Just when you think that it cannot get any worse, it always seems that it does. On January 6, 2021, the United States of America experienced its first insurrection in more than 100 years. The very first American insurrection was the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 which stemmed from the 1791 "whiskey tax" that Alexander Hamilton hoped would pay off the Federal debts that arose from fighting the Revolutionary War. But the "whiskey tax" was the very first Federal tax ever levied on the American people, and it was not well received by some. President Washington himself had to lead an army of 13,000 militiamen into Pennsylvania to suppress the insurgency. Fortunately, the rebels all went home before the arrival of the army, so there was no confrontation, and nobody was injured or killed. For more details take a look at:
Whiskey Rebellion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
Figure 1 – President Washington himself had to lead an army of 13,000 militiamen into Pennsylvania to suppress the insurgency.
But at least the "whiskey tax" of 1791 was a real historical event that actually happened and all other subsequent American insurgencies were also based on real historical events that actually happened. The Rebellion of 2021, on the other hand, was largely an artifact of Artificial Reality software in action that was used by some powerful people to create and amplify an Artificial Reality. I do not mean Virtual Reality software. I mean Artificial Reality software. Virtual Reality software tries to provide users with an experience that mimics real things. Artificial Reality software, on the other hand, tries to provide users with an experience that mimics an alternative reality that does not really exist like Grand Theft Auto software. Can the natural sciences offer an explanation for such very strange things?
In Life in Postwar America After Our Stunning Defeat in the Great Cyberwar of 2016, Some Thoughts on the Netflix Documentary The Social Dilemma, The Perils of Software Enhanced Confirmation Bias and The Current Global Coevolution of COVID-19 RNA, Human DNA, Memes and Software
I described the danger to the Union that extreme political memes present when enhanced by software. The dangers do not lie solely in the Artificial Reality software itself, as some would wish. It actually lies in the fact that we are DNA survival machines with Minds that were created by memes to allow memes to self-replicate from Mind to Mind. For more on that see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information. In The Danger of Believing in Things, I highlighted the dangers of not employing critical thought when evaluating assertions in our physical Universe, and the same goes for politics. In that posting, I explained that it is very dangerous to believe in things because that means you have turned off your faculty of critical thought, which hopefully, allows you to uncover attempts at deception by others. If you have ever purchased a new car, you know exactly what I am talking about. Instead, you should always approach things with some level of confidence that is less than 100%, and that confidence should always be based on the evidence at hand. In fact, at an age of 69 years, I now have very little confidence in most forms of human thought beyond the sciences and mathematics.
The American Dark Ages
So it is very discouraging to see about 35% of Americans forsake the 18th-century Enlightenment and the 17th-century Scientific Revolution from which the United States of America first emerged in 1776. Recall that the 18th-century Enlightenment was an international meme-complex that evolved from the 17th-century Scientific Revolution. The English Enlightenment was a rebellion against cruelty. The French Enlightenment was a rebellion against religious orthodoxy. And the American Enlightenment was a rebellion against tyranny. These philosophical movements brought forth the heretical proposition that rational thought, combined with evidence-based reasoning, could reveal the absolute truth, and allow individuals to actually govern themselves, without the need for an authoritarian monarchy or an authoritarian religious hierarchy. This change in thinking led to the 18th-century Enlightenment throughout the world and brought forth the United States of America as a self-governing political entity. But unfortunately, the United States of America has always been a very dangerous experiment in human nature to see if the masses could truly govern themselves, without succumbing to the passions of the mob. That is where the genius of the United States Constitution comes into play. The United States Constitution sets up a representative republic designed for an electorate that is only mildly paying attention to the events of the day and that sometimes can get riled up over certain issues. The representatives of this largely ill-informed electorate can also many times become scoundrels. On the face of it, it would appear that such a system could not possibly work. But it does work because the United States Constitution places many layers between the electorate and the governing bodies and has a large number of checks and balances to limit the powers of the political representatives.
But now we have about 35% of Americans belonging to a political cult that forsakes the very foundations of the United States of America. Instead of 18th-century evidence-based reasoning, these Americans now favor the thought processes that were typical of the 12th-century European Dark Ages. The archetypical example of this very strange political worldview has become QAnon. For specifics on QAnon, take a look at:
QAnon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon
QAnon and the Americans and politicians who also support similar deep dives into the European Dark Ages dramatically exhibit just how fragile the 18th-century Enlightenment and the 17th-century Scientific Revolution truly are. Having been born in 1951, President Dwight D. Eisenhower represents my very first memory of the dignity of the Office of the American Presidency and I shudder to think of what he would think of us now.
Figure 2 – During the Rebellion of 2021 the Capital Building of the United States of America was breached for the first time by domestic insurrectionists.
Figure 3 – The 2021 insurrectionists desecrated many symbols of American democracy.
Figure 4 – The QAnon Shaman and other insurrectionists managed to reach the floor of the Senate Chamber.
Figure 5 – The madness of the American Dark Ages.
Figure 6 – I shudder to think of what President Eisenhower would think of us now.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
