[user982]

Chapter 2:

  I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Chapter 13:

  One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Chapter 25:

  In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

[Mistletoe]

My only question is was this slide orchestrated or is it the natural tendency of humanity to slip back to ignorance when all their needs are met, like the Eloi in The Time Machine? Someone made lots of money from this slide, I just don't know if it was random chance or a scheme that worked.

This quote has always stuck with me and I think about it often, perhaps one of the main quotes that have steered my life.

“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”

― Alan Moore

[xorcist]

The answer is more often than not alternative c) all of the above.

Development may be a random walk, but there are plenty of people with interest in a certain outcome, and when they get the opportunity they will take it and try escalate the process. That's true in most things.

I also tend to believe that it is not a coincidence that so many societies right now flirt with authoritarianism, for example. We influence each other, even more so now that information is global and electronic.

[koakuma-chan]

Is the quote actually true or just something the author made up? Alan Moore appears to be a fiction writer.

[kogasa240p]

Well shit, that's happening right now.

[deadbabe]

Sad to say, we are now living in the world he feared, as fully realized.

[gdbsjjdn]

The "crystals and horoscopes" part is such a cheap jab that's going to alienate a lot of the population. Astrology is a harmless introspective process for most people, they just like having a framework to characterise their beliefs and feelings. You find very few people who feel that it's prescriptive and limits their life.

Contrasted with very rational people who are chasing magical, unmoored valuations in the stock market for instance. We buy and sell equity based not on future cash flows, but on confidence there will be a bigger sucker down the line. This untethering of "value" from any productive work is a greater contributor to the hollowing out of the US economy than anyone buying a piece of amethyst.

[layer8]

The “clutching” and “nervously consulting” is essential here. It’s where it has stopped being a “harmless introspective process”.

Apart from that, I read “crystals” and “horoscopes” in a more metaphorical sense here.