For The Message Of Television As Metaphor

...there Must Be A Sequence To Learning, That Perseverance And A Certain Measure Of Perspiration Are Indispensable, That Individual Pleasures Must Frequently Be Submerged In The Interests Of Group Cohesion, And That Learning To Be Critical And To Think Conceptually And Rigorously Do Not Come Easily To The Young But Are Hard-fought Victories.

Television Is Altering The Meaning Of 'being Informed' By Creating A Species Of Information That Might Properly Be Called Disinformation. Disinformation Does Not Mean False Information. It Means Misleading Information - Misplaced, Irrelevant, Fragmented Or Superficial Information - Information That Creates The Illusion Of Knowing Something, But Which In Fact Leads One Away From Knowing.

But In The End, Science Does Not Provide The Answers Most Of Us Require. Its Story Of Our Origins And Of Our End Is, To Say The Least, Unsatisfactory. To The Question, "how Did It All Begin?", Science Answers, "probably By An Accident." To The Question, "how Will It All End?", Science Answers, "probably By An Accident." And To Many People, The Accidental Life Is Not Worth Living. Moreover, The Science-god Has No Answer To The Question, "why Are We Here?" And, To The Question, "what Moral Instructions Do You Give Us?", The Science-god Maintains Silence.

Once You Have Learned To Ask Questions - Relevant And Appropriate And Substantial Questions - You Have Learned How To Learn And No One Can Keep You From Learning Whatever You Want Or Need To Know.

America Was Founded By Intellectuals, A Rare Occurrence In The History Of Modern Nations We Might Even Say That America Was Founded By Intellectuals, From Which It Has Taken Us Two Centuries And A Communications Revolution To Recover.