Carl Sagan was smart. Very smart.

Carl Sagan Was born in Brooklyn New York in 1939 and died in 1996 in Seattle, on my birthday. Not that this date is relevant. He was an American scientist and astronomer who spent a lot of time thinking about science and explaining science to ordinary folks and simpletons, like me. He did not shy away from controversy.

He attended the University of Chicago where he earned  bachelor’s and master’s degrees in astronomy and astrophysics. He became a Professor at the University of California Berkely and later  Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

But he became for his work popularizing science and making it accessible to ordinary people. His most famous work was with his wife Ann Druyan, called Cosmos. I actually never saw the original series but saw the later update, also called Cosmos by Neil de Grasse Tyson, another famous scientist turned popularizer.  Both men tried hard to educate the public about science and the importance of science.

It used to be that the United States was respected around the world for the greatness of its great universities.  Sadly, in the last year that great reputation has started to decline largely because of the work of the current president of the United States and his gang of merry Trumpsters. That is a huge shame and the longer that degradation continues, the worse it will be for not just the United States but the world. Together they have led a concerted attack on smart.

Sagan knew the dangers of ignorance.  Most of us are not so clear on that. In the last few years, led by the right-wing in America, appreciation of knowledge has been seriously eroding. This is what he said:

“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting — profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

Carl Sagan was so smart he thought this might happen. Most of us thought it was inconceivable. We were wrong. dead wrong.  This is what Sagan said,

“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…The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

That is the part that really concerns me.  Americans, led by their president have celebrating how ignorant they are. That is truly shocking. And disturbing. This could, as Sagan said, “blow up in our faces.”

Sagan called his book from which these quotes are taken, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.  We have to remember exactly that. without science and knowledge we truly are in the dark. That is nothing to celebrate.