Cancelling reason and evidence

Published on November 20th, 2024

In what may be termed a Post-Covid Ongoing Stress Era (POSE), the appeal to reason and scientific knowledge, as we’ve understood these, seems all but cancelled.   

In this apparent post-modernist dystopia that we see glimpses of all around us, the vulnerable, especially nascent developing minds, ineluctably rely on social media influencers of all kinds, including bots, spawned by the few who control much of the dumbed-down media. And, if this is not bad enough, long-verified scientific and expert-evaluated contemporary evidence are swept aside when powerful political leaders and oligarchs dominate the narrative in those diminishing traditional social media platforms that they directly or indirectly control. Opinion for them, matters. The more tendentious it is – serving their own ends and underpinning their facile, flippant and often prejudiced beliefs – the more bizarre credibility is attained. The validity and reliability of their opinion, for that moment of point-scoring and making headlines, is all that matters. Heavily-paid spin-doctors are quick with Marie Antoinette-esque attempts to minimise any damage to their principals. Of course, it was not intended, it was taken out of context, knowing full well the lasting impacts on those who rely on such easily-accessible electronic media for almost all their information. Fact-checking recedes into an inconvenience, with certain purported fact-checking sites serving the quest for dominance of one or other narrative.   

Our education, knowledge, and media systems, as we’ve traditionally known them, have dramatically morphed into the lowest common denominator, even lapsing into nativism, subjecting our future – our children – to the worst shibboleths and strident slogans through repeating that which trends, without regard for any evidence. Half-truths gain credence and inoculation to harsh reality seem to be blissful. And, when lived reality is further mediated through top-rated “reality-shows”, mindless, autonomic attraction to the banal become elevated to the celebrity. 

In a climate of geopolitical insecurity and increasing populist demagoguery, it becomes too much of an effort to confirm that “Knowledge derived from scientific research is a staple of human understanding and creativity.” (ISC Statutes) Indeed, what is glaringly observable is that a yawning trust deficit exists between those who can demonstrate that they have evidence to substantiate their understanding of science as we know it, with those who have assumed that space in the current technologically-driven social media information era and who currently hold sway globally. When tempers rise, provoked by mediocre leadership who rose during the severe lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic period, and who have embedded themselves since, very little lowering of emotions occur through logical explanation, conventional wisdom, or common understanding. The messengers of tried and tested evidence are easily overthrown and quickly become the new enemy waiting to be trashed.   

Against this backdrop, who is the messenger seems to have become more important than the content of the message itself. The outrageous, the trending messenger more often than not tends to grab the much-attenuated attention spans of otherwise thinking persons, whatever their age. Compliance and the need to be part of the in-crowd, even against one’s cultural and educational upbringing, becomes easy, both as powerful push and pull. The return to shades of 1920s Italy and 1930s Germany demagoguery looms frighteningly large. Despite almost-daily visible evidence on screens and other traditional media the world over of degradation of our ever-vulnerable environment, a denialist with following can cause severe setbacks, repudiating scientific warnings and expertise. Knowledge, science and those who underpin it in diverse settings, becomes suspect. The reliance on evident wisdom is truly disrupted, not in the woke, but in the socially destructive sense. The advances of science are quickly arrogated for nefarious purposes, with little societal benefit. In such a fractious world, the vast majority in the world, become mere pawns, with an acknowledgement of and restoration of our common humanity receding further. Social uncertainty, economic insecurity, fatalism and other helpless states become normative. Science becomes an inconvenience, a recurring nuisance that disturbs many comfort zones, destroying the partial and limited interpretations of our fragile world.  

Science stands in the way of desensitisation, immunity from the lessons of education, lapsing to the lowest common denominator, the loudest shrill epithet, refuge in narrow nationalism, and nativism emerging triumphal.  

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