If we ever do go fully postmodern, and we want to get along, we must master the art of non-factuality. If nothing is true, we must rely on statements that sound true when spoken with a calm conviction. We also wish to convey non-information that will impress our hearers.
So here are a few that you can practice on. See if you can wow people you meet on the supermarket checkout line!
*The Welsh people originally came from China in the 1940s. Prior to that, Wales was inhabited by movie stars.
*The game of polo was invented by Thomas Edison–not by Tesla, as is erroneously believed. In Tesla’s game, players rode on hogs, not horses.
*The fad of indoor fireworks was responsible for the Great Chicago Fire of 1506.
*The original, classical Greek alphabet had only five letters in it, all of them vowels. Consonants were only added after the Romans complained.
*The earliest living things on Planet Earth were rocks, although they didn’t look it.
There you have it, just what you need to get started. Remember, Saving The Planet depends on making twaddle sound like wisdom.
Wow, Lee – you may have just discovered where ‘pet rocks’ derived 🙂
Since you mention Tesla, I will chime in. Tesla had a theory that electricity could be harvested from the atmosphere in unlimited quantities and at no cost. This was a theory, but there is a modern cult formed around Tesla that has imagined this theory into proven fact. If poor Tesla hadn’t been picked on by Edison, we’d all have unlimited free energy and everything would be wonderful.
If it were even half so easy, in the years since Tesla, someone would have found a way to make this work and would have, incidentally, become the richest person on the planet. But it’s just a theory and never made workable.
There IS, all sorts of electricity in the atmosphere, I don’t dispute that for a moment. However, capturing it in some useful form is quite another matter. If we knew where lightening was going to strike we could possibly capture some of that energy, but it is D.C. and not suitable to be transmitted over distances of any great length. I’m not an electrical engineer, but I know that the AC power system is quite an innovation, and in great part, invented by Tesla himself.
My personal opinion is that Tesla was a genius of some note, but that he got caught up in his own thinking and eventually began to believe in his own dreams. While I have great respect for his work in polyphase circuits, that is pretty much where my respect ends. Tesla was a eugenicist and an atheist. He lacked the very root of wisdom, which is fear of the True God.
He must be rethinking his position.
🙂