Real Change Changes Everything

Einstein is frequently attributed with the observation that "Madness is doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result," but if he did, it probably would be more likely for him to observe, that "Genius is doing different things, realizing that that is what makes a difference." The whole essence of genius, is making the complex, simple, and not the simple, more complex, as was also attributed to Einstein, and every genius before him.

However, the latter creates more jobs to explain what the original source said, and thus the need for "experts," to interpret what such great ones said, or meant -- as though they had an even superior understanding of what the genius meant to say, but failed to. And so in every previous, earlier times, broad classes of people were created to mediate between the knowledge and what "the masses" could hope to understand -- primarily because they didn't have access to all the information, or even, a lot of it.

That's how much the world has changed -- already. In publications, one was always limited to the understanding of the publisher/editor/writer, which were those intermediaries who communicated what the "genius" understood. But what was actually the case, is that the information had to be reduced, and was invariably limited by the understanding, of those who only knew "words" as their livelihood as "scribes," or writers, who often "knew" nothing else, and so it was often enough, that the words just had the "ring of truth," rather than was actually true.

What changed, was that most people became better writers, because the new word processors, made public and personal writing accessible to virtually every "educated" person, and not just limited to the rare few who could produce perfect copy to the satisfaction of dictatorial editors, who thought it much less important that anybody else could understand what the author meant to say -- than what the editor wanted them to.

It is the most common use and abuse of power -- to control what another person thinks, by controlling what they think can be thought. The power to edit, in this manner, becomes the power to censor and suppress, what one chooses others to know or don't know, and in the hands of the ambitious and ruthless, easily and invariably becomes co-opted and corrupted -- because they "know better" for everybody else. That is in fact, "their job," yet they would claim, that power seemed to corrupt everybody else and every other profession but them, acting in their endless and noble pursuit of objectivity and the truth.

However, they are not good enough writers or liars, not to be betrayed by everything they say -- other than their rigorous professions of innocence, which are not obvious to anybody else. And so most of their writing and efforts, go to promoting that image of themselves -- rather than the service of allowing the audience to know anybody or anything else -- but the limits of their personal vanities and delusions.

And so while they are very fond of generalizing what people are like, we only get to know what they think everybody is like -- and nothing is permitted beyond.

Collectively, such people were fond in their past roles as essential middlemen, or intermediaries necessary for communications from one closed and specialized group with any other. But all that changed, with the reversal of the trend to increasing narrow and exclusive specialization, as allowed by the development of a more universal communications network -- which is the primary great change omitted in most lists of great changes, because it is so pervasive and fundamental -- of destroying such barriers and limitations. That change is still rocking the world.

Predictably, the greatest victims of such changes, are the old perpetuators and defenders of the way things used to be -- with themselves at the top, or at least in indispensable roles, as the exclusive ones allowed to perform the "brain surgeries" of information exchanges. The most populous of this class, are familiarly, those who work in compulsory education -- which should seem an anachronism in these times.

When people want to learn, just like people want to eat, why should there be a force-feeding of what a self-selected group of "professionals," be allowed over any other kind of learning -- which may even be superior to the required learning, which is more often the case now, than the officially sanctioned education.

Almost all child prodigies have to be home-schooled -- not to become resocialized and brainwashed as the "average," and told they cannot do what their teachers tell them is impossible or impermissible to do -- "at their age," as though mere seniority should be the basis or merit and recognition (reward). That may be the union teachers' reality, but it is not the whole, or even the best, of reality -- that will undoubtedly limit the future prospects, possibilities and vision for any society but the present troubled, unviable, unsustainable one.