Attacks on the Rational

Sometimes I think the defense of slavery has been as pernicious as slavery itself, if for no other reason than it discourages logical thinking.

Charleston in the years after the revolution included plantation owners willing to experiment with new technology. By the time of the nullification crisis around 1830 innovators still existed, but they weren’t respected for their efforts. Slaves, not machines, were the only answer for economic challenges.

Scientific thinking posits the sanctity of facts, and assumes scientists will change their theories when those theories no longer can explain observed reality. Thomas Kuhn showed men don’t always live up to that ideal, that when they’re confronted with anomalies they propose more and more absurd solutions to sustain their basic beliefs. However, he also showed that over time, the value of experience does alter theory, the underlying value holds.

One cannot support scientific thinking if one is so wedded to a practice like slavery that no contrary facts can be admitted. Once facts cannot be recognized, then they must be explained away, turned into something that supports the overarching theory. Bending reality becomes acceptable.

Today, we have people who deny the observed realities of climate change because the proposed explanation threatens some part of their world view. For some, it’s the idea that nature isn’t as rigid as suggested by Genesis. For others, it’s the concept of human responsibility and the consequences for accountability for one’s actions that’s troubling. And, of course, there are those who see an economic threat.

The result is an attack on science itself.

Recently, Mary Beard reviewed a book by Donald Kagan which she saw as attacking Thucydides for praising the behavior of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war which Kagan thinks is like that of those who wouldn’t put more resources into winning the war in Viet Nam. Since Kagan believes those actions led to unnecessary defeat, so Pericles must be redefined as leading his country to disaster.

The result is an attack on the academy itself which tries to sift evidence to develop explanations. When certain conclusions are forbidden, reality must be subverted.

Since the protests against the Vietnam war, discrimination against Blacks and abortion in the late 1960's, we have seen a growing number of people who cannot accept the validity of criticism of any kind. If schools needed to change to fit social ideals, then education must be rejected. And so, a generation developed who rejected the very tools they needed to survive in the changing economy.

Now the economy is in crisis and those who’ve been left behind are the most vehement in protesting any policy that might prevent further or repeated problems, simply because the people who propose those solutions are associated with other ideas that are unacceptable. The basic thinking seems to be, if you have the wrong idea about abortion, then you can’t be trusted with the money supply.

The final result has been an attack on the constitution itself, which distributes power among groups in the population. Since those left behind cannot change, then the constitution must be reinterpreted. The tools that come to hand are those developed by men in the south who defended slavery - nullification and the primacy of minority rights.

Elections are no longer legitimate if the wrong man wins.

Notes:
Beard, Mary. "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?," The New York Review of Books, 30 September 2010, on Donald Kagan’s Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.