The passage of time coincides with the addition of significant amounts of information to humans’ already enormous collective knowledge base. The volume and speed of those additions arguably have grown exponentially over the course of many hundreds of years. Limits on the capacities of human brains to absorb such mountains of information must exist, though that assertion may not have been proven. Assuming that is true, though, it follows that memories and knowledge are naturally limited. Teachers (and/or society at large) must make decisions, then, on what to teach children as they progress through formal education systems. One way of making those decisions might be to assign priorities to the elements of the information base that are available for students to learn. At various points in the education process, high priority new information must replace older information or, at a minimum, reduce the priority of older information. Over time, information once deemed critical to the “educated” mind is no longer taught—replaced by facts/knowledge judged more relevant to the times. In a world undamaged by bias, bigotry, and prejudice, such a system might be acceptable. But in today’s world, the most powerful—regardless of the “honor” or honesty of their motives and beliefs—make decisions on the basis of the extent to which those decisions reinforce their stilted beliefs and attitudes. Hence, the knowledge base upon which we rely to inform our morality decays over time, replaced by lies, insinuations, and broken logic. An argument could be made that our species is less well-informed about the real world around us today than was the case a thousand years ago. Opinions morph into “facts” and reality degrades into fiction. Its all more complex than that, of course, but that argument may contain the native seeds of truth, wrestling against invasive versions of genetically modified ideas that grow quickly in a landscape fertilized for that purpose.
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Today is unique in that the day is the year’s longest and the night is the year’s shortest…depending on which source delivers the information. At least a few claim tomorrow is the day; most seem to agree that today is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Regardless of how we refer to the day, today will usher in a dramatic rise in temperatures over much of the U.S., thanks to a large area of high pressure in the upper atmosphere traps heat. That causes temperatures and humidity beneath the “heat dome” to spike and remain high for a relatively extended period. We are under a heat advisory today, with temperatures peaking at around 88°F today and 90°F for the next two days. Beyond that, I haven’t bothered to look…we may melt into sticky asphalt roadways or get trapped by rivers of melted plastic.
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I watched a short documentary last night about Rob Ford, the now-deceased right-wing former mayor of Toronto. The film was entitled Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem. Ford was a very popular politician, even after finally admitting videos showing him smoking crack cocaine were real. The film was interesting and entertaining and certainly informative; at less than an hour long, it was just the right length to keep my attention for just long enough. But it was short enough to enable me to watch another film…too bd.
The other film I watched last night, Plane, was an adventure movie involving a jet that went down in a storm, carrying only 14 passengers, barely surviving a rough landing on an island overrun by criminals. I forced myself to watch to the end. That was all the punishment I could take. It was a junk film; garbage that I am embarrassed to have watched.
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The brilliant blue skies outside my window look innocuous; even pleasant and comforting. But the heat they will bring in the hours and days to come will reveal their sinister side. As long as the air conditioning in the house holds out, all will be well.
