Globally-Acceptable Truths in the Land of Eden

July 27, 2006

By Tom DeWeese

I’ve written many times of the assault on individual thought through behavior modification techniques such as “Critical Thinking” as a tool to lash out at one’s values system, and the use of “situation ethics” problems to challenge attitudes, values and beliefs.

These tools are fully employed in today’s government school classrooms as a means to create a new kind of thinking that is coordinated to fit a specific worldview. “Thought control” is a much easier way to describe it.

It’s vital to understand this process and to be aware of its tactics so one doesn’t fall victim to its use. The pressure to rethink ones values is seemingly everywhere, from textbooks and classrooms to television commercials to on-the-job training courses. We are constantly asked how we can be so certain about anything. We are told there are no absolutes. We are told to just live for the moment. History is eliminated from civics courses. Math is questioned as to whether it is exact. Science is ignored for political gain.

How did we lose our common sense? When did the ability to think rational thought become replaced with a whine? Where do these ideas come from?

Much to my annoyance, one of the perpetrators of this anti-reason idiocy thrust his own pompous irrationality on me through a series of astonishing e-mail letters that I tried hard to ignore. His name is Donald Sagar and he is president of his own think tank called the Eden Institute. He is also a representative to the United Nations for the Association for World Education. One has to view his website at www.edenorg.com to fully appreciate his delusion.

Mr. Sagar wrote to me one quiet Sunday afternoon to disagree with my articles dealing with global warming, which he most certainly had found while playing with his Google keys on his computer.

His first line told me everything I needed to know about Mr. Sagar’s value system. The e-mail began, “Science aside…” Obviously Mr. Sagar didn’t want to be bothered by mere science when he had loftier goals in mind. But he went on, “It is inherently illogical and otherwise irresponsible to suggest that human activity does not possess the potential to alter the Earth’s climate.” Yeah, I’ve gotten this kind of stuff before in response to my articles. What he’s saying is, no matter what science tells us, I “FEEL” that man is damaging the Earth, therefore I insist that it be true.

He then went into an orgy of really big words like quantitative and qualitative to prove his point. The guy really needs a course in people communications. He pushed the point that there are “6.6 billion people on earth destroying some 25 million acres of forest annually.” Of course, with the population growing, more and more destruction was the only result we could ever expect, according to Mr. Sagar. (These dire statements, by the way, have been proven time and again to be untrue.)

Incredibly, he then argued that “energy usage worldwide is increasing at an alarming rate of speed as 3rd world countries continue to modernize.” My first thought was he could help cut down on some of that energy use if only he would shut off his computer and leave me alone. But one must not miss the completely astonishing rationale of his statement. He apparently believes that people who live in third world countries are simply animals who should always live in mud huts, walk 5 miles a day for their filthy water and cook over the quaint campfire in the center of the village.

Such arrogance. Such irrational stupidity. I was tempted to fire off a fast finger burner to inform this idiot that modernization and the higher standard of living that comes with it is the only way individuals can actually take time to think about protecting the environment. But I really didn’t want to encourage him into thinking I wanted to have a dialog.

He then ended his correspondence with his real purpose for writing, saying, “What I would ask of you is to stop disseminating misinformation, so that those of us who are trying to make a real difference in the world have one less obstacle to overcome.”

I thought better of making a case. I really didn’t feel like wasting my time on such a fop. Instead, against my better judgment, I sent him a brief reply designed to make my feeling known and to make it plain I didn’t want a dialog. I said, “Science aside??? I think that says it all about your argument, no matter how many big words you use. Don’t bother me with your pretentious intellectual claptrap. It bores me.”

However, experience has taught me that this wouldn’t be the end of it. Sure enough, the next day, there he was again. He was on a mission to save my soul. He wrote back, saying, “This response just goes to show what a self-consumed digit you really are, Tom.” Then he started using that word “quantitative” again. That was followed by an incredible attack on science: “Science has absolutely no idea of what preceded the current universe… and no way to hazard a guess about what the future holds for mankind – unless of course the creations of science are used to definitively destroy that future.”

Are you getting this? According to Mr. Sagar, science knows nothing and is only a destructive force. We used to call these guys Luddites. But he is bordering on Neanderthal. Yet he kept challenging me to see how “intellectually adept” I am.

What an incredible waste of human life, and my time, this guy was becoming. So, again, I sighed, and fired off the message that would surely end this silly exercise. (Yes, I know. If I had simply deleted the message I wouldn’t risk getting another reply, but this was too outrageous to let go.) So I wrote, “I thought I made it clear. I have no interest in what you have to say. I consider you people to be Nazis and thugs. And nothing you have to say means a rat’s a– to me. I have to deal with the victims of your lies. Can I be any clearer? Do not write me again.”

Comes the answer: “Tom, You’ve become so obsessed with your own thinking that you’re incapable of hearing anybody else’s ideas any more. I don’t know where this God complex came from, but it is definitely counterproductive to the message you are trying to get out.” Now, two messages back, he was saying he wanted me to stop getting my message out. Now he is giving me pointers on how to do it better – as long as I use his logic and message of course.

He then went on to say, “As far as your association of me to the ‘nazis’ is concerned, perhaps you subconsciously see a parallel to yourself here. Why else would you bring up such a thing?” He then said I was like “listening to a skin head with hair.”

So who is Donald Sagar and why does he care what I have to say? Why do you and I care what he has to say? He has created the Eden Project, which “provides a realistic way to create a dynamic global model for identifying, collecting, analyzing, and distributing cultural information relative to the resolution of critical issues.” Wow. Now what does that mean? Well, by reading on one finds that Mr. Sagar assures us he has developed the ability to define “certainty.” Apparently this is something no human has ever been able to do before. He now claims, having done this incredible feat, that he can prove the existence of God.

He goes on to say the Eden Project can now define our problems on earth and fix them. Here is what the problem is, according to Mr. Sagar: “Because of the relentless increase in the quantity and complexity of knowledge in the world, we are experiencing a clash between cultures that prevents all but the most capable of surviving with any meaningful identity in tact.” Did you catch that? The reason we have wars, poverty and misery is because there is too much knowledge.

But, according to his website, he hasn’t just dreamed up his incredible feat. No, no, no. According to the opening paragraph which describes what the Eden Project is, he says, “This project will provide decision makers with a ‘pre-qualified’ “option” for stemming mankind’s current slide into chaos.” Now reading further one finds that this “pre-qualified” option means that he simply asked a bunch of ivory tower types to critique his work. They agreed and, poof, we have a new way of thinking. Facts don’t matter. He already said science knews nothing. Difference of opinion isn’t to be considered. They could only mess up our new well-ordered thought process.

Simply put, Mr. Sagar begins with what he considers to be certain “globally acceptable” truths, such as Global Warming; human beings are destructive to the environment; men are unthinking brutes who must be controlled from their own actions. It doesn’t matter if any of this gibberish is true. Once this premise is established then Mr. Sagar’s theories are easy to put into place.

Now he is free to establish a “group think” pattern that disallows contrary thought. It attacks anyone who thinks “outside the box.” Propaganda becomes universal truth. All he needs now is for those in power and their ability to apply force to make it so. Now you know why I compared him to Nazis.

In fact, he is in desperate need to get the rest of us to stop thinking and using our own experiences along with academic and scientific absolutes to draw our own conclusions. Once that is established, it is easy to reject morality, and then only a short step to accepting the idea that people of third world nations should live out their days in total poverty – for the common good. It is then a very short journey to accepting euthanasia as a means to rid us of the elderly who are no longer useful for the village. And then on to accepting the final solution of forced abortion for population control.

This is the reason why your children are being deliberately “Dumbed Down” in government schools. The premise of “globally-acceptable truth” is the very root of today’s public school curriculum. This is the foundation on which our new society is to be based, according to Mr. Sagar. And he says I have a God complex?!

He is dangerous to you and me because he is not alone. His ideas have been endorsed by very influential global mouthpieces. Who they are is almost as astonishing as what they say about the Eden Project, which they all endorse. You’ll find the letters posted on the Eden Project website.

First there is the letter from Susan Reed from the World Education Fellowship, who praises the Eden Project as being in the same spirit of the original charter of the UN. “I feel that the Eden project is a meaningful step in the direction that mankind must go…”

Then comes the letter from none other than Robert Muller, Assistant Secretary General of the UN and one of the main players in the global agenda to reorder society. He says, “I am referring to the need to establish a body of objective, globally acceptable information to serve as a foundation for global education… Its (Eden Project) formula for identifying universally acceptable objective data is truly unique. It achieves this distinction by establishing a global standard for inquiry.”

Other supporters include K.B. Mathur, Director General of UNESCO, Dale Ott, of the World Council of Churches, and many more heads of global and international organizations who seek to impose a new way of thinking on the world for their own political agenda. Most telling was a quote from Keith Smiley, President of Mohonk Consultations: “The planet earth and its people have been experiencing an information explosion. The uncontrolled expansion of information is dangerous since it tends to diffuse meaning and purpose.”

These people are telling us that humans armed with knowledge are dangerous to the new order they are trying to impose on us. Yet it is their policies which have created chaos and poverty throughout the world, the very issues they now seek to remedy with their new thought process. They seek to pull the strings to stop anyone from using reason and knowledge to fix it.

Poverty and ignorance are not natural states for human beings. It is fixable. It is simply a result of very bad government which prevents individuals from being free to use their abilities to achieve their own happiness, prosperity, and personal security.

Governments which deny individual commercial action among free individuals; deny the ability to own and control private property; and tax the self-earned wealth from the industrious are the root of poverty and misery and consequently, damaged environment.

We used to call such policies communism. Today we have a much gentler sounding name — Sustainable Development, now the official policy of the United States, all 50 states and nearly every city and small town in the nation. Sustainable Development is, of course, a top-down control of every aspect of our lives, from land use to community development to job availability to transportation to the foods we eat to our children’s education system. It is the policy Mr. Sagar’s “new think” was created to help implement.

Sustainable Development is restructuring our lives, and is targeting our children through an educational regime that seeks to develop collective attitudes, values and beliefs. Sustainable Development documents expressly call for the elimination of private property and freedom that private property supports. It supplants long-standing State laws, and causes irreparable harm to our economy and our society. Yet to Mr. Sagar, these concepts we call freedom are nothing more than delusions.

He and his fellow travelers are very dangerous people. They use every sort of deception, half-truth and non-science to implement this concept of virtual captivity for the human spirit. In support of such hysteria as global warming, they move to implement heavy restrictions on development through policies with names like Smart Growth and The Wildlands Project. All of it is heavily funded through taxpayer dollars and wealthy foundations promoting the policy’s political agenda.

The looming battle of ideas should be recognized as a classic—and perhaps ultimate – battle between Liberty and Tyranny. The social, economic, and political transformations Sustainable Development requires will mean the suppression of unalienable rights for all people.

Mr. Sagar and his Eden Project intend to box in the parameters of allowable thought and innovation. His goal is to control the voice of individuals he and his ilk deem to be renegades who will just muck up the order of things. That is why he found my writings so disturbing and was so desperate to engage me in debate.

So, here Mr. Sagar, is my response. Yours is a philosophy of death, designed to control and kill the spirit of Man. I view you to be the enemy of all that I hold valuable, including reason and knowledge. Do not write me again. I have no interest in light-hearted, spirited, intellectual word play with a killer of reason.

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Tom DeWeese
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Tom DeWeese is President of the American Policy Center and National Grassroots Coordinator for CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) working to help local activists organize into Freedom Pods (www.CFACT.org). He is also the author of three books, including Now Tell Me I Was Wrong, ERASE, and Sustainable: the WAR on Free Enterprise, Private Property, and Individuals.