This is absolutely monstrous but no worse than many of us feared. Bertrand Russel (in Practice and Theory) summed it all up: "If a more just economic system is only attainable by closing men's minds against free enquiry, the price is too high". But the trouble is the majority of citizens, especially the intelligentsia, are either completely indifferent to "free enquiry" and "free thought", or are in favour of totalitarian methods of enforcing dogma -- just so long as the dogma is of a certain type. The younger generation is notoriously comfortable about intolerance and the power of IT giants since it is only interested in access to their wretched mobile phones. The soon to be leading economy of the world, China, has a population which is, with very rare exceptions, perfectly happy with their totalitarian state just so long as it brings prosperity -- which so far it has done. The new intolerance is a self-inflicted blow which will usher in a new Dark Age. Socialism always prefers economic levelling to freedom and if current versions of socialism, Chinese or Western, neither introduce "a more just economic society" (which arguably they don't) while nonetheless suppressing freedom of enquiry, this is the end for a meaningful life. The brief window of opportunity that opened during the Renaissance has now been slammed shut, perhaps for ever. We are entering the age of the walking dead and it is being brought about not by Hitler youth or psychopaths but by self-righteous intellectual bigots enthroned in our universities, schools and Parliament. I feel almost suicidal.
This is absolutely monstrous but no worse than many of us feared. Bertrand Russel (in Practice and Theory) summed it all up: "If a more just economic system is only attainable by closing men's minds against free enquiry, the price is too high". But the trouble is the majority of citizens, especially the intelligentsia, are either completely indifferent to "free enquiry" and "free thought", or are in favour of totalitarian methods of enforcing dogma -- just so long as the dogma is of a certain type. The younger generation is notoriously comfortable about intolerance and the power of IT giants since it is only interested in access to their wretched mobile phones. The soon to be leading economy of the world, China, has a population which is, with very rare exceptions, perfectly happy with their totalitarian state just so long as it brings prosperity -- which so far it has done. The new intolerance is a self-inflicted blow which will usher in a new Dark Age. Socialism always prefers economic levelling to freedom and if current versions of socialism, Chinese or Western, neither introduce "a more just economic society" (which arguably they don't) while nonetheless suppressing freedom of enquiry, this is the end for a meaningful life. The brief window of opportunity that opened during the Renaissance has now been slammed shut, perhaps for ever. We are entering the age of the walking dead and it is being brought about not by Hitler youth or psychopaths but by self-righteous intellectual bigots enthroned in our universities, schools and Parliament. I feel almost suicidal.
Chickens coming home to roost. I heard the phrase "nothing can be worse than the tories" many times whilst out campaigning.