Don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

"Don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys." Willie Nelson

I imagine myself as a member of a small group of riders trying desperately to turn the stampeding herd before that herd reaches the cliffs.

The herd is humanity. My fellow riders are the few who, like me, think they have been enlightened and wish to stop an impending catastrophe. The skeptical reader is, of course, correct that the riders may be idiots and that the herd is just seeking better pastures. The consoling thought for the riders is that if they, the riders, are wrong it is of little consequence because they are so few; while the herd, if wrong, will probably destroy them self.

The riders, like me, think that there is a fundamental issue, that if resolved, will reposition the herd into a more perceptive and reasonable mode and thus the herd will live happily ever after.

The fundamental issue that concerns the riders is that the herd makes very poor decisions. For this reason the riders think that if the herd became Critical Thinkers and self-learners matters would improve. See "Bertrand Russell on Critical Thinking" http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Educ/EducHare.htm

A rider from a past generation spoke about these matters in:

The Decline of Western Democracy
by Walter Lippmann

"There has developed in this century a functional derangement of the relationship between the mass of the people and the government. The people have acquired power which they are incapable of exercising and the governments they elect have lost powers which they must recover if they are to govern …" http://www.theatlantic.com/ideastour/politics/lippmann-excerpt.mhtml
For copyright reasons, the full text of this article is not available on The Atlantic's site.

However, another site provides some interesting Lippmann insights.
http://www.memorablequotations.com/lippmann.htm