Thursday, January 31, 2019

The resurgence and expansion of the ideas of thought control

From The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman. Page 98. This fear of totalitarianism was on his horizon way back in 1964. He would be appalled to see the forces on informal tyranny today, trying to forbid topics of speech, speakers, and "bad" thoughts.
This modern society seems to be threatened by a number of serious threats, and the one that I would like to concentrate on and which will be in fact the central theme, although there will be a lot of subsidiary little items, the central theme of my discussion is that I believe that one of the greatest dangers to modern society is the possible resurgence and expansion of the ideas of thought control; such ideas as Hitler had, or Stalin in his time, or the Catholic religion in the Middle Ages, or the Chinese today. I think that one of the greatest dangers is that this shall increase until it encompasses all of the world.
With all information about us tracked, with self-organizing mobs of internet puritans, with legislators always seeking to ban something and constrain someone, and with the closing of the Overton window where any disagreement with orthodoxy brings unemployment, ostracism, denigration, the forces of thought control have invaded the home and approach the hearth.

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