Existing Without A Cause

Since we live in a "my opinion is as good as yours" society rampant with mediocrity, we've "leveled the playing field" for some shlepp to slam greater minds than their own.

Don't you get that feeling?

The biggest problem facing greater access to information - thus knowledge - is that most people are sufficiently equipped and trained to decipher and interpret what's before them.

Greater access to knowledge doesn't necessarily equate to being smarter. By extension, it won't translate into being better citizens either. In other words, knowledge can lack depth or etiquette.

For example,"universal truths and principles" no longer belong to our collective historical and societal conscience. No. We've strained and reduced it to the lowest and last common denominator: the individual. My "truth" is equal to the guy standing next to me. My culture is not greater than the next. Or, my interpretation of history is equal to the history teacher. Or my personal favorite, actors believing themselves to be foreign affairs experts.

This is all nonsense of course. Let's give everyone a "thanks for participating" ribbon and be done with it already. That way, we can all go make potato salad as we wallow in absurd intellectual meekness.

Talk about over rating oneself. I don't know how people do it. I'm personally so racked with self-doubt it pains me to literally right anything. I'm driven by my own vulnerability. That is, I can only explore what I do and don't know until I arrive to some respectable, reasonable and acceptable answer or truth. Surely even truth has an end point of sorts?

Think of all the great literature and epics in human history. They were all rooted in universal themes. There is no original thought. Just different spins of what defines humanity. One of the most disingenuous and frivolous piece of advice to give someone is to demand they be "original."
My idea of good and bad; right and wrong was probably the same as Homer's version or Dante's.

Not in contemporary times. Somehow, someway, something got lost in the shuffle. We've neutralized morality to the point there's no clear idea of collective morality (or social etiquette) anymore. If I don't want to say "thank you" for someone holding the door that's my business. If that person is insulted too bad. Then don't hold it for me since I didn't ask for it.

So who will "right" this ship? Intellectuals have given into the modern approach of relativism. For their part, politicians, save for a disunited few here and there scattered across the globe, merely follow the trends to maintain power.

Anyone?