On Feb 1, 2005, at 9:44 AM, Nick Arnett wrote:
Horn, John wrote:
This is one of the most terrifying things I have read in a long, long, LONG time.
Me too. Especially coming from Bill Moyers. The statistics really stopped me.
Depressing, but not terrifying, I think. Just more evidence that America is an empire in decline, and is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the rest of the world. I'm not pleased at the thought of the bulk of the contiguous US becoming "Jesusland", but short of the magic phrase "ready, aim, fire" I don't see how it can be prevented. The will to rationality and intelligence simply doesn't exist in many Americans.
A while back Dr. Brin put forth the idea that such individuals are romantics pining for a bygone era, and that's probably partially correct. (Even the ancient Greeks did that, pining for a time in their own history that they considered idyllic.) But they're also wanting a fantasy to come true. They're emotionally and psychologically infantile, still obsessed on the idea of the Infallible Parent and the Eden myth.
The thinking is bizarre too. An individual who is sure there's no Santa Claus will say, with a straight face, that resurrection is possible and an historic fact.
I'm religious, but I know the difference (I think) between what is irrational and what is non-rational. I'm deeply disturbed, even frightened, by the growth and seeming acceptance of irrationality in our culture. Irrationality seems increasingly confused with the non-rational.
That's a good point. I'd ask you to think about something else, though -- why do you consider yourself religious? I mean, if you have some kind of faith, *why* do you have that faith?
I ask myself, what provokes widespread irrational beliefs -- what are these people reacting to? Some sort of vast sense of helplessness? Intuition tells me that fear underlies this, but I'm not at all sure what fears are playing big roles today.
Possibly it comes, in part, from wanting the world to be a certain way, to fit one specific pattern of acceptability. Also, perhaps there's a fear of the unknown -- anarchy, chaos, unpredictability. These are facts of reality and many people are not comfortable with them. This could be one of the reasons there's so much open denial of the *fact* of global warming and its impending environmental impact. To deny global warming now is equivalent to denial of plate tectonics in the 1970s or the K/T asteroid in the 1980s.
There are other areas where you might see this same pattern. Wanting to block all research into human cloning is one.
Maybe some of it is that we *let* sheltered attitudes persist. We don't do enough reality checking, not enough pimp-slapping. Maybe we need to stop telling our children bullshit stories about easter bunnies, tooth fairies and father christmases, stop telling them that some things are true which we KNOW are not. Maybe we need to stop telling them impossible stories about loaves and fishes or six-day creations or seventy-two eternal virgins.
Maybe then our kids will be better at distinguishing fantasy from reality.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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