Enlightenment - the duty of each of us

We live in an amazing time of universal availability of information: when everyone has a smartphone with access to the World Wide Web, it is difficult to argue with this statement. Even those who do not use the Internet consume information through other, more archaic channels of its distribution.

On the other hand, a critical assessment of the information consumed is not a trivial task. As the previous generation fell victim to the advertising of "MMM" and other dubious projects of adventurers, so the current society kneels under the press of inaccurate information, which slowly but surely plunges us and our loved ones into the world consisting of half the facts, and half from fictions, myths and prejudices, which are multiplied by the near-evangelicals, as they themselves consider, their "field of knowledge".
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The dangers of GMOs , HIV-dissidence , propaganda of homeopathy at the state level, conspiracy theories, propaganda of raw food, third-wave feminism, flat earth community - this list can be stretched across several text screens. The victims of all this are two categories of people: reactionary, inert youth, who, because of their inexperience and compliance, easily accept any of the most radical ideas, as well as those who feel a lack of an educational base in the field of natural and fundamental sciences: physics, biology, chemistry and related with them disciplines.

Consumer society

Even with the example of our loved ones (or not so much) Habra and Hiktatimes, we can safely say that the vast majority of the population are consumers, not the creators of information. Even people who have something to say to others prefer to consume content rather than generate their own.

This situation has led to the fact that today generates content of less than 1% (or even 0.1%) of people, all the rest are consumers. There are many reasons for this, from insufficient language proficiency to banal laziness.

But while you are silent, your loved ones are stuffed with the words “Does not contain GMOs” on packs of soda or Elena Malysheva’s transmissions, in which there is already more senility than medicine.


No kidding. Check out a pack of soda in your kitchen.

Materialism loses

We consider ourselves, for the most part, a society of materialists. Even such ancient institutions as the Church, and they recognized the fact that the Earth is round and the cosmos exists. Even they have to adapt to the achievements of modern science and technology, mimicking for the sake of their own survival.

On the other hand, we, materialists and adherents of the scientific approach, are overwhelmed by a wave of obscurantism and pseudoscientific teachings, which are becoming more and more popular with the population.

Science has become too complicated for the average man. At the same time, the construction of the so-called “legal states” gave rise to a paradox: if earlier, in an era of rapid progress, when scientists were no longer burned as heretics, it was possible to give up “unbelievers” to science and simply ignore them, now they have real power over by scientists.

Probably the clearest example of the past few years is the persecution of the head of the Rosette project, Matt Taylor, which was begun by journalists of quite a serious publication The Verge.


The same Matt Taylor in the same sexist shirt, because of which he became the target of persecution for the third wave feminists

Feminists around the world began to exercise in eloquence and insult an imposing scientist for his clothes. With all this, Taylor is an exemplary family man (he has a wife and two children), and according to the stories of loved ones, he is a typical person who is passionate about and in love with his work. It got to the point that the ESA had to organize a press conference where Matt officially apologized for his inappropriate appearance. The fact that he had to apologize for his shirt when he conducted a unique mission brought the scientist to tears.

The feminists ’anti-Taylor mass media campaign and social networks to support Taylor and ridicule the“ offended ”by his appearance, and the fact that the shirt was made and presented to the scientist by a woman, his girlfriend, slightly cooled the heat.

But the fact of the incident leads to an unpleasant conclusion: the masses, who had previously kept aside, can now influence the world of science and scientists. If earlier people with a “spark” of madness and genius were directly sponsored by progressive capitalists and visionaries-patrons, then the modern symbiosis of state and business within the framework of globalization does not provide such opportunities. And besides, a connection between capital and a sexist / homophobic / nationalist / Islamophobe (underline), SJW, minorities or other “offended” will suddenly unleash all Egyptian executions on the heads of those involved. And this is bad for business.

So now we have to people who created and create our world every day, huddle at the door of this celebration of life, choosing words and shirts easier. Lenin would be proud of the present state of affairs: this world is in fact now governed by conditional milkmaids and workers.

These same people are subject to all sorts of pseudoscientific theories and theories. And an ordinary adherent of homeopathy or an adversary of evolutionary theory has never known that pseudoscience operates only with convenient facts, ignoring all inconvenient ones. It is for this reason, at first glance, everything is so beautiful and “smoothly”. And to dig deeper and it makes no sense, because questions, contradictions, other areas of knowledge are beginning to emerge, in which the average citizen of planet Earth has neither time, nor desire, nor, most often, an opportunity due to a weak theoretical base.

War with common sense

While abroad they are engaged in raw food eating and the observance of women's rights during space missions and scientific discoveries, Russia is actively encouraging the path of least resistance.

We do not have a society of Nokrats, no matter how much we would like, but the average lawmaker is the same average person as the conventional mechanic in your HOA. As a result, criminal bills are in essence adopted to ban GMO crops, which in the coming decades will reject the country in terms of food security for years, press conferences are held by homeopaths where those on serious grounds talk about quantum dissonance and arousing the potential of life force. person when eating sweets from sugar.

On the topic of the latter in media space, a serious wave has recently swept, and in both directions. Against the background of the memorandum of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the recognition of homeopathy as a pseudo-science, the “entire royal army” was convened to defend the latter. It came down to a big press conference, where for almost an hour and a half it was told that homeopathy was a new stage in science and medicine, and three dozen members of the commission on pseudo-science were mediocre and charlatans.

The director of the Evolution Foundation, Peter Talantov, who gave comments to the Geektimes editorial on the last memorandum of the RAS, in which he took part in the preparation, made a short video from an hour and a half conference of homeopaths , combining it with a joke about the hoaxes of the musician and actor Sergey Kuryokhin:


It would seem that with all the modern achievements of science, for homeopaths, it was not that it was not worth organizing a conference - not to let it go, but everything happens with exactly the opposite.

We have fallen into a world where we believe more than the attending physician, but the responses to Mail.ru Answers or women's forums. We have fallen into a world where the role of the Inquisition was assumed by the fanatics of various movements and movements, who endowed themselves with the power to “poison” and “burn” the disagreeable system. We are in a world where not a single line of text can be taken for granted without providing sources. We have fallen into a world where short-term profit and profit reigns, and not the prospect of development and common sense.

And the immediate benefit says: "obscurantism is good."

Because right now, products marked "Bio" or "Non-GMO" can be sold at 20-1000% more expensive. Because right now you can sell a kilogram of sugar at the price of a business class car. Because right now you can arrange paid seminars on how to cure AIDS from alternative methods, because HIV is a hoax.

Instead of output

We will not be saved by the RAS Memorandums - they are only of an advisory nature. Everything that is happening around us is only our fault.

We did not take the time to explain to our parents or brothers and sisters that GMOs cannot even theoretically develop cancer. After all, the gastrointestinal tract is a huge acidic cauldron that splits everything that falls into its constituent parts.

We didn’t take the time to explain to our children how the third wave of modern feminism differs from the original women's rights movement - and now their army has been enriched by someone’s daughter, for whom Matt Taylor’s shirt is more important than space exploration.

We, once setting up the TV, allowed our family members to watch REN-TV. And now homemade people believe in green men and twist hats of foil.

We did not explain to our old grandmother that the microwave was safe because we were in a hurry to go home.

We can only say that GMOs are harmless and even beneficial for the survival of our species, homeopathy is nonsense, HIV exists, and raw food is harmful to health. Without supporting their words with facts, unlike the opposite side, let their arguments be based on the “error of the survivor”. We know that we are right, but we are arrogant and do not even try to convince those around us that they are right.

Because it will be necessary to explain the principles of quantum physics and chemistry in order to convince another person of the inconsistency of homeopathy. Biology and chemistry - to explain what GMOs are and how it works. Biology - to prove that HIV exists. We silently, like greedy dragons, sit on a treasure trove called “knowledge” and do not share them with anyone.

Because we are lazy.