"... celebration of ignorance. Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves. Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
- Carl Hagen - The Demon-Haunted World. 1995
Take heart, however - for this too shall pass...
.