by

JANSEN ESTRUP

Some of the earliest warnings I remember came in my youth, probably just after the War. I remember some of them vaguely, like science fiction pulp lurking among the comic books and adventure fiction. And they were openly available, too, some of them by Eleanor Roosevelt, but Jane Addams was dead and Rachel Carson was still researching the basics for The Silent Spring.

So it was men who wrote and spoke most of the warnings.

“ … As to whether I have been deceived, disillusioned … the answer is yes, I suppose. I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of great Americans-the poets and seers. Some other breed of man has won out. This world which is in the making fills me with dread. I have seen it germinate; I can read it like a blue-print. It is not a world I want to live in. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles or hopes, is disbarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker is a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal.” Henry Miller, The Air-conditioned Nightmare 1945 – a writer branded a pornographer and his works banned for many years.

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge” ...

I – a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

II – a robot must obey the orders of a human being except where such orders conflict with the First Law.

III – a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First and Second Laws.

Laws of robotics from I, Robot – Isaac Asimov, 1950 - a man marginalized to fantasy and space opera adventure fiction. Today all manner of weaponized robotics is in service and on the drawing boards of DoD contractors, even local police forces and corporate profit centers.

“Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.” Ayn Rand 1950s - No need to elaborate on current gun mania. The NRA prefers guns to minds, even in grade schools.

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on Earth – more than ruin – more even than death … Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of (hu)man(kind).” Bertrand Russell (1948) Before HUAC and McCarthy hearings his teaching credentials were valued.

“Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones.

The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.

This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact protect the interests of underprivileged sections of the population.

Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.” Albert Einstein, 1949

“The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is my opinion, the real source of evil.”

Albert Einstein, 1949 – a man lionized for his esoteric theories about space and time but ignored for his practical down-to-earth insights -

“Using the American scene and the state of world thirteen years ago, I applied pyschodyamic laws. That so many of my 'experiments' tallied with, or approximated, subsequent reality (when the great bulk of 'prediction' in identical areas was different or contrary- hence fallacious) tends to show, I believe, not that I am a particularly bright, prophetic, intuitive or mystically gifted author but that the theory by which I guided myself was far more 'correct' than the theories commonly employed. Since 'predictability' is a scientific, rational or logical test of any method, I hope here to bring new attention to psychodynamic methods. For today's hideous history was made by the attitudes of yesterday, the attitudes of 1942 and attitudes a thousand years older than that.; much of it was predictable when attitudes were properly understood.

“In 1955-a year far more threatening to American freedom, American serenity and even American existence than 1942-I would like more people to come to understand a science by which useful insight into what may happen tomorrow may be had, through a special scrutiny of what we are doing - and thinking - right now …

“There are numbers of dire predictions in this book which have not come true – yet ...” Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers 1942-1954 – This writer, with a noticeable speech impediment, was often interviewed around the time of our second Great Red Scare, which frightened Americans into black lists, apocalyptic terror and the arms of evangelical religion. Wylie's fears, amongst others, are realized today in nanotechnologies, sophisticated ad campaigns, super computers and our hopeless dependence upon them. Today he would not, because of his halting speech pattern, be permitted a single sound-bite.

Did I, you may wonder, heed these persistent and prescient voices? Nah, no more than today's tweens and teens pay attention to Bell Hooks, Edward Phillips, Richard Wolff or Naomi Klein. They, like I was, are still browsing graphic novels, comic book sequels, bully cliques and illicit pleasures.

I paid attention exactly as Priam and Hector and Paris did, those three millenniums ago, to Cassandra. That is to say hardly at all.

So Oscar Wilde is right, then? Youth is wasted on the young? Or is Mark Twain, "One who doesn't read has no advantage over one who cannot?"