dumb down stay down

I've written here about increasing the availability of quality (top-notch)education to the masses. It occurred to me that the powers that be might not want that for who is going to support so many people with advanced degrees? Who is going to sweep the streets and pull the potatoes from the ground.

It was then that the answer came to me from the manifesto of the Zeitgeist organization. If everyone is smart, there is available that many more people to create machines for us that will do all the work. Then, we become self-supporting and there is no need for anyone to carry any burden. The rich will have no need for excessive funds because everyone can do everything they desire. Mind you, not everyone will want a yacht a penthouse suite but if everyone did, there would be enough brainpower to make it happen. How would it be possible for everyone to have a penthouse suite? Easy, you have cameras on the roof and broadcast the images to windows that are further down. How about yachts? You create much smaller boats that behave, motion wise, as if they were yachts and when a higher occupancy was needed, these smaller boats could get together and form one bigger sailing unit. They could even tow a platform where people could gather and/or swim in a pool.

The point of this exercise is that a utopia is unlimited in scope and degree of perfection if we allow for a collective brainpower. The ultimate utopia is presently a discussion for philosophers but I think most of us would be willing to accept some intermediary Utopian society. We can start by making universal education available to all. We must begin that process by eliminating the stranglehold that the rich and the educational institutions have on us. Our government must create its own Harvard and University of Chicago, and MIT, etc. Just one is all that's needed. It must then lure the professors over to that university with the promise of more money--heck, we could make millionaire of them if they were to come over. Their lectures would be recorded and made available to everyone on the face of the globe. Foreign countries would also benefit and they could either subsidize the effort or provide some of their best professors to the cause.

Hollywood could get its hands on the lectures and modify them with added features that would make the lectures more appealing to diverse groups that may learn better if say, the professor looked more like Denzel Washington or a rock star or a woman or a gay. . . you get the point.

Sad irony isn't it that we are sitting on the biggest mine of wealth and happiness--education--and we are not digging in for fear of letting the other guy get ahead.