Futudirection for Humanity? (was Don Davis article)

Hi,

>
> Our highest task is to see to it that libraries don't get lost to
entropy
> anymore.
>

Totally agree with your comment. I hope civilization does not get
lost once more into a new dark age. I believe science and tech won't
decline, because there will always exist an elitte that cultivate
them, and customers for it.

However, intelligence has been domesticated. These times are not the
times of the lonly inventor or genious anymore, which was an
authority by himself. Today bright minds work for the states, the
militaries or, more usually, for the merchants (private companies).
Intelligence is judged by the produce only, the practical produce,
the one that gives advantages or profits.

Meanwhile, common people is bombarded daily with primitive
lifestyles, prostibule sexual knowledge, and pseudoscience. There is
even a cult to criminality and violence, a message that is
transmmited in every single "progressive" movie, song or book.
Somehow the barbarians are between us one more time, and have
hijacked the structures of power and the media. Mediocrity is back
and stronger than ever. How to compare rap or reaggeton with Mozart?
Or Hamlet with a soap opera?

It will be a long time to recover a possitive way of seeing things.
Perhaps the letter of the Tango "Cambalache" (Bazaar) was a very
good predictor of what is going on these days. Perhaps it is worth
to take a new look to it. For me, it reflects civilization like it
is today. It was written in Argentina in 1935:

Cambalache (Bazaar) 1935
Lyrics by: Enrique Santos Discepolo

That the world was and it will be filth,
I already know...
In the year five hundred and six
and in the year two thousand too!
There always have been thieves,
traitors and victims of fraude,
happy and bitter people,
valuables and imitations
But, that the twentieth century
is a display
of insolent malice,
nobody can deny it anymore.
We lived sunk in a fuzz
and in the same mud
all well-worn...

Today it happens it is the same
to be decent or a traitor!
To be an ignorant, a genius, a pickpocket,
a generous person or a swindler!
All is the same! Nothing is better!
They are the same, an idiot ass
and a great professor!
There are no failing grades or merit valuations,
the inmorals have caught up with us.

If one lives in a pose
and another, in his ambition, steals,
it's the same if it's a priest,
a matress maker, a king of clubs,
a cad or a tramp.

What a lack of respect,
what a way to run over reason!
Anybody is a gentleman!
Anybody is a thief!
Mixed with Stavinsky, you have Don Bosco
and La Mignon
don Chicho and Napoleon,
Carnera and San Martin.

Like in the disrespectful window
of the bazaars,
life is mixed up,
and wounded by a rivetless sword
you can see a Bible crying
against a water heater.

Twentieth century, bazaar
problematic and feverish!
If you don't cry you don't get fed
and if you don't steal you're a stupid.
Go ahead! Keep it up!
That there, in hell
we're gonna reunite.
Don't think anymore,
move out of the way.
Nobody seems to care

if you were born honest.
It's the same the one who works,
day and night like an ox,
than the one who lives from the prostitutes,
than the one that kills or heals
or than the one who lives outside the law

Tan, tan...

Regards,

Omar Vega