(*Act 1 Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet.)
It’s an accepted truism that a small subset of us do much of the thinking and pull the rest of us along in their wake. The counterbalance to that concentration of power was a mostly educated and morally grounded electorate that acted as a check against the worst ideas and actions. That worked well until so many of us gave up our responsibility to be engaged and educated, abandoning common sense. That missing element has placed us where we are today. Let’s review a bit more and then figure out how to stage a comeback.
Almost everyone (unless you’ve been living under a rock) understands America is no longer the once-vaunted enlightened and educated society of yore. If you were trying to make sense of today’s depressing social stratification, the closest analog looks a lot like Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” where a society of laboratory-concocted individuals were ‘decanted’ into one of five different personalities and intelligence makeups from Alphas at the very top who were the thinkers and leaders holding the highest and most prestigious positions to the Epsilons on the bottom wrung tasked with the menial and unpleasant tasks. The other Betas, Gammas, and Deltas performed the required work, each level requiring successively less intelligence and drive. Together, this system was designed to create societal balance where everyone knew their place and harmony was to be maintained. Each caste being conditioned from birth to embrace its role in society, creating a sense of stability and contentment within a dystopian world that increasingly looks a lot like our own. Too many of us look precisely like Huxley’s lower castes today.
Unveiling the Truth: Is Our Social Stratification a Planned Strategy?
Whether this is self-inflicted or part of a devious master plan leading to our undoing Is impossible to say with certainty. However, if this is the reality of today’s world, is there anything we can do? Job one is to accept that we have become similarly socially stratified. Our future is in peril without the impetus to search for and accept verified truths.
Factual answers to issues on the full spectrum seem to escape us; young people and most adults are politically and economically illiterate, also broke (requiring parent’s support) on so many issues and levels it’s unsustainable, leading to the ability to manipulate public opinion on a scale not previously imagined, but very much apparent. Perhaps 90% of us have a reflexive belief that they know what current events are about but are demonstrably clueless when you ask them substantive questions in support of their arguments. Ultimately, what you witness are emotionally motivated individuals with no common sense who are nevertheless passionate, tending to hold extreme and false positions.
Several late-night personalities (Johnny Carson being one) used to do humorous Man in the Street segments demonstrating how much (how little) we seem to know even as we state what they believe are factual answers. From a YouTube video shot in NYC:
What country is Mt. Rushmore in? Respondent: “North America?”
When is July 4th celebrated in Great Britain? Respondent: “July 12th?”
Can you name three countries besides the U.S.? Respondent: “Jamaica, Africa and Pureto Rico.”
How long is a quarter of an hour? Respondent: “Twenty minutes.”
Who fought in the Mexican-American War? Respondent: “We have not learned that in school yet.”
How many cents in a dollar? Respondent: “25”
Where do you get your news?” Respondent: “TikToc.”
The Root of Society’s Growing Problems?
You can’t make this up or diminish the long-term effects of millions of young people detached from reality on multiple levels. That last answer may very well be at the root of the problem. The questions and the sometimes dubious answers reflect young people, initially teens and now progressively older adults, who live out their lives on multiple social media platforms, which are poor teachers of facts, history, and essential critical thinking. According to recent studies, the most commonly used platforms among U.S. teens include YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, with a significant number also using Discord, WhatsApp, and Reddit. On average, young people engage with around 4-5 social media platforms and spend about 5 hours daily on social media.
Paradoxically, North Korean interrogation tradecraft reportedly limits interrogation to only 6 hours a day because, more than that, the target of the interrogation answers becomes increasingly unreliable. Do North Korea and popular sites like TikTok and Instagram use the same techniques of repetition and forced focus to defeat a subject’s will and ability to resist being programmed? I believe the answer is “yes.”
The one constant humanity holds in common is the innate ability of choice. Choices are not always easy but, ultimately, should be apparent. We cannot be prosperous if we can’t produce functioning, thinking, productive, and reproducing young people. We have failed at that mission today. There is no papering over the steep decline in our society’s future outlook. People are already leaving the country entirely or moving to where they think they will be safer when the snot hits the fan. I don’t think there’s another parallel to this at any other time in our history.
Donald Trump can fix a lot, but he can’t fix stupid. We are inundated with stupid, self-serving people who care not a whit about tomorrow and have devolved into one of those lower castes we led with from Brave New World.
We have a lost generation today. Yet, there is still time to reform. I imagine someone ringing a bell in my mind and saying, “Repent before it is too late.” Let’s not fight for scraps when a brighter and fuller future is possible. The choices lay before us; will we do what’s hard but ultimately necessary?
I fear the answer will not be that we will be true to our own selves.
Allan J. Feifer—Patriot
Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at www.1plus1equals2.com. Read additional great writers here.
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