September 01, 2010 06:01 PM UTC

Non Cogito, Ego Sum

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• by: JO

Yesterday I violated a simple “rule” by commenting on something typed by one Mr. Wilson to the effect that John Maynard Keynes “is dead” and “his philosophies were a pack of lies.” https://coloradopols.com/showCo… This sparked a lengthy set of exchanges (not by me) not on economics, but on Creationism of all things! My first reactions were, “What a waste of time,” “however did we get from Keynes to Christ,” and “shame on me for engaging Mr. Wilson even once.”

But my second reaction was that this set of exchanges may well have cast illumination on the larger political conversation taking place this year. Short version: a sizable number of people, perplexed, turn to ancient texts with fundamentally simplistic explanations and prescriptions in order to address a complex of problems long in the making. Even shorter version: “Daddy in Heaven will take care of everything, don’t worry, just do what He says. Believe!”

Thus we go on this site from Keynesian economics (“a pack of lies,” hardly a sophisticated comment on a complex subject) to Creationism; on a larger scale, we go from persistent recession in the midst of deindustrialization to Glen Beck-turned-Minister to explain/solve what could be viewed as an incipient social breakdown. In neither case is it possible, at least not for me, to have a meaningful discussion that might lead closer to practical solutions since one side is firmly rooted in “beliefs” which by their very nature do not admit to scrutiny much less skepticism.

I don’t think it’s my business how people spend their Sunday mornings. It is my business when people insist on imposing their beliefs on me, as eventually they insist upon doing (examples: include “creationism” in the science curriculum in Texas public schools; refuse to pass legislation aimed at reducing dependence on petroleum on grounds that “global warming is a hoax”).

But above and beyond that, it is deeply disturbing to see large numbers of people, even a majority of people in some states with notoriously poor education systems, like Colorado, turning with great confidence to sets of irrational beliefs to address real and concrete issues (examples: dependence on carbon fuels; global warming). Such individuals are susceptible to believing anything and everything with no regard to facts. This in turn creates opportunities for entirely rational individuals with access to substantial funding (Koch Brothers being the most recently identified examples) to manipulate public policy to their personal short-term financial interest without regard to the larger society or longer term. Might this be the underlying hallmark of our age?

Elsewhere, the Islamist-fundamentalist movement provides a clear and disturbing picture of the directions in which this sort of social mind-set can lead. I would submit that the fundamentalist mind-set of American Tea-hadists leads towards precisely the same ends: irrational insistence on ancient mythic explanations for complex phenomena at the expense of effective solutions based on rational analysis.

We may be closer to that moment than we would like to think, while the problems continue. The jibbering of irrationalists isn’t always innocent and without consequence.