There was a show on PBS recently about the debate on climate change, basically showing that a small number of well-funded groups have managed to convince large numbers of people that climate change is not happening.
It is fascinating to see how large numbers of people have basically decided that “climate science” is junk. But then again, given just how dumb these scientists have been re: their knowledge of the science of psychology and communication, I am starting to think the same way.
It would be easy to dismiss climate science doubters as “well, what can you do about stupid ignorant people,” but that to me is a dodge. If university scientists are so smart, and the unwashed masses are so dumb, then it follows that these smart people ought to be able to convince the dumb people of whatever they want to convince them of. But in fact, a small number of people, with their own economic agenda, have appeared to outsmart the scientists, by winning the argument, at least in the court of public opinion. If you measure purely by public opinion results, the “global warming doesn’t exist” crowd seems to be a whole lot smarter than the scientists.
The ease with which the anti-climate change crowd has pulled this trick is worth considering. If these university scientists were so gosh darn smart, then they ought to know that you can’t just do your little experiments and publish a few papers in obscure journals and expect some guy in Dubuque to understand what they are doing or why. The average person’s faith has to be maintained. Back in the 50’s and 60’s we used to accept the word of “professors” and “rocket scientists” without question. But not any more.
Lately, scientists have gotten lazy. They are not doing their marketing. Their PR stinks. As a nation, we are growing to dislike scientists. (Anyone who has seen Revenge of the Nerds should know we don’t like smart people as a general policy.) We see them as immoral beings (or at least, by their own admission, amoral) who are often on the payroll of powerful corporations or elitist universities, often making chemical additives, poisons, and genetically modified foods without a thought for if they should or not. This makes us suspect them generally.
One big part of this mistrust of science is this: Schools are based on hierarchy, and a big part of the education system is selecting a minority of people who are “smarter,” who thus get to go on to lives of greater wealth and power. And for those left behind, this is not seen as a fair or benign system. The resentment has to go somewhere.
When the average person looks at the oppression exercised by those in power, they see the university system – and the scientists who all, it seems, work exclusively for that system . . . as part of a piece of a grand political machine that relentlessly does them ill. So of course, when one more idea comes along that asks for the lower classes to go without, or just talks down to them and says “we are smarter than you are so don’t ask a lot of foolish questions, just accept that we know what we are doing,” is it really all that surprising that the average Joe would see the scientists, not as objective thinkers, but as stooges of the status quo power elite? Especially when the global-warming-is-junk crowd is doing such a fabulous job of being sympathetic to their fears?
How is the average un-educated person supposed to separate actual irrefutable scientific fact from one more ploy designed to maintain the class system? Answer: they can’t. Too much trust equity has been lost in maintaining the privileges of “smart” people, thus fostering a constant backlash of resentment and suspicion. The idea that dumb people should blindly accept the prognostications of a group of people who claim to be purely interested in objective provable fact but are on the payroll of something seen to be manipulative and oppressive, well, the result was actually predictable.
This is a real problem we have in our society, that we are losing our collective faith in the people at the top. If people have lost faith in “science,” well, let’s not blame the unwashed masses for their ignorance. That’s a dodge. Machiavelli preached this 500 years ago: it is essential to use the faith of the masses to manage them. The people who are in charge should be aware of the need to maintain faith in science, and not take that faith for granted. When that faith is lost, we see how small interests can take advantage, as it becomes impossible for us as a nation to take action against them. And frankly, since the “scientists” didn’t see this easily predictable outcome coming, why should we trust them to predict anything else?
© Justin Locke
