The Vestigial Mind

In an age in which more information has been available to more people than ever before inhuman history, should we not be embarrassed at how little we know about the decisions we makeand the values that we hold? This abundance of knowledge has cost us something veryimportant: intellectual humility. Why should any of us ever again admit to ignorance when ananswer (regardless of whose) is only a top of the iphone away. We have become increasinglyreliant on third hand information that comes from god-only-knows where, authored by god-only-knows who, bearing god-only-knows what prejudices. My point here is not to say that there isn’ta wealth of good and legitimate knowledge, only a few clicks of the mouse away; but rather, thatwith this enormous cache of facts, theories, opinions and criticisms (mine among them), we, asindividuals are slowly becoming little more than animate mouthpieces, through which theopinions and beliefs of others are allowed to speak.With the distractions of daily life as proliferous as they are, it’s very easy to leap from thebed to the shower to the Today show whit breakfast to talk radio on the way to work to your jobback to your home onto the couch watching TV into bed (also with TV) and back to sleepwithout ever having taken a moment to pause and really think about something (anything!). Atthis juncture, we’re now ready to take anyone’s idea and label it as an unimpeachable truism onwhich hangs the very fabric of the cosmos! How could it be any other way? We fill out headswith the views of the liberal media or the conservative media without pausing for a moment toexplore the consequences of the basis of these beliefs. Because of the unbelievable availabilityof both conservative and liberal ideologies (as can be found in the news, radio, comedicnews...for our entertainment, of course), we can effectively convince ourselves that there is noother proper ideology before our own. Our political ideals have become something bordering ona belief system; and of course, believing in something means that you don’t have to give it muchindependent thought. Like our religion, our political beliefs are something beyond reproach,discussion, and above all: alteration.If we could please take a more active and thinking role in our decision making process; ifwe could be willing to question, not only the beliefs and ideas of others, but those of our own;perhaps we can take the first small steps towards the recovery of our own individual reason andthe legitimacy with which it was originally vested.

~Authored by My dearest like minded older brother, Frank Zilinyi

I would like to add a small amount of my own thoughts to this beautiful analysis of the great american ignorance. What seems to be an issue ailing the political minds of many of the inhabitants of this country. We seem to find ourselves, these days, seeing our political system, at least from a laymen's point of view, as somewhat of a religion. We follow blindly and have faith in a system most of us have no idea of how it works. Let me give you all a little definition of faith, especially concerning religion. Faith means the belief in something that logically cannot be true. this is fine when it concerns things such as religion because religions are not tangible objects that we can truly manipulate or change through our ignorance. Faith is in fact a practice in ignorance. Do not get me wrong here, I am a practicing catholic, but I am a realist and if I follow something blindly, I want to at least understand why. It is fine to believe in such illogical things as God or whatever you may call him and whatever he may mean to you. The whole idea of God is that he is omnipotent, meaning all powerful. In order to have such powers, God must be able to do anything, including the going against the laws of logic. God can make 4 equal 5, he can draw a square circle, set a fire he cannot put out and then put it out and these are all things that we will never be able to see or understand. If we accept God in this sense, it is O.K. to believe, there is nothing that we will ever see to make us understand otherwise and we only have faith to go on. When it comes to a government, we cannot follow blindly. We must think for ourselves and make our decisions based on real information that we have looked into and considered carefully on our own. Voting is your civic duty, but please don't if you're not thinking beforehand. That's all for now, my brain is ready for sleep and I must oblige.

~Rob