The prophetic Rod Serling foresaw the Covid debacle

[Dukkha]

The Old Man and the Cave

A story about one man who kept his people alive relying upon science from a computer and using logic and reason to restrict hoarding and protect the townspeople from contamination. Then the hot headed "freedom" loving hawks rolled into town and made them stop by force and destroyed the computer. The result was mass death.

"Mr Goldsmith, survivor. An eyewitness to man's imperfection. An observer of the very human trait of greed. And a chronicler of the last chapter—the one reading 'suicide'. Not a prediction of what is to be, just a projection of what could be." - Rod Serling

[Shermann]

1. An odd story, that one

The town leader relies on science, but he keeps the rest of the town reliant on faith in an old man they've never seen.

The newcomers shatter that faith, and the result is a catastrophe. So it is really more of a pro-faith story than it is pro-science as I see it.

Now Captain Kirk encountered these types of society-controlling computers all over the galaxy. He'd smash them to bits and not think twice about it, and the outcomes were presumably better than this. Kirk (and Spock for that matter) were not big fans of faith.

[Dukkha]

2. I see it as an allegory

In "faithlessness" Mr. Goldsmith was referring to people not trusting, or having faith, in science simply for lack of understanding it. The protagonist Goldsmith knew this so he concocted the "Old man in the cave" story so people would be more willing to accept the advice. When they learned it was a computer they attacked it and thus condemned themselves to death, despite the evidence that they were alive because of the data it provided.

Like today many people don't understand how viruses work, how vaccines work, and what needs to be done to contain the spread. They'd rather try snake oil remedies peddled by conspiracy pages and videos because being selfish and willfully ignorant is more important.

[soldierant]

10. "Faith" pretty well means "faith" - but "Faithless" and "Faithlessness" don't always just mean the

lack of faith. They can also mean "treacherous" and "treason."

And even "faith" doesn't always mean simply religious faith. If there is no one in your life in whom you can have faith that they will act a certain way in certain circumstances, maybe you need better contacts.

[Kablooie]

3. I think the point is that many people will only trust faith.

They prefer blind faith to what’s obvious right in front of them.
They will only follow science if it is cloaked in the fantasy of faith.

[PatSeg]

5. That's how I viewed it

The town's leader knew the people well enough to know what they would respond to and how. He was trying to save them from themselves.

[tenderfoot]

4. Here's his prophetic his take on the media

[Dukkha]

6. I liked his take on capitalist greed

in the episode "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" where the Devil is used again in the story, played by Julie Newmar. She cons a heartless tycoon out of his fortune and tells him why she punished him and was conned so easily “Because you, Mr. Feathersmith, are a wheeler and a dealer, a financier, a pusher...a brain, a manipulator... a raider. Because you are a taker instead of a builder. A conniver instead of a designer. An exploiter instead of an inventor. A user instead of a bringer.”

[yaesu]

7. Traumatized by WWII Serling would use his excellent writing skills and TV show

to quietly protest for human rights, economic inequality & anti war sentiment. A hard job to do when your bosses are corporate elites with very right wing beliefs.

[RVN VET71]

8. The destiny of man.

Sure looks like it, feels like it.

In this kind of allegory, the “prophet” hides the truth of the “Old man in the cave” from the townspeople because he doubts their ability to accept the truth. Keeping the people ignorant of that truth, he inadvertently makes them all easy prey for the snake oil peddled by the outsiders. If he had leveled with people and told them there was a computer-brain that would guide them through to better times, some of the townspeople would have believed him and trusted him. Others would have thought he was an agent of the devil and eaten the poisoned food and died, anyway.

Covid-19, alas, is not so cut and dried. People who eat the “poisoned food” of Fox and other purveyors of lies about the disease may contract it -- and then again, they may not. Of those who contract it, some will be hospitalized, but others will recover at home. Of those hospitalized, some will die, but others will recover and return him, some suffering permanent debilitating affects of the disease, others not. Still, there will be other opportunities for the anti-vaxxers to contract still other diseases and suffer deadly consequences because willful, stubborn ignorance is a part of that destiny of man thing.

The subtlety of the disease will keep us divided, and those of us who trust the science will be wearing masks and getting booster shots from now and forever.

[paleotn]

9. Human intelligence as an evolutionary survival strategy....

We've been around for only a whisper of time so the jury is still out. 60 million years from now we may be just a geologic oddity like the K-T Boundary to some intelligent, alien species who discovers this planet.

[Mosby]

11. That episode is an adaptation of a short story.

Forget who.