For Void's Sake

So, I've been practicing my Babylonian math lately. They used a base-60 (sexagesimal) system with an imbedded "10s" digit. So, for example, you count using tallies from 1 to 9 and when you get to 10 you add a different symbol representing 10. You count this way up to 60, then you start tallying sixties and tens of sixties (as opposed to ones) in the same manner till you get to sixties of sixties and so on. Its use of place value notation was a major innovation--one which we employ today with the decimal system. Mesopotamians were using this system ~2000 BC for geometry, measurement of astronomical distances, and of course in economics and trade. The Babylonians knew the Earth revolves around the Sun, they knew the Earth was round and they knew that math and science were the key to unlocking the mysteries of the world. Although their innovations were lost and had to be reinvented, few societies failed to grasp the importance of studying the physical world. Christianity (as an institution rather than a people or a philosophy) was the major exception. Certainly Christians didn't invent intolerance; the Old Testament practically prescribed intolerance as a means of preserving the tribe. But, Christianity innovated suppression of thought. Perhaps also associated with an increasingly barbarous and feudal society and with economic stratification, the control of information by the church (which was one with the government from the rise of the Roman Empire until the founding of the United States) kept the populace ignorant, fearful and subservient. The church/government managed to keep the population largely illiterate by monopolizing education, thereby avoiding the problem of free thought and maintaining cultural hegemony--hence the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages—over a thousand years of suppression of thought by those who feared what people would think if allowed to think for themselves. Why? So, the powerful could stay powerful and keep the masses at their heels.

Why am I writing about this? This is exactly what we have to look forward to if we continue to allow demagogues dominate the mass media (particularly what used to be news) and fail to reject their misinformation and thought control. Need we subject ourselves to this? Must the U.S. stagger intoxicatedly away from the Renaissance into a new Dark Age just as Europe and circa-Mediterranean societies did after the brilliant Preclassical period? I hate to compare Glen Beck or Bill O'Reilly to a pope or a king, but their effect is the same--or it may be more correct to say the effect of institutions empowering them are the same. The so-called news media obfuscate the truth and replace it with fear of an ever-present and unseen enemy. They bury the facts in emotions and charge that questioning this unseen enemy is tantamount to alliance with it. If we are to avoid a new Dark Age, infotainment must be stopped. Apparently people are all too ready to stop thinking. They don't need the help of the news which is supposed to inform and empower them. We can move forward from the Modern Era, we don’t need to digress.