Human knowledge is acquired by means of our physical/perceptual senses, and by our practice of recording and organizing sensory data into "recipes" to accomplish particular tasks. The use of recorded language is what allows the many to gain from the discoveries of the few. Recorded language is the medium we use to further the acquisition and the communication of knowledge. It is the peculiar practice of the human animal to record knowledge via richly descriptive languages that allows us to build on the experiences of our ancestors.

Cultures that failed to use recorded language effectively and routinely to promote their development simply did not develop very far, as evidenced by American Indians, Australian aborigines, African tribes and South American tribes. So much for dolphins, elephants and monkeys, also, who demonstrate limited language abilities but do not use recorded knowledge to build on the experience of their predecessors.

If you are offended by these thoughts, simply answer the following question; what do these peoples have to show in civilization development to the rest of us for all the time they have existed? They were and are essentially static. Progress does not exist for them, and that means they will, at the least, be pushed aside until they realize the means to create progress through effective use of recorded language. The same message applies to all of the rest of us. If you stop your development you will ultimately be controlled and overrun. Note, however, that this is not an unsolvable problem.

Language can be considered in a broad sense to include spoken and written words, pictures and other symbols used to convey ideas. We do not have a common awareness of the faculty of telepathy at this time, so we must for the moment exclude that hypothesized method of communication. Note, however, that even if telepathy were available, some type of structured, symbolic language would be essential to express any thought.

Knowledge of a language does not imply any other specific type of knowledge. Language is only a structured medium we use to communicate the sensory data we perceive and the organization of that data into actionable packets of information. For example, many of us know the mechanics of the English language, yet we are not orators or writers of note. Similarly, many people have learned the syntax of computer languages and yet are not programmers. In both instances, the essential missing ingredient is something substantive to communicate and sometimes the means to communicate. You might ask yourself why so many individuals in so many different life circumstances do not have something substantive to communicate?

Some philosophers (Skeptics) have made careers out of casting doubt on the validity of data gained via our sensory perceptions, and they have claimed that our knowledge gained thereby is flawed. What a waste of time it is to ponder that! Our perceptual senses are the only starting point we have, and they are most certainly not our ending point as we proceed into the future. It is true that science has shown us that we cannot see certain wavelengths of light and that we cannot hear certain sound frequencies, but that only tells us that our senses need to be extended to make our physical perceptions more complete. We do that presently by numerous physical devices. Later, we will evolve the human animal. In the process we may discover or create altogether new perceptual senses that radically alter our rate of acquisition and use of knowledge. Like telepathy. We will likely quantify, rather soon, the physical basis for that apparent but elusive capability we call intuition.

For now, delight in the realization that we have means to acquire, to develop, to organize and to extend human knowledge. Then recognize what a feeble performance we have given in the past 50,000 years using those means to advance our species. The primary moral imperative of every age is to promote the acquisition, development and application of knowledge to our advancement. This is what philosophy is all about. It is not simply the love of knowledge. It is the love of human advancement that results from gaining and applying knowledge.

The acquisition and development of new knowledge for advancing our species appears to be the domain of very few humans, past and present. If you consider the development of philosophies, ideologies, the physical sciences and applied technology to ensure our physical survival and advancement, it is easy to recognize that very few people, optimistically one percent, actually have advanced our knowledge. Perhaps an additional four percent have shown us how to apply new knowledge to our daily lives.

This means that of the eight billion plus people who have lived since the beginning of recorded history, the majority of which are alive today, that roughly eighty million have produced the entire body of new knowledge from which we have developed and presently sustain our civilizations. If you were to examine all of our books on every imaginable subject, however, you would come up with a much smaller number, perhaps one hundredth of one percent, or eight hundred thousand people. Since books miss many significant contributions, I would suggest the number eight million as more reasonable.

The remainder of the human race, some seven billion nine hundred and ninety two million of us, has been the partial beneficiary of that work, but has been unable to contribute to it except as comparatively unskilled labor. No matter what specific range of numbers you choose from the ones shown above, almost all of us are bit players in the drama of life, due to circumstances well beyond our control up to this time in history.

This troublesome but undeniable fact begs three questions. What is the importance to our species to change the ratio of bit players to stars? What can be done to hasten progress in human advancement to avoid wars, economic slavery and environmental disasters? How do we make life more meaningful for those who are increasingly unable to contribute to our advancement, due to inherited or geographic location of birth limitations? The answers to these questions are critical to our overall success, and they are provided starting with the Destiny chapter.

How many of us today are substantively necessary to the maintenance of our own existence? Recognize that we no longer have the one-to-one relationship between the individual and nature, as represented in earlier generations, as recently as 100 years ago, by hunting and farming. If your surname is Smith, think about which Smiths are the best ones to have on this planet. How many Smiths do we need? Is there a limit to the desirable number of Smiths? Does it matter what your surname happens to be?

Most of us alive today in "First World" industrialized nations have become marginally essential to everyone but ourselves. We are becoming increasingly non-essential, and we are reacting to that reality by becoming petty whiners or dropouts. We are not taking the responsibility to develop into meaningful contributors. One reason why that is so is that we no longer have to be creative to survive. For most of us, substantive contribution to the present, let alone the future, is beyond our perceived ability, and thus we are not effective.

Consider the wasted time in meaningless discussions about race superiority, religious differences, gender, clothing styles, etc., used to divert our attention from the reality of our bit player role. What is the value of those bit player activities, for bit players are usually long on opinions and short on intelligence, experience and education? Your life and the lives of others are too special to waste, regardless of your inherited gifts, so the imperative is to direct your thoughts away from bit player activities.

Our societies are producing ever-larger percentages of people with no goals of consequence, and these people are dropping out. We are conveniently not including those individuals in our published statistics regarding unemployment. Nor do our leaders appear to understand that feeling useless leads to social apathy, and eventually to societal chaos. War, which was used historically to redirect people's frustration, is a lousy method to deal with lack of meaning. Is it in any way sensible to repeat the errors of our ancestors in that regard? Must you awaken your leaders with utter apathy or revolution to get them to understand the fundamental need of all people to be relevant?

Lack of control over our individual destiny is more than a perceived problem. The fundamental need for each of us is to meet our basic needs in some form that we find respectable. Show me a person who is secure in being well employed, well fed, well sheltered and well loved, and I will show you a person unwilling to make war or legislation against other people. No, I am not talking about your perception of "rich" people.

Conversely, show me a person who is insecure in perceived or actual ability/power to fulfill basic needs, either physical or emotional, and I will show you a person who can kill in a heartbeat, either directly or in mean-spirited attitudes towards fellow citizens. No, not all weakened people are mean, but they are not growth oriented or productive. They do, however, reproduce.

Our society in the USA is developing the latter type of person in two stages. The first stage is the degrading of life style, attitudes and expectations of fairness, because of applied socialism. You will see negative evidence of socialism in the USA in the examples below.

A Necessary Digression into Anti-knowledge Behaviors:

The preponderance of utter incompetents in some civil service jobs previously held by competent, limited skill people, is producing deep-seated anger within the "customers." Gone is the idea that high performance yields high success, i.e. a sense of fairness. We cannot expect to get as good as we give. We pay high taxes and get poor service and we are thus confounded in the course of trying to be personally responsible and effective. For example, try calling the Internal Revenue Service with a non-trivial tax question. How many attempts does it take to connect with an IRS employee? What is the knowledge level of that person? Are you empowered to proceed knowledgeably after that communication?

The infusion of absurd types of laws to control human relationship problems, that cannot possibly solve the real problems at a practical level, are a current reality and an irritation, for we are solving the wrong problems. For example, family court attempts to attach the wages of a supporting parent of a dissolved marriage. We choke on laborious societal efforts to treat symptoms rather than solving the root problems.

The second stage is recognition of complete loss of individual power. For example, your medical care provider usually decides which doctors you can visit. Has not managed health care become an oppressive risk to our wellbeing? Do you understand that the cost of medical treatment of all varieties started its significant rise with the broad-based implementation of private health insurance in the 1950's? Do you realize that Medicare and Medicaid hastened the rate of rise for medical service costs absurdly from their outset? The federal government finally put the brakes on in the early 1980's regarding maximum amounts to be paid to medical providers by category of service. They also started limiting what services could be provided without hard justification.

Businesses put the brakes on too by making employees increasingly responsible on a percentage basis for their healthcare costs. HMOs were introduced to contain cost, not to improve or better manage service levels. Each of these 11th hour fixes would have been unnecessary if we had avoided socialized medicine from the beginning. Socialism in medical care is the reason capitalism in the practice of medicine resulted in absurd prices for everything. Without socialism in that area the costs of medical services of all kinds would immediately plummet.

The cost will always reflect what the market will bear, and the quality and availability of service does not diminish because free market capitalism means competition for customers. Can you imagine that a pacemaker could cost $16,000? Your personal computer has a hundred times as many components and costs only about $1600. The pill you take for high blood pressure, which is only one of a hundred alternative pills, somehow costs anywhere from $1 to $5 per pill, and the cost to make the pill is about one cent. Is that pricing R&D expense recovery? Of course not. It is uncontrolled capitalism that results from socialized medicine.

I became personally aware of the curse of socialism in medicine as I reviewed the hospital and obstetrician delivery costs for my children. In mid-1964, the total cost was $140. By the end of 1965, the total cost was $1100. In 1974, the cost was $4000. In no instance was there any complication or hospital stay in excess of three days. Are you developing any knowledge by reading this digression into the effects of socialized medicine? How will you apply your knowledge? Might you push for legislation that will make quality medical care affordable for you directly from your earned income?

Social Security is anything but good. The motive, as usual, was good but the concept was inherently flawed, for it failed to contain checks and balances. A simple retirement fund concept was okay, provided the collected funds were invested to yield growth through accumulated profit. They were not. Besides being a population pyramid scheme, Social Security evolved into a catchall funding source for programs for indigents, "victims" and anyone who could appear to justify a handout. For example, a college age student could receive great educational financial assistance as a gift, not a loan, if that student's supporting parent was 65 or older. Does not that type of silliness promote irresponsible behavior on the part of people who should be beyond child bearing age? The Social Security program can be seen today at best as marginally effective in providing retired people supplemental but inadequate income.

To be blunt, there has yet to be implemented an effective solution to ignorance that results from inherited limitations, for there is no sensible system of checks and balances in socialism that will cause individuals to exercise good judgment. When we feed ignorant people and are not able to educate them to becoming self-sufficient all we get in return is a greater number of ignorant people. This means the costs rise for the people who are working diligently while the quality of their life diminishes. Socialism and communism weaken and limit societies because they destroy individual initiative on the part of those capable of contributing.

The increasing tendency of companies to eliminate pension and retirement programs in favor of stock options and 401K plans is evidence of businesses trying to end socialism to their benefit. Ultimately, this practice is good, for it puts the responsibility for personal financial planning and retirement survival into the hands of the employees, where it belongs. It does not, however, solve the ignorance problem.

If the House of Representatives elects to ignore numerous national opinion poll results regarding President Clinton and proceed with impeachment efforts does that not paint representative democracy in the USA in a new light? What is the effective value of your opinion? Does our increasingly dismal voting record reflect the curse of socialism? What is the actual form of the USA federal government that masquerades as a representative democracy?

We are becoming increasingly reactive to loss of individual power, though not in any useful way. Is a society wrapped up in cop, court and emergency room TV shows thinking about anything useful at all? We are willing to look most anywhere to find examples of justice or success or life problems apparently larger than our own, even if we must use escapism methods. Did you ever wonder about the crowds at the Roman Coliseum who derived their entertainment from watching other humans torn limb from limb, or locked in mortal combat for other's entertainment? Fascination with barbaric behavior is one predictable trait of people who have little to gain and nothing to lose, i.e. no sense of personal control over the development of their life.

I once heard an opinion about life from a person I considered to be cruel and self-serving. He said, "There are two types of people in the world, players and losers. If you are not a player, you are a loser." There was just enough sense in what he said to irritate me, for I realized that people who do not take an active role in developing their own lives did fit his definition of "loser." It was painfully obvious that responsibility for growth is a personal issue.

Socialism cuts us off at our knees because it does not teach us to be responsible for ourselves. It teaches us that we have a lifetime parent, and that we can be obedient children with little personal responsibility and no goals of consequence. By so doing, we gradually become irrelevant to others and ourselves. Then we develop apathy and a decline in values, at which point we lack the initiative to improve our life. After that, anything that goes wrong in our lives or our society provokes insecurity and childish blaming of others for our problems.

Back to the Primary Topic:

The implications of the above observations are all too obvious and, frankly, very disturbing. Some of you may insist on the "truth" of the delusional religious teachings mentioned earlier and fail to accept the imperatives of human evolution and individual rights and responsibility. You might also accept the tenets of socialism and its superficial benefits without understanding its serious consequences. You might also join the ranks of those who have given up any hope for a good life.

Your life is not a dress rehearsal. This planet is not a nursery school. Humans have the opportunity and the responsibility to develop the present and the future in rational ways to promote advancement of our species equitably. That will be accomplished by increasing and applying our knowledge, not by succumbing to socialism. Thus, the cycle of the use and extension of human knowledge is the most humanitarian activity possible, so that all of us can be, in fact, meaningful and relevant not only to ourselves but to the future of our species.

Sadly, we have been trained to believe that humanitarian activities are simply those that reduce suffering from poverty or natural disasters. That sounds good if you are hungry or cold. But as a national or international priority, those activities have frequently amplified the environmental and economic problems, by making ever more people who are not self-sustaining and who are definitely not contributive in any meaningful way to the advancement of our species. They cannot even survive in a manner respectable by their view of life, unless we take almost full responsibility for their physical needs as well as our own. This fundamental truth is understood by successful people, who have strongly polarized their positions towards either total socialism or total cruelty. Neither position is sensible or moral.

There are, of course, circumstances that make conventional humanitarian relief activities a reason to be proud to be human. For example, when a freak but natural event destroys the property and lives of people outside our domain, and we choose to help the living victims restore their lives, that is a most respectable and commendable humanitarian behavior. If, however, the circumstance of the disaster is not freak, i.e. it is a regular occurrence, then we demonstrate foolishness in repetitively helping those who will not protect themselves. The examples I choose for contrast are the relief efforts that followed the destruction around Mount St. Helen, vs. the repeated relief efforts in Bangladesh, where the inhabitants continue to repopulate non-viable, flood prone land areas. Should flood prone land areas in the USA have any form of ongoing property insurance against floods, when you pay for that insurance for other people who are too dense and/or too irresponsible to make considerate decisions?

You might also recall the drought relief efforts in Ethiopia, in which the food destined to help starving children, as well as adults, was usually consumed only by the adults, resulting in many dead children, who were "replaced" with new births. Recognize that unconceived children never have to be fed, never feel pain, do not stress the planet environmentally or the societies into which they might have been born. They are not subject to disasters. But what do we actually do? We reproduce like rabbits. Do we solve world hunger anywhere by feeding those who cannot or will not feed themselves, and who also reproduce like rabbits?

Homeless and otherwise poor people anywhere in the world are a painful reality. We are obligated to help these people survive and to have decent lives. We cannot, however, make them capable or competitive in terms of the demands society places on all of the rest of us. And we cannot contain the size or recurrence level of this problem through humanitarian relief of any form known to date. When people cannot be educated to self-sufficiency and good judgment relative to reproduction we must take kind action to help those who are here and to stop their numbers from increasing.

Now lets consider how ordinary people deal with the realization of being nearly meaningless. People find it necessary to divert their hours of consciousness each day into something they can find meaningful, for in the face of limited ability and knowledge, and unstimulating, mostly created jobs, there is little left except losing oneself in sports or television talk, comedy or game shows. Do the statistics about the many hours spent each week watching television point to growth? Is it not obvious that the popularity of violent movies among the young is a perfectly reasonable result of them recognizing, subliminally, that almost all of them will likely have a near meaningless future? Is it unreasonable that many of our "adults" and adolescents will take a swing at nearly anything to feel important? Can you possibly believe that we can control or solve this problem by passing more punitive criminal laws or more restrictive personal freedom laws or by having additional police?

Take a good look at the "causes" that capture people's attention and note how absurd we have become. Gender bashing, abortion arguments, political correctness, health fads and "victim" behaviors are displayed to us in all the media as national pastimes. The words "get a life" would seem appropriate, but the problem is most people do not have any sense about what they could be doing. Most people also lack meaningfulness in their created, insecure and usually low pay jobs, so they identify with "issues" that speak only to the preservation of implanted fears and prejudices. These behaviors cause them not to think about anything meaningful.

Is this not the product or result to be expected in a society where 95 percent of the people haven't the slightest idea how to provide for themselves individually, or how industry designs and makes the products they use? Who are we kidding when we claim that the most recent example of automation "frees" us to think about more important activities? Is it not clear that the acquisition and use of knowledge on behalf of improving one's understanding of life and one's accomplishments is the only way to become meaningful?

Do you grasp the essential foolishness of letting any institution, business, government or religion, usurp your individual human right to seek a more meaningful destiny? Are you and your children becoming more capable via knowledge or more dependent through ignorance and time wasted on silly diversions?

Alvin Toffler's book, Future Shock, addressed a number of valid concerns about the rapid rate of change in our lives in the last half of the 20th century. The essence of the problem is that most of us are ill equipped to adapt well to rapid changes in society or to keep current with evolving technology, whether the changes are individually beneficial or not. Essentially, we lack the knowledge to understand and to contribute to the changes on our own behalf. As human knowledge has grown, we see ever more of our brightest specializing in narrow areas of technical fields because it is not realistic for any one of us to be an expert in all areas of present knowledge. We simply do not have the time, even the brightest of us. What we do have is the choice of specialization and the challenge to combine our discoveries to make all humans capable of learning all that we know, rapidly.

We have arrived at the threshold of a radically different future for Humanity, and it will be very unlike what we have known up through the latter 20th century. Our fascination with the explosion of scientific knowledge around the turn of the last century, e.g., Rutherford, Einstein, et al., was appropriate but is dwarfed by what has been discovered in the last half of the 20th century. We simply did not realize how our various technologies, e.g., computers and scientific instruments, would combine, synergistically, to enhance the growth of scientific knowledge and its application to our lives. However, our individual and broad societal responses to that change are now out of step with that scientific reality.

The problem of people failing to keep current, even at a superficial level, is understandable. Early in life, we learn our strengths and our weaknesses, and we normally migrate to those activities that use our strengths. That is easy to understand, for we like success and we quickly become frustrated when we fail to excel in the presence of others.

What do we do, however, when we discover that our capabilities are so minimal that most of human knowledge and advancement is beyond our ability to understand? I know the feeling of trying to understand subjects beyond my grasp, and the progression from curiosity to frustration is rapid and deep. When information flows over our thoughts like water from a duck's back, we cannot keep pace with the instructor, and our defensive response is to escape that situation quickly and as gracefully as we can without looking foolish. Magnify that problem to include what our best scientists have discovered in the past 50 years and you readily see that almost all of us are in deep technological water, way over our heads. Our responses, which are solely defensive, are both understandable and useless.

We cannot contribute to growth in human knowledge, we have difficulty even establishing our physical security and, most of all, we are utterly lost in trying to understand the implications of new human knowledge applied to the future. Yet, which of us can say, sensibly, that we should stop the growth of human knowledge to accommodate our individual intellectual and experiential weaknesses?

It is rather obvious that each of us would like to understand all that is known in order to be relevant to the present and to the future of Humanity. It is also obvious that remaining ignorant will do nothing to improve our individual lives. That means we must turn to our educators to provide us with perspective, even if we cannot participate now in complex technical areas directly. We must hope that our current limitations will be overcome through applied research and technology.

In summary, the acquisition and application of human knowledge are our highest responsibilities to us as individuals and to our species. You cannot get a decent job nor have good income without superior knowledge of a currently useful subject. Any activity or practice that impedes the acquisition and development of knowledge and it's use by all is simply stupid, whether it comes from a philosopher, a religionist, the government, business, parents or ourselves as individuals. Failure to harness our technical knowledge to allow each of us to learn all of what our best minds know would be unforgivable. Ignorance is not bliss.