The divergence of modern intellectual life suggests a bifurcated evolutionary path, one that mirrors the systemic decay envisioned in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation (1951). In this sociopolitical landscape, we see a "Great Decoupling" between those who engaged with the holistic curriculum of the modern classroom and those who retreated to the periphery. The former group, having internalized the rigors of geology, biology, and historical criticism, represents a stream of humanity progressing in alignment with empirical reality. Conversely, a parallel stream has emerged from the "back of the classroom," composed of individuals who disengaged from the educational process, absorbing only the most superficial layer of information. This disengagement is often a conscious choice driven by generational reinforcement; a student may witness his father and grandfather rejecting the very concepts being taught in school, leading him to decide early on that this knowledge is not only unnecessary but spiritually suspect. This creates a vacuum filled by fundamentalist ideologies, where a lack of scientific literacy—such as a failure to grasp the deep time of geochronology or the complexities of 4.5 billion years of Earth's history—leads to a truncated worldview.
It is important to note that this analysis focuses strictly on the sociological and educational divide between these two groups; we are not concerned here with Asimov’s concept of psychohistory or the mathematical prediction of future masses, but rather the tangible, present-day divergence in literacy and social function. This illiteracy is self-perpetuating through a cycle of warped education. A pastor who grows up in an environment that actively devalues secular learning enters the system already guarded against it. He sits through his education without truly participating, eventually becoming a semi-literate gatekeeper of knowledge. Within this structure, the church transforms into a rigid echo chamber. Because the congregation and leadership share the same "back of the class" origin, limited ideas and a fundamental lack of education are battered back and forth, eventually being codified as "normal" or "virtuous." In these spaces, the rejection of evidence-based reality is not seen as a deficit but as a badge of communal loyalty. This leader may offer charismatic social cohesion, but he lacks the theological depth to navigate the "Advanced History" of the church or the scientific literacy to address modern crises. Consequently, his followers cling to archaic or demonstrably false assertions, such as young-earth creationism or the rejection of carbon dating, simply because their social circle has normalized the dismissal of anything outside their insular loop. While the Empire in Asimov's work was not born illiterate, its downfall was precipitated by a "stultification" of the mind—a state where curiosity was dammed up and the ruling class became functionally illiterate regarding the very technologies that kept their civilization alive.
This social phenomenon creates a dangerous imbalance between what Asimov characterized as the "Empire" and the "Foundation." The "Empire" in this metaphor is the socially dominant, extroverted mass that excels at interconnection and the maintenance of social systems but remains functionally ignorant of the mathematics and technology that sustain civilization. They possess a high degree of social intelligence, yet they are increasingly aggressive in their attempts to reshape the world in a regressive image. This extremist extroversion, when divorced from the "introverted" labor of study and objective analysis, borders on the psychological state that Carl Jung identified as a functional insanity. Jung (1921/1971) posited in Psychological Types that a healthy psyche must balance the inner and outer worlds, noting that a person who is purely one or the other would be "in the lunatic asylum."
As the world drifts further from this stable center, we find ourselves heading toward a collective state of the lunatic asylum. On one side, we have an "Empire" of social extroverts who have abandoned the grounded reality of education to live within the walls of their own echo chambers. On the other, we have an "introverted" intellectual elite who lack the social connectivity to lead the masses. When these two streams refuse to meet at the center, the social structure loses its grip on reality. To drift toward either extreme—the purely social but ignorant, or the purely intellectual but isolated—is to enter a state where the world no longer functions. The well-rounded individual, the classically educated leader who understands both the intricacies of the Greek New Testament and the laws of thermodynamics, is the only bridge left. Without this synthesis, the uneducated stream continues to regress, dragging the rest of civilization toward an asylum where social enthusiasm is mistaken for truth and the "back of the class" mentality dictates the future of the species.
References
- Asimov, I. (1951). Foundation. Gnome Press.
- Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921).
- Marsden, G. M. (2006). Fundamentalism and American Culture. Oxford University Press.
- KDBooks (2024). Why you should read Asimov’s Foundation Series. YouTube.
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