Some time ago I posted are we all being Googlified.  

We use the internet and social media is not so much to expand our minds as to lose them.

Social media does not democratise debate. It limits it to the resilient, offering tweet-size solutions.

We tend to validate what we already believe, wish or suspect is true as opposed to challenging our way of thinking.

In this overheated world fulled by attack ads, and social media frenzies, the only think that matter is how an individual feels about something. Feeling validates itself and anything else is an establishment conspiracy.

It is well-known that if you want to rule a people keep them ignorant.

Take the USA for instance.

One has only to look at the rise of Donald Trump, the Tea Party, Climate change deniers, Creationists, and the hold these have and the lengths believers go to push their agendas, contrary to tangible, scientific proof, to understand that ignorance is something people invest in heavily.

In a country that was founded on Immigration the USA that has built some 650 miles of wall along the 1,954-mile US-Mexico boundary. There are around 16,238 murders per year in the United States; this averages out to around 44 murders per day. There were 2.24 million prisoners in the United States as of Dec. 31, 2011. That accounted for about 22 percent of the global prison population.

“It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population.” 

America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance.

Here as elsewhere we see politicians more concerned with appearing approachable than smart or engaging in genuine political discourse.

Celebrity gossip dominates news feeds and cycles.

We have a generation that have not read a book since leaving school. How take selfies posted on Facebook to say look at me I did this or I am here, got the t-shirt. Who cares. Almost all of us have been there before you.

Topical TV discussion ( on this side of the pond Question Time, Hard Talk, News Night and the like) shows use celebrities, sportspeople, or some one from the station’s stable of stars to discuss controversial issues eschewing experts and reducing complex subjects to clickbait.

Shrinking government funding for Education, and other artistic, creative, literary and scientific endeavors, works to erode the significance of scholarship and creativity and all they entail as respectable and seriously useful occupations or pastimes.

Universities are changing as a consequence of fee charging and anti-intellectualism. Instead of teaching students the joy of learning and critical thinking, we train them for jobs.

Ignorance should never be held up as inspirational, convenient fictions, don’t replace facts, and aggressive cyber trolls never silence the truth.

A clever country is where intellectuals are not scorned as elite, but recognised as essential.

If we want inequality to disappear our Leaders must educate for free and capitalism with its unrelenting greed must pay. ( see World Aid commission of 0.05%)