[narrator]

The Egyptian and Babylonian religions of antiquity were dedicated to maintaining the status quo and they did so for centuries. They did this by carefully guarding who was allowed to have access to sacred knowledge to control who had power in their hierarchical societies.

Those with access to specialized knowledge had to be limited in number and properly initiated. Unfortunately, it seems like this pattern of social organization in which knowledge is jelously guarded and only available to the vetted privileged few is a very durable pattern in the organization of human civilizations.

[ionised]

"Beware he who would deny you information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

[aaron-lebo]

That comparison only holds if you consider those attending cheap state school on student loans as "the vetted privileged few".

Not to mention, even at the state schools, we just download the PDFs off Google Scholar because searching the databases is annoying. Nothings's really changed other than rhetoric.

[narrator]

I'm just saying that Aaron in that quote is describing a very old civilizational anti-pattern. Obviously, things are a lot better than they were, especially after the invention of the printing press and the Internet.

There is also a lot of information, such as how to make rockets capable of reaching orbit, that is covered by ITAR that is still jealously guarded knowledge available only to the initiated few.