by Daniel Romm
The value of learning the basics of money management and investing has already been noted and the advantage of knowing how to plan is obvious. Let's explore the significance of an early education in decision-making. A person's decisions have a great, if not the greatest, impact on his or her well being and, although consistently making good ones won't guarantee happiness, frequently making bad ones will surely lead to misery. Once people attained sufficient expertise to routinely make good decisions based on the facts, they became independent thinkers by habit and adopted a healthy skepticism toward extravagant assertions from so-called ‘experts’ with hidden agendas — the ‘they’ in the old mantra, “They say that …”
Plato's Dialogues reveal that Socrates, the first gadfly, tried to goad his countrymen into thinking independently. Unfortunately, his fellow Athenians weren't ready to listen and rewarded his benevolence by executing him for his efforts. Although society soon progressed to the point where anyone bold enough to expose ignorance needn't contemplate a similar fate, after the Renaissance it wasn't until well into the 25th century that people once again began to seriously reexamine accepted beliefs. Before then the hegemony of authority stifled critical thought. Unless one's credentials were impeccable, people adamantly refused to even listen and would remark derisively, “Who are you to presume to know more than we do? Are you qualified to lecture us? Your opinion is contradictory to the accepted wisdom of the day so you must be wrong!”
Clearly one should always be ready to entertain fresh viewpoints on issues, regardless of whose they are, and then decide to accept or reject them based solely on any new facts or perspectives that may have been presented. If you were certain Darwin's theory of evolution had no merit14 or that a man never landed on the moon then it's quite likely you hadn't studied the opposing facts. Perhaps doing so might not have changed your mind completely but it would certainly have raised some doubts and enabled you to debate opponents on a more equal footing.
Prior educational norms also contributed to this unfortunate emphasis on credentials. Teachers were proclaimed to be authorities in their fields of expertise merely because they spent years pursuing an advanced degree. But outside of an academic environment most, if not all, of what they learned in graduate school was of no use whatsoever to them or anyone else. What's more, much of their erudition was an unexamined repetition of what their professors had learned in a similar fashion and regurgitated to unsuspecting students. Unchallenged errors were perpetuated ad infinitum from generation to generation.
Certainly we should pay attention to the well educated. But one must be particularly wary of the profit motive – a pervasive influence that justifies a high degree of skepticism. All professionals compete for funding. The upshot is that intelligent, well-informed people don't have the luxury of waiting for an inspiration. They must persist in inundating the rank and file with premature, often bad, ideas. Furthermore, economic necessity requires those same ideas to be presented with an air of certitude that would only be warranted if they were thoroughly researched, well thought out, verifiable theories.
As a result, although presumed to be authentic by those who first promulgate them, ‘accepted theories’ (in reality mere fads) regularly fall by the wayside every decade or so. To mention only a few: the miracle food switched from liver to spinach to broccoli to wine to peanuts to dark chocolate; the miracle drug from penicillin to vitamin C to aspirin to statins; the miracle cure for heart disease from surgery to exercise to non-smoking to low cholesterol to weight loss. The list goes on and on. The reason is evident with a little reflection; any new ‘proven’ recommendation ushers in a public frenzy to buy new products.
Teaching young people to make their own independent decisions finally broke the stranglehold authority figures had maintained over a naïve public. This has proven advantageous to all including, ironically, authority figures themselves, who are now motivated to focus their talents on projects of the clearest worth since only those efforts are apt to be rewarded.
Another bonus of being an independent thinker is immunity from peer pressure. To kids, peers are merely one variety of authority figures. Acceding to the often petty and immature desires of the in-group was once an integral part of the process of becoming ‘popular’. But now, more often than not kids disregard them as they realize the validity of their own personae and discover it's easier and more rewarding to be true to one's nature. Rather than going out of the way to curry favor with the school's ‘glitterati’, most of whom are too different to blend in with and vice versa, kids now settle for fewer but truer friends, namely those who share their attitudes, priorities and interests, and are delighted to discover that these replacements invariably turn out to be nurturing, compatible soul mates.
Instead of expending energy in a chameleon-like effort to be liked by all, kids are now consistently the same stimulus and tolerate different responses from different people. By being themselves they effortlessly attract the people they like and repel those they don't, making it easier to disassociate from those who can't take a hint. Life is more fun and considerably less bothersome. Once teens stop putting on a false front, many of their peers no longer view them as phonies and begin to accept and even admire them.
Next let's look at the consequences of offering an early education in the essentials of intersexual relationships. Before then people found it very difficult to stay open-minded on the subject of romance. The mundane notion that conjugal love is essential for human happiness went unchallenged. Popular songs bewildered our youth with love-saturated lyrics, brainwashing them into believing something was amiss if they preferred their own company to that of others. Self-help books on psychology offered no relief, in fact they made matters worse by rating love as the highest good and ignoring that the notion of romantic love arose comparatively recently in human history. The idea first appeared in the West around the 12th century;15 the carefree and apparently joyous Greek and Roman civilizations flourished handsomely without it. Furthermore, any love stronger than friendship is entirely omitted from Aristotle's influential treatise16 specifying which factors are germane for a good life.
Unattached young people illogically reasoned that since most psychos are loners (true) most loners must be psychos (false). Succumbing to haunting feelings of loneliness, they suffered from lowered self-esteem that frequently mushroomed into melancholy and occasionally into severe depression. To alleviate the symptoms they rushed into unwise marriages that most often resulted in divorce or domestic abuse counseling. Now while still teenagers they learn that a lifetime of marital bliss is unlikely since whenever two people begin to alter their behavior (which is inevitable) the odds heavily favor divergence. They are also taught that an unwelcome effort to effect change in a recalcitrant partner is apt to create tension and aggravate an already unbearable situation.
Thus many people live together blissfully for as long as they remain compatible. If and when this happy state wanes they agree to go their separate ways unencumbered by a messy divorce. They are content to merely split their ample assets leaving both parties quite well off in this golden age of individual affluence. Even Jenny, although convinced in her heart she and Ben will never split, has chosen to be practical and merely share his last name without marrying.
Marriages were essential before the 20th century, but for survival not happiness. There was simply too much work for one person to do alone. This is no longer the case due to the proliferation of superbly efficient high-tech robotic devices. Even a single working parent can comfortably raise children if not a workaholic like Ben or Jenny who, although working sixty-hours a week at their prestigious careers, can quickly and easily complete household chores with ample time left over to indulge in the tender and emotionally exhilarating frivolities of intimacy's delectable forms. However, they know they have no time for kids if they want to cement their lofty positions at the Academy, a higher priority for them both than children even though anyone interested in raising a family can remain
unmarried without societal disapproval. Also, single parent households have long ago ceased to engender scorn as long as both parents contribute equably to the emotional and economic welfare of the kids for as long as reasonably necessary.
Another notable improvement occurred in the area of jurisprudence. The impediment that had obscured the need for change was the legal profession's exaggeration that our system of justice is the best the world has ever seen and ever will see. This epitome of hubris was eventually dismissed on grounds of irrelevance as more and more people saw through the ruse and countered, “Our system is amenable to improvement as long as it isn't perfect, which not even presumptuous lawyers would assert. We wholeheartedly grant that the framers of the Constitution drafted a document well suited to their times but they couldn't possibly have foreseen the exponential rise in the rate of technological change. Our legal system hasn't adapted to meet the challenge and changing it takes too long to keep pace.” Soon thereafter Congress enacted several laws that streamlined legal process without jeopardizing essential safeguards, all of which the Supreme Court subsequently proclaimed constitutional.
The criminal justice system was the first to benefit from the new legislation. Although everyone concurred that the right to be tried by peers is fundamental to liberty they also realized that the prevailing adversarial approach was deeply flawed. Legal scholar Burt Rosen concisely presented their views, “A good system will do everything possible to help the jury resolve issues and reach the correct verdict but this isn't how trials are being conducted. The typical jury consists of twelve conscientious citizens trying to determine guilt or innocence while the opposing attorneys, with the permission of the judge, use every ploy at their disposal to confuse and bamboozle them.
“As exemplified in the O.J. Simpson case, whenever it behooves them to do so lawyers obfuscate facts, concoct far-fetched alternative scenarios, denigrate witnesses, call so-called experts to the stand who spout directly contradictory opinions with the same air of scientific certainty, willy-nilly accuse police and investigators of sloppy practices, coach witnesses in the art of persuasively presenting evasive and/or disingenuous testimony, and generally gloss over weak points in their own arguments while furtively overstating favorable ones they know to be fallacious. Since prosecutors and defense attorneys are professionals at this game, the likelihood that the nonprofessional jury will arrive at the correct verdict is lower than it would be if lawyers truly sought justice. But in our system only winning matters. Defense attorneys must win to lure more clients and prosecutors must win to keep their patrons in office.
“Other than tradition there is no reason why lawyers and judge couldn't be legally required to cooperate with the jury to ascertain the real facts of the case.17 When it becomes clear to the judge and either attorney that the other's facts are correct, the jury would be so apprised and the charade would cease. As before, each disputant would be legally represented and the jury would retain the final word. This approach has been adopted throughout much of Europe but its opponents here, particularly the profit-motivated legal profession, will be quick to point out some impracticalities. But other than overcoming the profit motive itself all of them can be easily remedied.” Legislation supporting Rosen's viewpoint was quickly enacted.
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13 Ben was born too early to learn how to do this in high school. Fortunately Jenny taught him.
14 It is startling that in the year 2000 about one adult in three believed Darwin's theory had even a grain of validity.
15 The subject is first dealt with extensively in literature in Capellanus's Art of Love (Ovid's Amores deal with seduction, not love).
16 Nicomachean Ethics
17 The effectiveness of cooperation vis-à-vis competition is another of the book's central themes, beginning with Jim's description of the poker game in Part I, chapter 4.
2
The Beginning of The End
“What's this?” exclaimed an astonished Arthur Noll, chairman of the Academy's astronomy department. While conducting his daily survey of the sky through the world's most powerful refracting telescope he noticed that the object forming in our solar system from the dark matter flow induced by Professor Richardson's apparatus had grown considerably. After measuring the increase he decided his ominous discovery warranted a meeting of the Academy's science faculty. Needless to say, everyone was abuzz with curiosity as they made their way en masse to the auditorium.
Professor Noll presented his customarily thorough evidence consisting of numerous photographs, charts and diagrams. Professor Richardson was the first to comment, “We knew from my experiment that spraying the dark matter source with a highly concentrated tachyon beam would cause a portion of it to slow down and coagulate in our universe. This new object is within our solar system and will behave just like any other ordinary matter, unlike the dark matter source from which it came. We expected it to accumulate mass proportionally to the rate of siphoning; what we couldn't know at the time was how its density would behave as it enlarged. But it has now reached the point where we can, and much sooner than predicted.”
“Doesn't this portend a cataclysmic danger?” asked Professor Noll, echoing the foreboding question on everyone's mind.
“Possibly, but more study is required.” Upon further review, Professor Richardson reached a dismal conclusion and reconvened the meeting. “Using Professor Noll's observations I have computed the rate of growth of the object's density and it is much higher than we could have suspected. If it continues to escalate at its current pace then, as you feared, the object would indeed collapse to a small black hole. Even though a similar process, only on a much larger scale, of slowed tachyons entering the outskirts of the visible universe is known to account for the existence of the enormous black holes called quasars, we didn't expect a small influx of dark matter to pose a problem.
“What's worse, having once let the camel's nose enter the tent we can't keep out the camel. Even were we to immediately turn off the apparatus, under its own momentum the incoming stream of dark matter would not only still produce a black hole, it would also feed and magnify it sufficiently to inevitably entrap the sun in about a hundred years from now. We have set into motion an irreversible process that will destroy our solar system and everything contained therein, including us.
“Sadly, before the organization caved under public pressure we were going to set the parameters of the tachyon beam to supply only 70% of the world's exorbitant energy demands instead of the 99% actually bestowed. I am now able to calculate that had we done so there would be no black hole. This slight reduction in available consumable energy would have minimally impacted the lavish lifestyle of the people, and even then primarily only the rich — a small price to pay for the prevention of the imminent destruction of mankind! We should withhold our findings from the public in order to forestall widespread alarm but must immediately inform the Corporation.”
It fell upon the board to decide how to deal with the impending disaster. Initiating and organizing a frantic search for a way out and orchestrating an announcement in such a way as to minimize panic were only two of the pressing issues facing them. As a preliminary step, they clandestinely assembled advisory panels in various spheres of expertise and commissioned each to provide input as needed.
Jenny was totally distraught upon returning home from the introductory convocation of the psychology panel. Ben was unaware of the panel's formation; however, he knew his mate well enough to sense something was seriously wrong. “Why the long face?”
Although sworn to silence, it was too much to expect Jenny not to discuss the proceedings with Ben even though she thought he was unaware of the black hole (the Corporation had forbidden attendees of professor Noll's meeting to reveal the catastrophe). “I don't know how to begin,” she said, bursting into tears.
Patently concerned, Ben asked gingerly, “Has your cancer returned?”
“Even worse.”
“What could
be worse than that?”
“The end of the world.”
“It can't be that bad,” said Ben in an unsuccessful attempt to console her.
“I'm not exaggerating, it's true! There's a black hole forming near Mercury that will swallow up the sun in about a hundred years. I have been selected to be a member of a secret panel formed to figure out how to ease everybody's despair when the news is eventually released. The opening session has just ended.”
“Ah, so you know,” whispered Ben softly.
“It's so heartbreaking. No more glorious flaming sunsets, majestic snow-capped peaks, gorgeous seascapes, moonlit starry skies, crimson volcanic eruptions and other such splendors. In fact, no more sun, mountains, seas, moon, sky, volcanoes, period.
“Why did life evolve ever more perfect forms? All human endeavor — art, music, history, science, literature — what was it for? Everything we strived to attain, all our efforts, for naught. We can't even survive by colonizing other inhabitable planets, they'll be gone too.”
“Yes, it would be unbearably grim if there were no other observers in the universe outside of our solar system but it's unlikely we are the only life.”
“Even if there are others it is painfully disappointing that humanity must perish. Until recently in our history it seemed we were stuck in Nietzsche's recurrent cycles: one-step forward, one step back. But I dared to hope we had turned a corner. Human prosperity has never been greater and a host of novel gadgets are on the drawing board to increase it even more. These were exciting times — such bitter irony.”
Realizing he couldn't pacify her, Ben resignedly revealed the worst-case scenario. “According to quantum theory there is no reality without observers; mind creates reality and there is no reality without mind. If we actually are the only life and we perish then the entire universe will evaporate into a surreal nothingness.”