The Unmistakable Shot Across the Bow
A Scientific Skeptic's Warning About The Fall Of Reason from 2016
Almost a decade ago, I posted this essay as a public warning that reason itself was at a crossroads and that we were losing the war of ideas.
Ten years later, it is even clearer as my country of birth descends into madness and is on a clear pathway toward authoritarianism.
”Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust.” commonly paraphrased as:
Shortly after, I also posted my analysis of International Relations - 30 years after the wall in an essay which you can still read on the Wayback Machine. Mind you, it might take a while to load.
From December, 2016
We have been warning about unreason and anti-intellectual values and their consequences for years. They are certainly nothing new. And we've made the case for the harm too many times to count.
We don't tend to peddle in alarmism or use hyperbole as an educational tactic. That should be apparent for anyone who has followed us for any extended period of time.
But drastic measures seem increasingly necessary to fend off a disturbing and unavoidable trend.
We've even claimed partial progress at a few points, where it seemed that the rise of apparent pro-science advocacy and general skepticism online was a positive trend that seemed to have gained steam. There were short-lived signs to be optimistic about.
Where once there were only the old guards in Randi, SGU, Skeptic Magazine and CFI, there were suddenly hundreds and thousands of pro-science and scientific skepticism sources online. We thought that was the harbinger of good things to come. Maybe this trend would motivate people to learn basic philosophy and logic; to study the study of reality and look increasingly away from standard television and reality fiction.
Where once the words fallacy and fact-checking were as uncommon to see as a Northern hairy-nosed wombat, they suddenly could be seen frequently on social media threads and the run of the mill Facebook brawl.
Voices like Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, Sagan and Russell, among many others, were becoming more prominent and seemingly fighting back our demon-haunted world and lighting more and more candles in the dark. Maybe the better angels of our nature and voices of reason were starting to win?
But we were wrong. We were incredibly naive. We were blind to the constant and sometimes partially dormant underbelly of wanton human ignorance and fear. The kraken has been released.
The momentum shift was temporary and insignificant. It seems to have been nothing but a blip on the radar screen and something more akin to the "wow" signal than anything sustainable and transformative. It seems to have even provoked a strong whiplash back to a previous more regressive state; one that we have seen too often in our distant and even relatively recent past. Again, this is nothing new.
The heralding of the internet as our savior was premature. It has simply freed up the beast.
We are not witnessing forward-looking change, or at least there is little indication of that, despite some who claim it to be so. It's just a "shake-up," you say? Maybe the consequence is nothing more than frightening the "global elite" and exposing the illuminati and ultimately banishing them forever? That does make for an exciting Hollywood plot, I must say. Someone get Dan Brown on the horn.
Make no mistake, there is now a consistent and comprehensive attack on reason and in the words of the infamous lunatic and queen of false drama and outrage, Alex Jones, a battle for your mind is now in full force. Their job is to so confuse you as to make any semblance of objective reality more obscure and blurred. And they claim to have the only torch to lead you toward the light.
An example of this attitude is perfectly illustrated in a recent Breitbart article where they go so far as to call the scientific method itself into question and to try to convince its readers that phrases like peer review and scientific consensus are nothing more than appeals to authority and that you need to fight back and ignore anyone who makes rational and evidence-based appeals. Citing intellectual values like reason and scientific evidence is now itself seen as a fallacy. Touche! Well played!
This is, as we wrote recently, clearly the revenge of the layman. Charlatans, more interested in ad revenue and the benefits and power afforded by demagoguery, now couch their sophistry in the language of nothing short of appeals to ignorance, as if it is the highest virtue.
You, the commoner, are soon to seize power, if you only select them as your champions - the new lords of unreason. You can become the new aristocracy and elite, if you simply follow them and abandon reason.
“You little people cannot possibly be expected to understand these complex matters." That is the catch-all phrase used to empower and embolden you to take reality back from science and reason. You can reform it in your image.
For the record, I am a layman, you are a layman. We are all laymen.
Without human functional expertise, science, technology and reason, we would all still be cowering in a cave from simple dental infection or not having even survived birth.
It now comes swift and steady.
It arrives bundled in calculated sophistry and partial truth. Its calling cards are veiled and direct attacks on science, media, expertise, facts and all forms of authority.
Its vernacular is the hyperbolic and propagandistic use of terms like fake news, elitism and all forms of partisan ad hominem and tribal generalization.
It's no longer a question of simply refuting questionable and unsupported claims like creationism, climate change skepticism, anti-GMO, anti-vaccination, appeals to "nature," and the host of other unreasonable claims that scientific skepticism purports to challenge, this is bigger.
It's an all-out affront on claims to an objective reality and our hard fought epistemic victories.
This is a formal, informal, semi-organized and direct attack on reality - modern civilization, scientific values, enlightened ethics and reason.
I don't care if you consider yourself left or right on the political spectrum, this is far greater than party politics anymore, although much of the assault is clothed in partisan calls to arms. This is a call to self-respecting reasonable people everywhere.
What is required is solidarity and unity around the core value of reason and nothing less will do. We need all champions of modern ethics and the central enlightenment value of science on board and everyone needs to stand up and project your voice, consistently and resolutely.
Reason and unreason are in a tug of war and the cord just passed the flag and to the wrong side.