Time to Rally the Reality-Based Community
Sep. 17th, 2005 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saavedra77The other day, my friend MJ and I had a rather frustrating conversation with a friend of hers, a nonscientist who's been persuaded by pundits, politicians, and pastors that evolution, global warming, and other unwanted ideas all represent "junk science." The whole conversation reminded me of a recent Salon article about politically "manufactured doubt" and the increasingly powerful constellation of groups seeking to debunk science where it conflicts with their faith or pecuniary interests.
The article also cites, in passing, remarks attributed to a White House "senior advisor" last year by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine. I must confess that, news junkie though I am, I hadn't seen this, until today: In an interview with Suskind, this "senior advisor" disdained what he called "the reality-based community ... who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."
I actually found this article pretty illuminating: if you don't belong to the "reality-based community," maybe the catastrophes currently unfolding in Iraq and along the Gulf Coast don't matter.
Or maybe it's all just the wrath of a vengeful God--a theological tradition taken to task by the liberal Baptist Bill Moyers in a recent talk.
Whatever the rationalization, I'm with Moyers when he says "Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious." Time to rally the reality-based community, I think.
The article also cites, in passing, remarks attributed to a White House "senior advisor" last year by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine. I must confess that, news junkie though I am, I hadn't seen this, until today: In an interview with Suskind, this "senior advisor" disdained what he called "the reality-based community ... who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."
I actually found this article pretty illuminating: if you don't belong to the "reality-based community," maybe the catastrophes currently unfolding in Iraq and along the Gulf Coast don't matter.
Or maybe it's all just the wrath of a vengeful God--a theological tradition taken to task by the liberal Baptist Bill Moyers in a recent talk.
Whatever the rationalization, I'm with Moyers when he says "Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious." Time to rally the reality-based community, I think.
