The paradox of the digital age
Access to wisdom and knowledge is inexpensive and speedy while the population plunges to ignorance, intellectual indolence, and witlessness
The wonderful world of the internet has brought the best libraries and books in the world into every home and classroom at virtually no cost. A first-class education is available to all for those exhibiting even modest intellectual ambition.
But this stupendous opportunity to make the rash, impetuous, juvenile, hormonal lusts and instincts subservient to the reflective, cerebral faculties has been squandered. The internet is predominately used in trivial, depraved, sordid, childish amusements or pursuits that leave injustice undisturbed and wisdom on life support. The daily choices unbefitting a species endowed with brain and capability of moral sensibilities do not lead to ostracism or opprobrium among peers, friends, or families. Indeed, they typically lead to soaring popularity like a 7th grader who has become a social media icon by applying makeup and skin care products instead of reading Huckleberry Finn or The Last of the Mohicans or writing essays on justice or the obligations of citizenship.
Where are the teachers and parents to instruct youth that the unexamined life is not worth living, and that Socrates chose death to emancipate the mind from hormonal enslavements? Mal-parenting and maleducation are epidemic.