"Susicion of Authority" is Also Propaganda

While individuals get our empathy and sympathy, institutions seldom do. The "we're in this together" spirit of films from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s later gave way to a reflex shared by left and right, that villainy is associated with organization. Even when they aren't portrayed as evil, bureaucrats are stupid and public officials short-sighted. Only the clever bravado of a solitary hero (or at most a small team) will make a difference in resolving the grand crisis at hand. This rule of con...

 Carl Sagan's Vision of the Human Race's Future

We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the Earth and the ocean and the sky. The open road still softly calls. Our little terraqueous globe as the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds. We who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds, are we to venture out into space? By the time we're ready to settle even the nearest other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many...