[FairfieldLife] Re: The Fireplace Delusion by Sam Harris

[turquoiseb]

Excellent, Turq said hearthily.

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues"
<curtisdeltablues@...> wrote:
>
> Me:
> This is such an interesting piece about perspectives and our emotional
investment to them.  And it points out how vulnerable to the same
emotional attachment to ideas both believers and non believers are. 
There is something in this for everyone:
>
> Sam:
> It seems to me that many nonbelievers have forgotten—or never
knew—what it is like to suffer an unhappy collision with scientific
rationality. We are open to good evidence and sound argument as a matter
of principle, and are generally willing to follow wherever they may
lead. Certain of us have made careers out of bemoaning the failure of
religious people to adopt this same attitude.
>
> However, I recently stumbled upon an example of secular intransigence
that may give readers a sense of how religious people feel when their
beliefs are criticized. It's not a perfect analogy, as you will see, but
the rigorous research I've conducted at dinner parties suggests that it
is worth thinking about. We can call the phenomenon "the fireplace
delusion."
>
> On a cold night, most people consider a well-tended fire to be one of
the more wholesome pleasures that humanity has produced. A fire, burning
safely within the confines of a fireplace or a woodstove, is a visible
and tangible source of comfort to us. We love everything about it: the
warmth, the beauty of its flames, and—unless one is allergic to
smoke—the smell that it imparts to the surrounding air.
>
> I am sorry to say that if you feel this way about a wood fire, you are
not only wrong but dangerously misguided. I mean to seriously convince
you of this—so you can consider it in part a public service
announcement—but please keep in mind that I am drawing an analogy. I
want you to be sensitive to how you feel, and to notice the resistance
you begin to muster as you consider what I have to say.
>
> Because wood is among the most natural substances on earth, and its
use as a fuel is universal, most people imagine that burning wood must
be a perfectly benign thing to do. Breathing winter air scented by wood
smoke seems utterly unlike puffing on a cigarette or inhaling the
exhaust from a passing truck. But this is an illusion.
>
> Here is what we know from a scientific point of view: There is no
amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe. It is at least as bad for
you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse. (One study found it to
be 30 times more potent a carcinogen.) The smoke from an ordinary wood
fire contains hundreds of compounds known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic,
teratogenic, and irritating to the respiratory system. Most of the
particles generated by burning wood are smaller than one micron—a
size believed to be most damaging to our lungs. In fact, these particles
are so fine that they can evade our mucociliary defenses and travel
directly into the bloodstream, posing a risk to the heart. Particles
this size also resist gravitational settling, remaining airborne for
weeks at a time.
>
> Once they have exited your chimney, the toxic gases (e.g. benzene) and
particles that make up smoke freely pass back into your home and into
the homes of others. (Research shows that nearly 70 percent of chimney
smoke reenters nearby buildings.) Children who live in homes with active
fireplaces or woodstoves, or in areas where wood burning is common,
suffer a higher incidence of asthma, cough, bronchitis, nocturnal
awakening, and compromised lung function. Among adults, wood burning is
associated with more-frequent emergency room visits and hospital
admissions for respiratory illness, along with increased mortality from
heart attacks. The inhalation of wood smoke, even at relatively low
levels, alters pulmonary immune function, leading to a greater
susceptibility to colds, flus, and other respiratory infections. All
these effects are borne disproportionately by children and the elderly.
>
> The unhappy truth about burning wood has been scientifically
established to a moral certainty: That nice, cozy fire in your fireplace
is bad for you. It is bad for your children. It is bad for your
neighbors and their children. Burning wood is also completely
unnecessary, because in the developed world we invariably have better
and cleaner alternatives for heating our homes. If you are burning wood
in the United States, Europe, Australia, or any other developed nation,
you are most likely doing so recreationally—and the persistence of
this habit is a major source of air pollution in cities throughout the
world. In fact, wood smoke often contributes more harmful particulates
to urban air than any other source.
>
> In the developing world, the burning of solid fuel in the home is a
genuine scourge, second only to poor sanitation as an environmental
health risk. In 2000, the World Health Organization estimated that it
caused nearly 2 million premature deaths each year—considerably more
than were caused by traffic accidents.
>
> I suspect that many of you have already begun to marshal
counterarguments of a sort that will be familiar to anyone who has
debated the validity and usefulness of religion. Here is one: Human
beings have warmed themselves around fires for tens of thousands of
years, and this practice was instrumental in our survival as a species.
Without fire there would be no material culture. Nothing is more natural
to us than burning wood to stay warm.
>
> True enough. But many other things are just as natural—such as
dying at the ripe old age of thirty. Dying in childbirth is eminently
natural, as is premature death from scores of diseases that are now
preventable. Getting eaten by a lion or a bear is also your
birthright—or would be, but for the protective artifice of
civilization—and becoming a meal for a larger carnivore would
connect you to the deep history of our species as surely as the
pleasures of the hearth ever could. For nearly two centuries the divide
between what is natural—and all the needless misery that
entails—and what is good has been growing. Breathing the fumes
issuing from your neighbor's chimney, or from your own, now falls on the
wrong side of that divide.
>
> The case against burning wood is every bit as clear as the case
against smoking cigarettes. Indeed, it is even clearer, because when you
light a fire, you needlessly poison the air that everyone around you for
miles must breathe. Even if you reject every intrusion of the "nanny
state," you should agree that the recreational burning of wood is
unethical and should be illegal, especially in urban areas. By lighting
a fire, you are creating pollution that you cannot dispose. It might be
the clearest day of the year, but burn a sufficient quantity of wood and
the air in the vicinity of your home will resemble a bad day in Beijing.
Your neighbors should not have to pay the cost of this archaic behavior
of yours. And there is no way they can transfer this cost to you in a
way that would preserve their interests. Therefore, even libertarians
should be willing to pass a law prohibiting the recreational burning of
wood in favor of cleaner alternatives (like gas).
>
> I have discovered that when I make this case, even to highly
intelligent and health-conscious men and women, a psychological truth
quickly becomes as visible as a pair of clenched fists: They do not want
to believe any of it. Most people I meet want to live in a world in
which wood smoke is harmless. Indeed, they seem committed to living in
such a world, regardless of the facts. To try to convince them that
burning wood is harmful—and has always been so—is somehow
offensive. The ritual of burning wood is simply too comforting and too
familiar to be reconsidered, its consolation so ancient and ubiquitous
that it has to be benign. The alternative—burning gas over fake
logs—seems a sacrilege.
>
> And yet, the reality of our situation is scientifically unambiguous:
If you care about your family's health and that of your neighbors, the
sight of a glowing hearth should be about as comforting as the sight of
a diesel engine idling in your living room. It is time to break the
spell and burn gas—or burn nothing at all.
>
> Of course, if you are anything like my friends, you will refuse to
believe this. And that should give you some sense of what we are up
against whenever we confront religion.
>