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The Winter Solstice of Civilization - Speech about declining general intelligence)

civilization intelligence history philosophy inspirational general intelligence 2020 2021 books

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#1 jroseland

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Posted 26 December 2020 - 02:30 PM


It's Christmas - the winter solstice. In this 10-minute speech, I offer hope and realism, suggesting that this moment in history is the solstice of something greater.
In this video, for the discerning, I drop black pills (grim truths), red pills (unpopular truths), and white pills (empowering truths) - crossing the chasm from the abstract and philosophical to the pragmatic and personal.
 
 
Last year I read this very thoroughly researched book, At Our Wits' End, about the troubling decline of general intelligence across the western world; which explains why we never went back to the moon and why you can't fly at supersonic speeds on the Concorde across the Atlantic.
 
This is something that people might debate about but it's become especially apparent in 2020 that civilization is in decline. We keep getting smarter phones but people are getting dumber. Politics are getting dumber. The news is getting dumber. Entertainment is getting dumber. Culture is getting dumber. The rules are getting dumber, you’re not allowed to go to the gym but you’re allowed to go to Walmart.
 
At Our Wits' End concludes, citing historical examples - Rome, Classical Greece, etc - that this decline of intelligence is the harbinger of an impending new dark age - a brutish bad time. There’s a chance that, like in the movie The Matrix, that 1999 was the true high-water mark for humanity and that we damned to decline, devolve, and ultimately be enslaved by our own technology and hubris in the age of Aquarius.

 


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#2 jroseland

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Posted 11 January 2021 - 08:41 AM

New related podcast: Will 2021 Be Better?

 

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You're probably hoping that 2021 will be a better year, a lot of people are. And - let's be realists - if we're talking about the macro, this is an unfounded and naive hope. We can anticipate all the trends that made 2020 so turbulent to accelerate in 2021. Society is not magically going to get smarter and more decent in 2021. The state is not going to say, "Wow, we made some catastrophic mistakes. We're sorry! Here, you can have all your freedoms back that we violated so egregiously in 2020." But, at the same time, I don't expect 2021 to be worse, I expect it to be sadder. As the Roman Empire collapsed many Roman citizens, born free, voluntarily became slaves because they just wanted someone to take care of them - that's sad. In 2021, we're going to increasingly witness the sad spectacle of friends and family forsaking the liberties they were born with in exchange for promises from the government that they'll be take care of - "If you take the COVID-19 vaccine yearly, keep your vaccination passport up to date and your social credit score high enough, you'll be eligible for monthly universal basic income..."
 

Listen to podcast: https://castbox.fm/vb/343629619

 

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