I expect that Russia’s invasion of Georgia will trigger well-documented references to WW II, WW I, and possibly Hannibal crossing the Alps. It is the written record of things gone by that troubles me.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881) was onto more than he knew when he had Mr. Phoebus, in Lothair, say:

Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.

I have to agree with Disraeli in that the printing press did not do much to eliminate mankind’s appetite for brutality in the five and a half centuries since Johann Gutenberg (1400? - 1468?) invented movable type.

Admittedly, the percentage of people who knew how to read remained low until “enlightened” governments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries began teaching the children of the illiterate masses how to read and write. It wasn’t long before entire families could read and write.

Illiteracy itself was spawned by the written word long before the invention of the printing press. When only two people knew how to read and write everybody else was illiterate. No one was illiterate when no one knew how to read.

George Santayana (1863–1952) turned a brush fire into a forest fire when he said:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Remembering the past largely means reading about it, or believing the people who do read about it. The obvious flaw in that institutional trap tells me that I don’t want to be around when the past is more remembered than it has been in modern times.

An examination of twentieth century butchery is no argument in favor of the printed word. Nevertheless, the Internet has a chance to succeed where the printing press failed; i.e., use the printed word to make a positive change in the way humankind does business.

Before the Internet came along reputable historians, and those who handicap such things, primarily relied on written accounts of past events so they could determine where man went wrong. Empires were repeatedly carved up in print and reassembled to conform to contemporary political designs; conquerors were lauded, or lambasted, depending upon the fashion of the day.

Investigators read the same text; read each other, and come to the same conclusions. The only challenge was in how to say the same thing differently than it had ever been said before. Throw- in the vested interests of teachers, authors, and politicians in general, and it is no wonder the human personalty has been changing for the worse.

Incidentally, the professionally written word is rapidly overtaking prostitution, and the legal profession, in providing incomes to a vast number of “contributors” century after century. That is why it always fascinates me when newspapers and magazines call writers contributors. They at least got that one right. The contribution is to the business entity not to society.

The trillions of words written on the Internet by average people offers future historians a chance to look back and accurately determine where a society went wrong.

My contention is that parasites never made it into legend and song down through history; so they never appeared in print. To this day, parasites remain civilization’s deadliest disease —— undiagnosed —— untreated —— and unquestioned. My fervent prayer is that enough meaningful Internet text will survive long enough to show future investigators the parasite class
for what it has always been in every civilization throughout history.

There is a danger that Internet text will go the way of books in libraries where wisdom is suffocated by trivia. One has to wade through 99.9999999999 percent crap to find one kernel of wisdom in a library.

Having said the above, I must confess that I read books. Nevertheless, whenever I look at the books on the shelves in a library I see centuries of labor, an incalculable number of incomes, and nothing more.

Few writers posting on the Internet, professional or amateur, identify the parasite class by name. When future historians dive into today’s gigabyte capacity trying to identify what brought America down will they find enough material to figure out that the “welfare state” with all of its destructive power is a synonym for parasites?

__________________

Flanders

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible. Eric Hoffer

So the welfare state will bring us down? I could make a better case that the National Security state will be our downfall, or the overexcess of materialism brought about by capitalism just making so much stuff that we have become fat and lazy.

As to your point about the internet, I'm not sure how that will be used by future historians. Information overkill might be a problem there. Still, I have to think that if the yahoo message boards from 2003 are looked at they will show how scared of Saddam Huessin many Americans were, how many riught wingers were seriously arguing that Islam was actually going to take over America and that oil would pay for the Iraq war.