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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
palindromebeta
Published Letters: 116 Editor's Choice: 2
'I’m doing what I can to support responsible living, but I’m open to the idea that nothing we do can change Earth’s inexorable march toward a more tropical tomorrow.'
The message has been simplified just to get it across, I think. 'Recycling things and fuel conservation are sensible' isn't a news story 'new study says we're all going to die' is.
I was buying a new printer a week or two ago, and a printer and cartridge was $40, the replacement cartridges were $50. I understand the economics - make the printer a loss leader, lock me into buying those cartridges, but *the first cartridge came with the printer*. When the ink runs out, it would be cheaper to *buy a new printer*.
And I don't need to see a picture of a sad polar bear cub to see that that's utterly insane, but at the same time, it's never going to be a talking point on a news show.
The airline thing has suffered from the same need to make a news story. There's still this idea that planes are for the 'jet set', that it's a luxury, that it's awash with money and glamor, unlike us ordinary joes.
I know for a fact that airlines don't burn a drop of fuel they don't have to. That, for the last couple of years, the most important people in the company are the guys buying the fuel, because a decimal point wrong costs millions.
There's a site called Speak Your Branes that collects the more moronic things people say on news sites. One entry this week was a guy who posted *three times* that he didn't care about the Oscars. And such a man is a fool ... but not for apathy towards the Oscars. Most people are apathetic about the Oscars. It's perfectly sensible to be apathetic about the Oscars.
And that's the problem here - the reliance on news channels and sites on the letters column. Politicians love the idea of an 'engaged' electorate, by which they mean they love the idea millions of people agree with them. Editors love whipping up a bit of controversy, it gets the readers and viewers in. Of *course* the people who write in have an opinion. Of *course* it's often partial and arrogantly asserted and simplistic and polarized. And, yes, gosh I appreciate the irony that I'm saying this as one of those letter writers. I'm not fooling myself I'm 'representative', though. I'm weird. You're weird reading this.
The trick is never to mistake the internet for reality or democracy. Snakes on a Plane wasn't the biggest film of last year; Ron Paul is not going to win by a landslide; Matt Drudge and Harry Knowles are not 'powerful'.
As for the broader point:
There are limits to knowledge. But that doesn't mean we can't say we 'know' things. It doesn't mean we should lump science in with faith. Scientists are, by definition, people who question the limits of their knowledge. It's the old Dawkins line - a tribesman can hold as one of his most sacred beliefs that the Moon is a the gourd of the gods, but scientists *know* it's a large spherical rock about a quarter of a million miles away, because they built a big rocket and went there. And by doing that, some things they learned changed their mind, others confirmed theories.
There *is* a difference between the tribesman and the scientist, and it *can* be fairly characterized as 'the tribesman believes this because his religion demands him to; the scientist believes it because of the evidence'. It can be fairly characterized as 'the tribesman doesn't question and has no way of testing this belief; the scientist understands that his position is to the best of his knowledge'. And it's fair to characterize it as 'the tribesman is wrong; the scientist is right'.
And I agree with that ... but it's precisely the sort of nuance that gets lost in translation.
Evolution is a good example. Scientists have a painstaking working model of evolutionary biology that's assembled from millions of data points. There are bits and pieces we don't understand, but we think a lot of them are 'known unknowns'.
Creationists have a book that they say is right and that if reality contradicts it, then that's the doings of Satan and trust the book.
To call both of those the same thing, 'belief' is to do the former a massive disservice and to elevate the latter's nonsense until both are equivalent.
Perhaps, if we want a term, it should be 'understand'. Scientists 'understand' nature to operate under the principles of natural selection. I guess Creationists 'understand' the world to operate on the principle of divine intervention.
It places the emphasis and burden of proof on the understander, I think, gets the subjective nature of it across.
But I still think it's conceding ground and words that faith-based ideology won't. You are not going to get a fundamentalist to agree to differ. And it's not a desirable outcome, either - evolution and creationism can't both be right: one of them *has* to be wrong. Pretending and humoring and word games don't change that.
Okeydokey, I've asked this before, but never got an answer. What do you think 'spirituality' means? What's the difference between someone who's spiritual and someone who isn't?
... which is why I resist using the same word to describe them both. If they're not the same thing, or of equal value, or describing the same process ... perhaps instead of one catch-all 'style' word like 'believe' we need a set of more precise, graded 'substance' words.
(Thank you everyone who answered my 'definition of spirituality' question, by the way - I need a little time to read through and absorb those. Hope I get a chance to answer before the thread closes!).
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
