Watching Humanity’s Descent Into Chaos |
For the last twenty years, I have had the peculiar sensation that I am living inside a psychiatric experiment designed by people who failed psychiatry. Every year brings another revelation, another movement, another self-appointed redeemer promising to heal humanity while simultaneously making it impossible for neighbors to speak to one another. The modern world suffers from a surplus of prophets and a shortage of adults.
The messianic crazies are everywhere. Some predict the end of capitalism, others the end of democracy, others the end of Western civilization, and still others the end of the world itself. Every one of them claims to possess secret knowledge unavailable to ordinary mortals. They speak with absolute certainty because certainty is the only asset they possess. Facts can be challenged. Evidence can be questioned. Certainty, delivered with sufficient arrogance, can attract millions.
The ancient rabbis understood something that modern society has forgotten: anyone who claims to know everything is usually advertising his ignorance. Yet ours is an age in which humility has become a disqualification. The man who says, “I might be wrong,” is ignored. The man who declares, “I alone understand reality,” gets a podcast, a book deal, and twenty million followers. Confidence has replaced competence. Volume has replaced wisdom.
Never in human history have so many people known so little while speaking so much. The internet promised the democratization of knowledge. Instead, it often democratized nonsense. Every uninformed........