Thomas Paine wrote The Age Of Reason in 1794. Paine was a Diest. He believed in a creator of the universe, but he didn’t subscribe to a God who manages every aspect of a person’s day to day life.
I’m not going to get into religion here. I firmly believe in John Lennon’s words: “Whatever gets you through the night, is all right.” You believe what you believe, and I’ll believe what I believe, you don’t come to my front porch selling your philosophy and I’ll never show up at your house selling mine. I’ll never hate you for your religion or start a war with you because you don’t see things the way I do.
Totally off point here but I love Lennon’s, “Working Class Hero” it is possibly my favorite song, well that, and Springsteen’s “Jungleland,” especially about three minutes and thirty seconds in where Clarence Clemons whipsaws the whole song apart with his saxophone, and of course, William Devaughn’s “Be Thankful For What You Got.”
Ok, back on point. That point is: fact and reason. I’m not sure we ever did, but we certainly don’t now live in The Age Of Reason. Not even close.
My work in technology and IT predates the Internet. In fact, it predates IT, we used to be MIS, before that we were “that guy in who can fix your computer…” In the early nineties a lot of us were convinced the Internet was going to make us smarter. Well, that didn’t happen…
I no longer interact or react with Trolls, but I still read their nonsense. The earth is flat, we not only never went to the moon, but we’ve also never even been into space. These are possibly the most ridiculous and laughable. Vaccines don’t work or they cause God knows what, less laughable. I’m old enough to have known some people who had Polio. They were much older than me. I don’t know any of my peers who ever suffered that horror. I had measles and the mumps. My kids never did. Neither did your kids. Sowing doubt and denying science harms all of us. Vaccines work.
Flat-earthers and moon landing deniers aren’t dangerous. They can be amusing or frustrating. Truth be told I kind of enjoy them. I saw a photo the other day, a guy took it on an early morning flight on a commercial airliner. He got a photo of the rising sun in one window and the setting moon on the opposite window. He posted this with his photos, PROOF! All I could think was, you do you, bro…
People deny the Holocaust ever happened. That is dangerous. It’s delusional. This kind of thinking allows things like this to happen again. We can’t allow that. I fear it will.
Our next book, “Water Wars” is about a handful of people dealing with the collapse of society and order and government in the face of a mounting environmental crisis. I’m no climate scientist, I’m not even very smart, but I know the lakes and streams here used to freeze solid come late November and stay frozen until March. I’ve not seen a frozen pond around here, the place I’ve lived all my life in about five years, maybe more. Yesterday it was eighty degrees in Baltimore. You can be a climate change denier all day, that’s up to you, but I know what I see and what I see scares me some.
When did we start blindly supporting politicians? I’ve worked with some lawyers who are banging clients at five-hundred bucks an hour—banging is the appropriate word here too. Think about that. That’s twenty-thousand dollars a week, well over a million dollars a year. Many, if not most politicians, at least at the federal level, are lawyers who gave up their practices so they can go to Washington DC, for a tenth of that salary. Yet somehow many of us believe they do this for some altruistic love of the people.
My best friend, right hand man and editor Mark is a Mets fan, I’m a Yankees fan since I fell out of the womb. We’re still friends. We look past each other’s failures in baseball.
I know a guy, a big dude, union electrician, who actually cries when the NY Islanders lose a hockey game. I get being a sports fan, I even understand idolizing some of the best in their particular field. I idolized Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, and Pete Rose. The wisdom of this may be questionable, but it’s relatively harmless. Idolizing and taking sides and becoming violent and risking prison and ruining your life to defend your chosen political idol isn’t just dangerous, it defies logic, common sense. Know this, they will not reciprocate—ever! Not at all.
I may be a fan of John and Clarence and William and Roger and The Mick, but I’ll not let them define who I am.
Sadly, Mr. Paine, it’s been over two hundred years since you wrote your pamphlet that caused so much commotion, and we still ain’t anywhere near the age of reason. In fact, we’re about as far from it as I think we’ve ever been.
