Lately, I've been concerned that we're headed for a redux of the Middle Ages. Those times were marked by a dangerous rise in religious devotion coupled with the suppression of reason. They lasted a really long time...
Unlike the Dark Ages, where the general populace was kept in the dark because the channel to available knowledge was cut off by those who stood to benefit from an uninformed public, the Neoieval movement thrives because the channel is flooded with misinformation. I call it the Interference Age. If you attempt to drink from the firehose of information (most notably in the form of cable television and the internet), you'll likely be frustrated at the flood of contrary opinions, the misrepresentation of facts, and the tendency of formerly reliable sources of information to hedge their bets and put out competing articles of content to court buyers from both sides of the divide.
Similar to Medieval times, I see the relegation of real science to the fringes while religious assumption takes center stage in the decision making process. I see the marginalization of fact in favor of positions supporting pre-existing beliefs. This was drawn into stark contrast for me watching "Stephen Fry in America" the other night. While in Montana, he met with a glacier scientist. He asked the scientist, "Well, since you're a glacier scientist, it follows that I ask you if you believe in global warming." The scientist replied that he had no choice to believe since his job was to measure glacier loss and that we'll be living glacier-free by 2020. However, the right wing flat out refuses to acknowledge the metrics. I'm not sure why. We can debate whether or not you think we're causing it, but it seems we'd damn sure better make sure we're prepared to deal with the results. I'm not sure how Climate Change became a partisan issue - I sometimes think that if Al Gore had named his movie "An Inconvenient Show" and said that he wasn't really a fan of Small Wonder, the right wing would be hailing Tiffany Brissette as the second coming. So, instead of a real discussion about what is going on with the climate and what we should do about it, we have scare tactics (the infamous hockey stick diagram) from the left and outright denial on the right. The left may argue that they were overstating their case in order to get everyone's attention, but dishonesty is dishonesty.
And speaking of scare tactics, the pale, pasty Godfathers of misinformation are those pale, pasty members of the New American Century Batshit Crazy right wing. They have a gift for flooding the channels with terms like "Pro-Abortion," "Death Tax," "Death Squads," and the current redefinition of "Communism" by that right-wing luminary Victoria Jackson. They have really leveraged Kierkegaard's notion of negation-by-labelling. I am certainly not in favor of abortion. However, I recognize that some issues are too complex to be dealt with legislatively - that some decisions are personal and need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. But, the party that believes that the government should stay out of our lives feels it can make a blanket case for its "pro-oppression" stance based on the biblically proscribed sanctity of all life. Then, they can turn around and be in favor of capital punishment, or (on the extreme-extreme) be in favor of killing a doctor that deals with un-viable fetuses that endanger the mother. But, they can take my statements and label them "pro-abortion" and negate their meaning within their community.
Quite frankly, I'm afraid there is a reverse-hockey-stick diagram representing our critical thinking abilities as time goes on. We are all capable of seeing through the fog, but it takes letting go of pre-conceived notions. I know it's easier to join a team and focus on beating the other team, but the sooner we realize we're all on the same team and start working toward real solutions, the better off we'll be.
I'm not optimistic.
