By Science Junkie – July 24, 2011
It sure looks that way to this observer of our irredeemably
polarized, zero-sum, increasingly bizarre culture. More on that shortly, but
first an enthusiastic endorsement for the work of a fellow columnist here at
TPJmagazine. Loren Adams always informs and entertains, and in his July 10
column, “The Curse,” he
forcefully captures the life-and-death seriousness of a chronic disease eating
away at the constitution of the nation (capital C, too). The disease is the
left-right schism, “the great divide” that has long afflicted this country but
which we have more or less managed to control, at least since the Civil War.
Until now.
Adams says the divide is dangerously widening again, and he
lays the blame for the latest crisis in our democracy squarely on the modern
Republican Party, which has become an intentional, well-coordinated agent of
social destruction:
“[The Republican Party’s] political operatives made a
conscious decision three decades ago to win at any cost, including compromising
traditional values that moderated our political system to civility and accepted
standards of discourse. No longer is there a conscience to constrain; all
tactics are on-the-table. As part of the conscious decision to include the
unconscionable, the GOP has embraced deceit, fear, greed, and hate as part of
its fabric. The composition is damaging to the nation as a whole, not just the
party, and they care not. All that matters is [the] objective; winning is the
only thing that counts. The end justifies the means.”
Adams sees us decaying, and perhaps dying, as a nation
because of the enormous burden the Republicans have deliberately and
shamelessly imposed on our always fragile social contract (loyal opposition and
all that). I urge you to read his column – or read it again. His
rotting-corpse metaphor alone is worth the time.
I agree with Loren nearly a hundred percent. And if our
country is not close to death, it is surely on the verge of permanent
disability, no longer able to provide the opportunity for a decent standard of
living and a sense of security for most of its citizens. And no longer an
optimistic, cheerful nation, but a dour, resentful, suspicious, and hostile place.
A Republican kind of place.
The toxic Republican Party can be imagined as a big tent
bulging with delusional ideologues, not
all of them ideologically compatible, except in an opportunistic sense. The
point is that the tent is so full of ignorant, brainwashed true believers and
opportunists that no one who respects reason and evidence will be inclined to
seek admission to participate in good faith. Looking inside the Republican big
top, the most prominent recognizable ideologies on display are: radical
political and social conservatism, fundagelical religion, libertarianism, the
strange new concoction known as the Tea Party, and an assortment of odious,
far-right hate groups. All of them are extreme in their ideological certitude,
and fanatically determined. Working together as they do, they constitute a
formidable political army with its own ministry of propaganda, the ubiquitous
right-wing broadcast media (although it looks like Faux News could be in for a
bit of a rough ride – and may they suffer the torments of the damned).
Characterizing right-wing ideologues as delusional is,
admittedly, borderline redundant. Ideology, by its very nature, leads to denial
of reality and a tendency towards fanaticism. Here’s why: Ideologues turn
science and reason upside down, starting with non-negotiable, faith-based
premises and then twisting, distorting, or denying all evidence that does not
conform to their preconceived “truths.” And along with the majority, including
many on the left, they extol faith as a virtue, even though it is diametrically
opposed to science. Last time I checked, science was the only reliable method
of advancing our understanding, prediction, and control of reality. It is a
fair question to ask what insights ideology has ever provided about the nature
of reality?
Because they publicly proclaim speculative,
non-evidence-based beliefs to be The Truth, ideologues of every stripe almost
invariably end up in a position from which their only face-saving option is to
double down and use every available tactic they can get away with, including: denialism;
lying (and do they ever lie – to themselves and others); demonizing the
opposition and those who don’t conform to their narrow, usually regressive,
world view; employing every logical fallacy ever cataloged; using political
power to disenfranchise the poor and the elderly; aggressively and deceitfully
undermining science and science education when it contradicts their unsupported
beliefs. The U.S. furnishes a prime example of a society threatened by an
epidemic of toxic ideologies run amok.
It is easy to come up with prominent and familiar ideologies
that exemplify all or most of the above traits: communism, fascism, U.S.
conservatism, Islamism, religion and the paranormal, alternative medicine, the
anti-vaccination movement, conspiracy theories, and perhaps some environmental
and animal-rights movements. There are ideologues on both ends of the political
spectrum; but I’m arguing that those on the political/cultural/religious right
are, by far, the most dangerous at this point in time. So let me take this opportunity
to once again issue my recurring warning: The right wing in the U.S. is poised
to gain power – to win at any cost, as Loren Adams puts it – and
the first and highest priority for all reasonable Americans must be to keep
power out of their hands. This is a Paul Revere moment, but you’d never know it
from the business-as-usual demeanor of the U.S. mainstream media. Or the
accommodationist Obama administration. Or a great many progressives and
moderates. And the rest of the world just shakes their heads as we Americans go
about our lives as if things were normal, not as if we were on the brink of
forfeiting all our hard-won social progress.
I predict that if the right does gain power in this election
cycle, the Bush administration will look like a sunday school picnic by
comparison. (Go on, try to tell me I’m wrong about that. But be sure to read
the religious and political rights’ own widely available words before you do.)
What we’re seeing now from the House Republican majority is just weak tea compared
to the toxic brew they’ll force down our throats once they’ve consolidated
power. It doesn’t take much digging to see what’s coming, including the final
nail in the coffin of meaningful democracy.)
As I said, ideologues share a strong, emotional, often
fanatical, devotion to a set of core
beliefs that are not verified, not adequately supported by sound, real-world
evidence. Their fanaticism pushes them to organize and form coalitions with
compatible groups and to probe for weaknesses and push for advantages in every
domain. They are often well-disciplined, well-funded, and relentless. A perfect
example of discipline comes from the protestant religious right and the
Catholic Church. Protestant fundamentalism has a rather notorious antipathy to
Catholicism and often refers to the Church as “the great whore” and the pope as
the “anti-Christ.” They say those things even with five conservative Catholics
and one moderate Catholic sitting on the Supreme Court. So where is the
right-wing Catholic outrage at such defamation? The point is that even with
such profound animosities festering just below the surface, conservatives are
still disciplined enough to keep the lid on their differences in the interest
of winning the bigger political battle against hated liberalism.
So are the regressives winning? Yeah, I think so. It is hugely
dispiriting to see how much power, influence and support the delusional right
has and how so many Americans have been duped into voting for malevolent
ideologues and against their own interests. So while I agree with Loren Adams
about Republican tactics and ruthlessness, I would add that I think the root
cause of conservative
personality disorder lies in an innate human proclivity for ideology. We
are natural-born ideologues, which may have served us well in the Stone Age but
is lethal now. Reverting to pre-Enlightenment superstitions is no longer a
survival option.
The
only long-term antidote to cultural decay is Jefferson’s informed citizenry, a
rational majority that understands the primacy of genuine evidence as the basis
for belief, decision-making, and the preservation of constitutional democracy.
Obviously we are a long, long way from that ideal. For the present, the goal is
to keep the deluded fanatics out of power so at least we’ll have a chance to
begin to work towards a nation of informed, responsible, critical thinkers.
This will only occur through a vastly improved education system, an undertaking
the right will continue to undermine at every stage. And right now it looks as
if they will succeed before the task even gets underway.
As
Dr. Michael Shermer says in his new book, “The
Believing Brain,” the way forward is to embrace the spirit of scientific
inquiry. Not just esoteric laboratory science, but widespread scientific
thinking throughout the populace. As Shermer says,
“I’m a skeptic not because I do
not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference
between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is
science.”
Science
is intrinsically skeptical and thus resists the tendency towards faith-based
certitude, or ideology. Skepticism is really just applied scientific reasoning
that says I won’t accept anything as even provisionally true without sufficient
evidence (hence, atheism). Any other attitude towards reality opens the door to
all kinds of unsupported nonsense, which is where we are now as a culture.
Lamentably, that’s where intellectually undisciplined human nature takes us.
The antidote is the acquired discipline of skeptical, scientific rigor.
Many
right-wing opponents of science – religious, cultural, corporate, and
political – love to trot out the canard that science is just another
faith-based belief system. To which I say, when feeling charitable, “That’s
total rubbish!” Science is not based on “faith,” but on evidence and reason.
Look at it this way: All our reliable knowledge is based on evidence from
observation and experiment. That isn’t “faith” in the unknown or the
unverified, it’s confidence in the known based on centuries of disciplined
investigation. Just look at the results that accrued once humans started using
and refining the scientific method! The heart of the method is called
induction, which boils down to this: if we can document and/or produce a
cause-and-effect pattern repeatedly under given conditions, it is likely the
pattern will occur the next time those conditions obtain, and possibly under
somewhat different conditions as well (which can be the basis for a systematic
replication). That’s not faith, that’s practical common sense; we rely on
science because it works. I’m sure there’s no need to provide examples of the
prodigious accomplishments of science.
Of
course science can’t say with absolute certainty that just because something
has always occurred in a certain way that it always will; that’s why scientists
readily concede that their laws and theories are provisional – a
disconfirming observation might occur at any time. But just because something
is theoretically possible – and damn near anything is – doesn’t
mean it’s real. I guess we can’t even prove beyond doubt that reality is real;
but it’s pointless to let that kind of philosophical uncertainty impede us, so
we go with what works. And that’s not “faith,” at least not in the sense
intended by science deniers.
So
we’re justified in saying the sun will rise in the east – tomorrow and
every day. We COULD turn out to be wrong at some point; but what possible value
is there in doubting something that has always proven to be true? Better to say
that under specified observational or experimental conditions, we have ALWAYS
gotten this result, so we carry on with confidence it will persist in the
future. Eventually we come to know enough about various aspects of reality to
make reliable predictions and to exert impressive control over real-world
outcomes. That’s science: empirical, pragmatic, highly effective. It’s not
absolute, and it’s not without difficulties – after all, it’s a human
enterprise. Still we just keep at it and trust it because of its track record:
and we keep seeing progress in our knowledge, understanding, prediction, and
control. The scientific method works where nothing else comes close. Certainly
not any ideology.