In the opening decade of the 21st century we are are implementing technologies with incredible creative and destructive potential at a frantic pace. At the same time our political systems seem to be sliding inexorably towards societal barbarity and Judicial tyranny. The enactment of new governmental powers in the US and Europe that removes the rights of the individual and supersedes them with those of the state, is only one small facet of a troubling trend taken by our species in recent times towards totalitarianism.

The suspension of old protections and freedoms should alert us to the fact that something is amiss. The rapidly beating drums of war should awaken us. The climate of fear and suspicion all over our news media should alarm us to the point where we recognize that something is terribly wrong, but does it? For some reason we seem largely indifferent to the erosion of our freedoms. The culture of fairness and tolerance that is supposedly our societies foundation stone is crumbling, yet we barely seem to notice.

We are unable to recognize that we live in a society where our consent is obtained by a process of persuasion, coercion, secrecy, and fabrication. We are not 'informed' as we naively believe, so much as we are subtly led. Nor are we really asked for our real opinions, so much as we are presented with carefully crafted predefined choices that we are assured, represent what the majority of us want.

We are not aware of how little we know, because we happily entrust others with the management of our secrets. We believe our media and our government largely free from the kinds of abuses we have so often seen elsewhere, even when there is very little basis in reality for this belief. Despite constant abuses, lies, deceits, and manipulations, we stubbornly ignore the evidence of our own eyes and ears, and cling to the certainties that deep down we know to be false. All the while blaming others for abuses we ourselves do little or nothing to correct.

The only reason this fraud can be perpetuated upon us, is because we happily continue to allow it. Will we ever wake up, and even if we do, will it be enough? Whatever utopian dreams we might treasure for humanities' future, the question remains, can anything perfect ever result from the minds of imperfect men?