern isn’t just whether America is in decline, but whether we are witnessing a broader cycle of decline across Western civilization, or even globally. While competition between nations is important, it isn’t enough on its own. What we truly need is a world where the average person has more viable options, economically, politically, and technologically. If our current systems are stagnating, the focus should be on creating new pathways for individual prosperity rather than just shifting power between competing states.

maypeacepreva1l 2y ago
I personally believe that we do have unprecedented number of tools in our disposal to be successful, compared to any other time in our history. The problem is somewhere else.
osigurdson 2y ago
We also still have all of these undemocratic, authoritarian regimes in the world. Hopefully Earth will move beyond that one day.
cardamomo 2y ago
> The focus should be on creating new pathways for individual prosperity rather than just shifting power between competing states. I'd argue that the focus should be on creating prosperous communities, of mutual benefit to their individual members. But maybe that's just a "pathway" to individual prosperity.
- zmgsabst 2y ago
  Communities should exist because they benefit people, who in turn should support the continuation of something that benefits them. But people don’t exist for the benefit of communities.
- Gormo 2y ago
  Communities form among individuals seeking mutual benefit, not the other way around. The way to create prosperous communities is to maximize opportunities for individuals.

croes 2y ago

Don’t forget to read the comments of the article.

fuzzfactor 2y ago
roger. >February 4, 2025 at 11:07 am >In the immortal words of Ghandi “When an idiot is elected to power, the people who voted for him is well represented.”
- throw0101b 2y ago
  "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.* — H.L. Mencken

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

wow "when the United States is a service and information economy; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues"

kristianc 2y ago
On the other hand, people losing the ability to think critically, being concerned at power being concentrated amongst the few and thinking the next generation is more ignorant are perennial concerns since forever.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  Yes. Example, late state Roman Republic, power concentration into a few Generals with armies. This lead to a dictatorship. But this time, current time, with technology, it seems different. Even though you could make same arguments that the printing press had similar effects and criticisms. Hence this is just another cycle of technology change. But really, does seem different in scale this time around.

nimbius 2y ago

Americans may not think of themselves as an “empire,” but much of the world does. The average age of empires, according to a specialist on the subject, the late Sir John Bagot Glubb, is 250 years. After that, empires always die, often slowly but overwhelmingly from overreaching in the search for power. the US is 249 years old.

mc32 2y ago
So time to retrench and look inwardly instead of projecting power? Maybe instead of meddling in international affairs via cover NGOs, let those people work out their own problems like we did in our early republic. We don't have to be captain save-a-hoe for the world.
- Jerrrry 2y ago
  [dead]
zmgsabst 2y ago
Uh — Roman Empire lasted in part something like 1500 years and imperial China around 2100 years. Average implies that it’s not a hard and fast rule they die at that particular point — as the following sentence implies.
- icegreentea2 2y ago
  That's true, but those empires also had periods of traumatic decline and upheaval. Given if you grant those entities continuity for those time scales, there were absolutely periods in the middle where everything went to shit. Using a 1500 year number for Rome includes having half the empire drop off and die. The more important idea isn't the 250 years (I agree), the idea is that it's not unreasonable to model aspects of America as an empire.
  - zmgsabst 2y ago
    I’d argue that the US is experiencing the transition from republic to empire that Rome did — also during a period of decline and political corruption. My point was that decline and regrowth, or even political transition as with Rome, happen frequently — not just decline followed by collapse (or “death”).

chmorgan_ 2y ago

Carl Sagan may very well be correct, however he didn't make predictions about when such an event might occur, and his predictions were aimed at avoiding it occurring at all. I've seen this article appear several times in two distinct time periods, one was after Trump was elected the first time, and the second is now. Why is it popular now? Because people opposed to the present political party want to portray it as a decent into darkness and superstition. It's being used as a tool and it's hyperbole. Don't fall for the trap, things in the US at least appear to be improving tremendously in just a matter of weeks. Border security is improving, cutting off trafficking and drugs. Middle East peace is advancing. Ukraine might be settled. Significant waste is being cut from government spending etc.

edoceo 2y ago
Threatening to close the Dept of Education and blocking scientific research is not an improvement. And nothing has changed on Border, Drugs, ME or UKR - same as it was. Bro just talked a game and some believe without evidence
StefanBatory 2y ago
> Middle East peace is advancing Trump just announced what amounts to a genocide on Palestinians and occupation of Gaza as American territory. This won't be a lasting peace.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Yes, my crystal auras suggest things are getting much better too so I don't see what people are worried about.

kennysoona 2y ago

I think the only people denying the decline of the US are the same people that think the US can be as powerful and respected as it was in the 50s, i.e. not the most well informed crowd. It really is crazy to see the way the US is going. I remember reading every time in history an emerging superpower was replacing a declining power, the declining power got antsy and shot first, leading to them getting whooped by the emerging superpower, cementing them as a superpower. I wonder if that will happen with the US.

guerrilla 2y ago
The latter is called Thucydides Trap.
MangoCoffee 2y ago
Who is going to replace US? China? Its economy is on the decline with deflation, debts, real estates problem...etc. Europe? Japan?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- matteuan 2y ago
  Behind this there is the wrong assumption that there must be a replacement for all. For sure there will be gaps filled by other powers, but it's not necessary, we just got used to it.
- the_clarence 2y ago
  The problem is that China is still self sufficient. Huge country with a single timezone and great infrastructure and now has the expertise to produce for itself and enough people to buy its own products. Sure there's going to be some instability but even then the dictatorship is helping in preventing people to go too crazy. There's a reason musk is pushing for babies: the US is mostly empty land with a few large cities.
  - CAP_NET_ADMIN 2y ago

cess11 2y ago

Another succinct view from roughly the same point in history that I return to every now and then is Deleuze's Postscript. "It’s a capitalism of higher-order production. It no longer buys raw materials and no longer sells the finished products: it buys the finished products or assembles parts. What it wants to sell is services and what it wants to buy is stocks. This is no longer a capitalism for production but for the product, which is to say, for being sold or marketed." 'The conquests of the market are made by grabbing control and no longer by disciplinary training, by fixing the exchange rate much more than by lowering costs, by transformation of the product more than by specialization of production. Corruption thereby gains a new power. Marketing has become the center or the “soul” of the corporation. We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world. The operation of markets is now the instrument of social control and forms the impudent breed of our masters.' "There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons." https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-posts...

nothrowaways 2y ago

Yet, 30 years later America is on the lead, large and sound. Until it decides to go on a mission of self fulfilled prophecy, trying to undo everything overnight.

physhster 2y ago
Soundly the laughing stock of the entire world.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- lttlrck 2y ago
  Why? Is there something funny happening?
whizzter 2y ago
You mean like randomly firing tons of people from the National Nuclear Security Administration? (The agency in charge of maintaining the nuclear arsenal)

MangoCoffee 2y ago

the Chinese have been saying, 'The East is rising and the West is declining,' but China's current economy is on the decline, and Europe is no better. That leaves the U.S. still standing with economic growth. I guess we'll see.

rcarmo 2y ago
Economy is not a game of absolute value--it is a game of _relative_ value and scale, and the US having economic growth _by itself_ is a mirage.
SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
The claim that the US has "economic growth" and that China does not is a strong claim, and does not seem to be supported by any real-world facts. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/17/china-economy-hits-growth-target-but-rate-among-slowest-in-decades https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/17/china-econo...
- MangoCoffee 2y ago
  the China 5% growth in the article...is it believable? the real world fact that you cited come from China. which stop reporting youth unemployment when the numbers is bad back in 2023. only to restart reporting the number with new method. Can you trust Chinese's numbers when its real estates, foreign investment drop, deflation...etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JYWFUI5kEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JYWFUI5kEc https://apnews.com/article/china-youth-unemployment-slowdown-321cd96377ee066915fc39232b9477c3 https://apnews.com/article/china-youth-unemployment-slowdown...
  - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
    So your argument is that "nobody knows anything"? It's hardly an argument that you know something. It's also a straw man to nitpick the number, as your claim "That leaves the U.S. still standing with economic growth" - was that China was not growing, at all.

suraci 2y ago

Arguing about the decline of the US with idealism is just as meaningless as arguing about the prosperity of the US with idealism.

b3lvedere 2y ago

Predict eh? I think Mr. Sagan saw a seemingly endless cycle. Cycles are kinda predictable because of their nature. However we might have a few chances to modify the cycle until the next giant civilication wants to dictate it all, because they think their way is the best way. Some would call that evolution. Try try try and try again until something works. And if it doesn't anymore. Try again again.

FiniteField 2y ago

Carl Sagan died the year after this quote. With the greatest respect to him as a science communicator, he has not lived to see an entire generation of politics. When he died, the liberal capitalist post-historical consensus was in full swing. World leaders believed that all notions of identity and nationhood would gently fade away, to be replaced by a world of fungible, peaceful shoppers, administered by an all-knowing, all-loving class of technocratic managers. The election of Trump (especially Trump 2.0) is a ground-up repudiation of this consensus by ordinary people, who have a completely different life experience to the managerial cosmopolitan class (of whom this website largely represents). Trump, and various other right-wing ascendants throughout the world, are a statement by the common people of the belief that a desire for identity, sovereignty and representation does not disappear the moment a McDonald's appears in their home country. The (understandable!) lamentations of the academic class towards the current actions of the Trump administration have, to my mind, a deficit of self-reflection and theory of mind towards the people supporting these actions. For decades, the stage of "democracy" has been increasingly garnished with explicitly non-democratic embellishments. NGOs, panels of "experts", bureaucratic oversight, international "obligations" and so on. This is the exact same situation that motivated the people of Britain to vote for Brexit 9 years ago. Michael Gove, while I have very little time for him as a politician, made a point in a news interview that was condemned for years, but that I think was an accurate capture of working-class sentiment in that time. The soundbite form was "Britain has had enough of experts". And he was exactly right. For decades, academia has been part of an ongoing anti-democratic, elitist movement to effectively take control away from common people. Health matters are deferred to "listening to the experts", and ordinary people were made to feel as if they didn't deserve a say on if they should be allowed to leave their own homes in 2020-21. NGO-funded academic studies serve to tell normal people that despite their own experiences, mass immigration has been an unambiguous good in their lives, and they have no right to express otherwise. This idea of deference to unelected experts peaked when normal people started being told that it was not within their jurisdiction to define for themselves what the words "man" and "woman" mean -- these two words that are foundational to human civilisation and the language spoken in it were to become the domain of a sect of largely self-appointed modern-day clerics, who expected the public to believe that they were completely rational, objective, and blind to ideology. This is what the conversation on "anti-intellectualism" very often misses, when being discussed by those in the intellectual classes. While criticising the "uneducated" masses for being so unenlightened, they fail to notice that they also have biases, incentives, and ideological motivations, and it is these that the public are pushing back against, not the noble pursuit of objective knowledge.

culanuchachamim 2y ago

-Sagan’s 1995 predictions are now being heralded as prophetic. As Director of Public Radio International’s Science Friday, Charles Bergquist tweeted, “Carl Sagan had either a time machine or a crystal ball.” Prophetic, time machine, crystal call. That's exactly the lenguage of darkness and superstition...

gopkarthik 2y ago
They acknowledge the irony in the very next sentence: "Matt Novak cautions against falling back into superstitious thinking in our praise of Demon Haunted World. After all, he says, “the ‘accuracy’ of predictions is often a Rorschach test” and “some of Sagan’s concerns” in other parts of the book “sound rather quaint.”"

wakawaka28 2y ago

He's no prophet. Outsourcing of everything was well underway even in the 90s with no sign it would stop short of a catastrophe. As for the ignorance and superstition aspect of it, that's his whole schtick. I don't think people are necessarily a lot more ignorant about science than they were in the 90s, despite the decline of US industry. What might strike some people as odd is that it took like 50 years for people to start to panic about the future of our economy. And even that is probably inaccurate. I think people did panic in the 70s and 80s, but we have so far to fall and nobody expected it to take so long.

Anotheroneagain 2y ago

I began reading the book (The Demon Haunted World) and it shocked me how casually Sagan states that he hallucinated, and it gave me an epiphany: The schizophrenic doesn't understand that other people are sane! Suddenly, it makes perfect sense - a schizophrenic (or perhaps a group of them) somehow came up with science. And for them it was a world changing event, as they could disprove their hallucinations one by one. It turned them from something that was barely surviving on the outskirts of society into somewhat functional beings. But, for the same reason why he was insane in the first place, sooner or later he corrupts his science as well. However the schizophrenic doesn't uderstand that others are sane. So, when he was convincing the sailors that scurvy isn't from the lack of fruit, he fought their insane belief, like when he believed a leprechaun stabbed him. When he is convincing you that there are more genders than men and women, he is fighting your insane delusion, like when he disproved that there were fire spitting dragons flying in the sky! He's merely trying to bring you out of darknes, just like he did himself.