Denying Science, At Great Peril

IN HIS SEMINAL book "The Demon Haunted World", published just before his death in 1995, the late Carl Sagan provides a compelling examination of the modern preoccupation with pseudo science. In our increasingly well educated era, a not insignificant segment of the population,is apparently unable or unwilling to understand and come to terms with the revealed, verified realities of the world and the universe. Sagan points out that there is no shortage of intelligence among the masses. There is, however, a shortage of scientifically well educated students. In this regard our education system has failed us. We have turned out more than a mere few generations of poorly educated citizens. When a charismatic leader openly proclaims his love of the poorly educated, sycophantic cult like followers eagerly assemble at his throne of willful, lazy ignorance, their choice to eschew education in favor of cheap entertainment fully reinforced and vindicated. Maybe science classes, particularly chemistry and physices, should be required courses, not elective. Maybe pseudo science is perceived, albeit incorrecly, as being more fun, more exciting. It is of course neither, but it is simplistic, easy to comprehend and digest, and embrace. The poorly educated, who have become a celebrated demographic in the United States of Avoicance, take the lazy way, the easy way out. Its cool to be dumb. Simply spout a few conspiracy theories laced with pseudo science and you have the making of a best seller or rapt audience on the A.M radio stations which market, under the cover of night, this garbage like they market far right wing dispensers of hatred and lies by day. The money hungry media, which relies on the steady income of abloated,over priced advertising industry, happily spoon feeds a credulous, gullible public the precise intellectual opiate it so desperately craves: pseudo science fiction and fantasy, attractively packaged and presented as credible information. Certainly it is far easier and more immediately emotionally fulfilling to immerse a lay mind in the salve of escape entertainment rather than slogging our way through the hours of lectures, textbooks, and examinations necesary to put one's self on a firm footing with the ostensibly enormously complex universe as it really is. Imagine the shattering experience of conversing, or trying to have an intelligent conversation with a climate change denier, as he moves the downward facing open palm of his hand in an undulating roller coaster motion in front of your face, signifying that climate change is cyclical, and that the cycles recycle according to their own natural causes, without any human intervention or influence. The message is tragically clear,the product of an opaque mentality. Imagination him telling you, with a condescending smirk, in all seriuosness, without a trace of doubt, that teh Earth'sclimate is alwasy changeing, and has always changed, and alwasys will, regardless of human activity. One trillion tons of carbon, injected into the atmosphere by humans, thus becomes irrelevant, even imaginary, or worse, a hoax, a conspiracy among the world's radical liberals, a pretext to take control of government,destroy all economic freedom, and to sustain the enormous corporate profits generated by the fossil fuel industry. Ironically, it is the conservative capitalists, not the socialistic tree hugging liberals who seek to sustain forever their sacred corporate money making machine. No, the Earth is not so huge, and we humans are not so weak and small as to make any impact by us on the world's ecosystem impossible. we burn down huge forests, turn rivers into lakes, and our cities can be seen from outer space. There shall remain of our cities but the wind that blew through them. Astray within their hollow cement shells,our descendants will marvel at the stupidity of their ancestors, for truly, against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.