Trust
It just dawned on me why liberals and conservatives alike are rejecting the sciences, the scientific method, and a host of other things dependent on large networks of people spread out across the world and over centuries of time: mistrust.
To have endeavors such as the sciences, the scientist has to trust that those who preceded him as well as his contemporary colleagues have, in the main, worked honestly and well in their various fields, and have been honest in the presentations of their data, notes, and papers; that their discoveries are worth investigating and confirming objectively; and that the scientific method itself produces dependable, reproduceable results in virtually every case. If he can't trust, whether his colleagues, his predecessors, or the scientific method, then science can't be trusted, and can't be carried out.
There are other endeavors stretching out globally and through long reaches of time: religion, technology, culture, society, community. Reception of the benefits of all of them depend on trust, trust in those who transmit such things to you, trust that what they are transmitting is worth paying attention to and trying out. Religion is a little easier than technology and science, and culture, society, and community, easier still, as these are as much everyday things for those practicing it as they are more exalted things. Religion has a strong emotional component to it, and we are far better at perceiving emotions and their trustworthiness or lack of it than we are intellectual worth, because the former are hardwired into more ancient, use-tested parts of our brains than the latter. You may not trust all religions, but you are likely to trust one to the limit, whether it's one of the great religions, or a cult, or atheism, or whatever. And as for culture, society, and community, those you are most likely to trust above all, because they have to do with the people you see every day and your relationships with them, your personal human ecology. You know them intimately, and as you trust your eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, and other senses, you trust the data your senses have gathered down the years that tell you what your culture, society, and community really are in practice.
But if you cannot trust at all, all of these slip from your grasp. And science becomes worthless, even sinister to you, an object of paranoia.
Okay, this is what's happening to both liberals and conservatives in this country. In conservatives, the mistrust is masked as religious in nature; in liberals, it's masked as a social phenomenon, adhering to the "in thing," or as political correctness. But neither group trusts science or much else any more, however they express that.
We are losing the ability to trust -- and all civlization is based and built on trust, trust in long-dead others that what they have passed forward to us is worth keeping. We are in seriously deep shit.
To have endeavors such as the sciences, the scientist has to trust that those who preceded him as well as his contemporary colleagues have, in the main, worked honestly and well in their various fields, and have been honest in the presentations of their data, notes, and papers; that their discoveries are worth investigating and confirming objectively; and that the scientific method itself produces dependable, reproduceable results in virtually every case. If he can't trust, whether his colleagues, his predecessors, or the scientific method, then science can't be trusted, and can't be carried out.
There are other endeavors stretching out globally and through long reaches of time: religion, technology, culture, society, community. Reception of the benefits of all of them depend on trust, trust in those who transmit such things to you, trust that what they are transmitting is worth paying attention to and trying out. Religion is a little easier than technology and science, and culture, society, and community, easier still, as these are as much everyday things for those practicing it as they are more exalted things. Religion has a strong emotional component to it, and we are far better at perceiving emotions and their trustworthiness or lack of it than we are intellectual worth, because the former are hardwired into more ancient, use-tested parts of our brains than the latter. You may not trust all religions, but you are likely to trust one to the limit, whether it's one of the great religions, or a cult, or atheism, or whatever. And as for culture, society, and community, those you are most likely to trust above all, because they have to do with the people you see every day and your relationships with them, your personal human ecology. You know them intimately, and as you trust your eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, and other senses, you trust the data your senses have gathered down the years that tell you what your culture, society, and community really are in practice.
But if you cannot trust at all, all of these slip from your grasp. And science becomes worthless, even sinister to you, an object of paranoia.
Okay, this is what's happening to both liberals and conservatives in this country. In conservatives, the mistrust is masked as religious in nature; in liberals, it's masked as a social phenomenon, adhering to the "in thing," or as political correctness. But neither group trusts science or much else any more, however they express that.
We are losing the ability to trust -- and all civlization is based and built on trust, trust in long-dead others that what they have passed forward to us is worth keeping. We are in seriously deep shit.