Quotes

It is rare that you'll find anything that could be seen as being even remotely political or inflammatory in my blog. I try to keep personal opinions about such things to myself, or discuss them with John and others in my circle of influence. It's unusual for me to read the newspaper on a regular basis. Yesterday was different. John handed me a section of the newspaper and told me to read it; the article he wanted me to read was about critical thinking. It was interesting, but when he pointed out another article, I got really interested and one or two of my "buttons" were pushed.

In this past Saturday's "Globe and Mail", there was an excellent op-ed piece, written by Peter Scowen. The title of the piece is "The sleep of reason produces monsters. Or at least oil-covered pelicans". In it, he talks about our appetite for the good life, and references the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In the second paragraph, he states, "...it urgently needs to be said by someone, frankly, that we are entering the Age of Endarkenment." That is something I've been saying for a few years now.

I won't type out the whole thing for you, but there are a couple of sentences in it that I consider worth repeating and remembering.

"It is now official that the freedom to use one's own intelligence has mutated into the freedom to use one's own stupidity..."

"The people making the most use of freedom of speech are people who have the most vile, irresponsible and ill-informed things to say."

The piece ends with the following paragraph:

"Meanwhile, the oil flows and flows and flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and we know that we, the children of Enlightenment, don't have, and never really had to begin with, the capacity to stop it. Our appetites are stronger than our reason. The waters grow darker by the day."

I've clipped out the entire article and have every intention of keeping it. If you're interested in reading the whole article, you can find it here.