In my earlier post on this topic, I looked mainly at phenomena related to modern mass media. Most of the problems I'm going to look at today aren't nearly as new, but in combination with one another and with the problems I discussed last time, they've become particularly prevalent, and their effects are often extremely nefarious.
Hunger for a Panacea
As problems become more complex and harder to solve, there is a natural human tendency to look for simple, catch-all answers and solutions. It's a search for a sense of control in a world too complex for any of us to fully understand. But however natural this tendency may be, it's unhelpful when it comes time to grapple with problems in the real world. This tendency deceives people into thinking that shallow soundbites are meaningful, and worse, it makes them susceptible to dogma, ideology, demagoguery, and various other sorts of false salvation which make them even less able to address the problems they face in an honest and effective way. This tendency is also what gives so much potency to many of the other problems I'll discuss below.
Demagoguery
Demagoguery is nothing new, but with fear and anxiety about the future at fever pitch in our society today, and in an age when the average teenager has at his fingertips communication tools which Hitler and Goebbels could only have dreamed of, demagogues are making lots of problems and have the potential to make even more.
Logical Fallacies
It's shocking how many people can't assess the validity of the the logic of anything beyond the most basic "if-then" statements. It's not sexy and exciting, but solid logic is an indispensable tool in any critical thinking toolbox, and it's also a key facilitator of meaningful and constructive dialogue between conflicting ideas.
Backlash against Science
The backlash against science in our society today is remarkable. I don't know the latest statistics on how many Americans believe in evolution, but I suspect that it hasn't improved much since this stunning 2009 survey.
The treasure and human effort this country has poured into science and the benefits it has reaped from its investment are staggering in their own right. The dismissal of science by so many Americans is also breathtaking of its own merit. Taken together, these things should constitute a gargantuan mindfuck. Your everloving head should explode. But sadly, it's come to seem almost normal. Contemplate it next time your mind is in an altered state and tell me what the fuck happens. Maybe you can get it to seem weird again.
The effects of the dismissal of science go way beyond turning some of our most profound insights into the natural world into casualties on the bloody battlefields of the culture wars. It has also created an atmosphere in which religious ideologues can perversely claim that they are being persecuted when the rest of us insist that facts and working theories established by science form a better foundation upon which to base our shared understanding of the world around us than religious myth.
And then we get Glenn Beck on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial taking a messy liquid shit on the memory of the struggle for civil rights by blacks.
But worse, this creates an environment in which religious myth becomes a viable contender with scientific fact in influencing public policy. Science is stigmatized as an oppressive ideology (how ironic when a core tenet of science is that the body of knowledge should constantly be updated, with old understandings replaced by newer, better ones through a process of dispassionate trial - anathema to the static, inflexible nature of most ideologies as we define the concept of ideology today), and teaching of the scientific method becomes viewed as some kind of a Trojan Horse for scientism, and voila, our critical thinking toolbox just got lighter again. Soon the toolbox will be empty and we can just replace it with a sledgehammer, faith, or whatever other blunt instrument the next demagogue or snake oil salesman or conspiracy theorist foists upon us. With our powers of critical thought so weakened, it will be damn near impossible to see him for what he is.
And fuck, I'm out of steam. I guess this is going to be a three part deal. More soon.
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