Another Metaphorical Demonstration

I've been away for a bit, consumed with personal issues that required my highest levels of attention. I decided to get away for a bit to direct you to another great article that is a small metaphor for the direction to which the structure of society is being directed. It is not pretty, but it is a demonstration of the dangerous mindset that is already being adopted by the gatekeepers of our society.

We used to have some conception of freedom and its value in our lives. But today, it appears that people are readily adopting a conformist attitude and spirit. This is a dangerous development that threatens freedom for everyone. If the prevailing attitude and spirit of people is that it is ok to force others to conform, this guarantees that eventually any sort of nonconformity will be punished. It used to be that people knew that we all had the freedom to think what we wanted to think, regardless of how it relates to 'popular opinion'. In fact, from all my studies, 'popular opinion' is by definition incorrect. But as time has passed, the demands for conformity are more powerful than ever. How long will we allow these types of developments to continue? Is it right for us to feel that we have the right to punish people for refusing to 'tow the company line'? Wasn't it 'popular opinion' that we needed to attack/invade Iraq because they had 'weapons of mass destruction' and that they were about to attack America?

There was a time that 'popular opinion' was that the Earth was flat, that the universe revolved around the Earth, that germs didn't cause infections in surgery, that a man couldn't run a mile in less than 4 minutes, that nobody could split the atom. Every one of these widely-held concepts was proven to be 100% false, even though you could find armies of 'experts' that freely and widely supported these ideas. So much for so-called 'experts'...

What a lot of people do not understand is that most 'experts' have a vested interest in supporting the views that support the status quo. Most experts that decide to exhibit enough courage to speak the truth against the lies of popular opinion experience public humiliation, derision, ad hominem attacks, professional and social ostracism, and financial isolation. This peer pressure is the price that the truthful often endure just for speaking the truth. Understand that there are people/factions that have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the status quo and that they will lie, cheat, steal, and kill to preserve it. Understand that the 'powers-that-be' have their own goals and objectives. And you can be sure that your welfare is NOT one of their priorities.