The Media and the Experts — Modernity’s Oracle of Delphi

View of Delphi with Sacrificial Procession by Claude Lorrain

Situated on mount Parnassus in central Greece lies the city of Delphi. While the city now is mostly ruins, for over a thousand years the ancient world referred to it as the Center of the World. Millions from around the ancient world would flock to the city to inquire of the Oracle. To a select few, the Oracle would sit in the temple of Apollo and give prophecies or answer questions of business, trade, and war. Alexander the Great was said to have visited the Oracle to inquire as to whether he would conquer the world.

While modernity can scoff at the ancient world’s religious practices and beliefs, our world is not far removed from Delphi.

Lycurgus Consulting the Oracle, as imagined by Eugène Delacroix

Today, the world has its own class of Oracles. These “Experts” as they are called, are numerous in the fields of statistics, economics, medicine, media, etc. They are what Nassim Taleb calls the “Intellectual Yet Idiots”.

As the Coronavirus pandemic is revealing, modernity’s Oracles are mostly just a scam. Only a handful in media even foresaw the Coronavirus as a threat to America. Most experts, whether in media, medicine, or economics didn’t see it coming. The World Health Organization told everyone in mid January that the Coronavirus was nothing to worry about. Despite being caught unaware by the virus, the experts continue to predict the future with certainty. Their prophetic targets continue to move, while they lie about past predictions. Or they cover old predictions up.

And they are still running things.https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/18/flashback-who-china-coronavirus-contagious/

When will the American people have enough? When will we quit listening to the economists and banking experts that spouted the “too big to fail” theory prior to 2008? When will we decide to start ignoring the statisticians and pundits who told us Hillary Clinton had a 99% chance of winning the 2016 election? When will we hold the experts accountable?

The ruins of Delphi, National Geographic

To this day, it is not entirely known how the Oracle of Delphi was so accurate in her prophecies of the future. Some suggest that the Oracle was possessed with a demonic spirit that would give her insight. Others believe that she would purposely give only vague prophecies that could be interpreted many ways. Regardless of whether the Oracle’s gifts were real or just a facade, the ancient world was enthralled with her. For almost a thousand years, the Oracle’s words were taken as a word from the god Apollo.

Let’s not take a thousand years to wake up to the modern fraud. And let’s begin to hold today’s Oracles accountable.