While we can sit around and be exasperated with the bizarre lack of logic and facts in this debate, I'd like to suggest that there actually isn't anything bizarre or tragic about it, the facts are missing for a reason.
This is the new frame, so get used to it. When they cannot win on the facts, they eliminate them from the debate and assert that everything is a matter of faith. It is like the argument that ID should be taught next to evolution because they are both a matter of faith. I believe in evolution; Suzie believes in creationism. This being a democratic society, we should all be able to have our beliefs. Turn it around and instead of using the frame to hoist religious belief up to the standing of science, you can use it to lower science to the level of religous belief.
In both instances we are being told that we should throw out documented facts (pollutions makes people sick, there is a hole in the ozone, icebergs are breaking up, species are disappearing...) and focus only on the unknowns (origin of life, how long we can live with hole in ozone). Because no one knows the answer, boom, all answers are ideological, not truth, and boom, they are all on par with each other.
The idea that we can use facts to make an educated guess is dismissed when it comes to the issues where those in power (financial or political) rely on the absence of facts to keep that power. Oddly, no one seems to be outraged when doctors or weathermen make educated guesses based on available facts. Actually, I think there have been leaders in Africa spouting the same bs, only in response to Aids and its treatment, calling it voodoo.
Anyway... I don't see capitalism and industry screetching to a halt in our lifetimes. In fact, some will find ways to profit from the evironmetalist movement. So they need not be so defensive. Stick to calling us spoiled young brats who know nothing about the real world and who just want attention. Like those anti-war protesters who were screaming we shouldn't go to Iraq. What the hell do we know, anyway? Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
Which is why we have to stick our necks in the religious debates and remind them that there is belief (all the fanatisms all put in one big ugly big bag) and reason (and its sidekicks doubt, experiment, logic, facts). In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
They think that they are the more rational, the more scientific-based, the more "centered"...(oh those corporativist)
And the reason is that "reason" can also be very very fanatic.
We are delaing with the rejection of the following idea: HAving a set of ideas and myths (religious or not) and tryting to obtain in good faith your facts and take any criticism into the collection of facts.
The disregard of "looking for facts" as imperfect as it is.
Religious people as scientists do look for facts.. using different frames.. but they indeed look for them (most of them).
Fanatics .. independently of the mythology they defend, disregard the facts... And there are a bunch of them in Science (remember the difference between the radical scientists which makes fun of everything which is not Sicence, and the scientists who knows very well the limits of his framework).
People not interested in facts have all the cards...because they know how to play the game. We should learn how to play this game. We should try to break the barriers that the different frames create between scientists, religious, magic thinking people, enviromentalists, corporatists.. in each group there are people who look for facts (they interpret it, validate it and reflect upon them differently for sure..but they are..well OPEN)..although the frame of reference may create the ilusion that they do not. They have something in common: they follow certain internal logic. They should be our target...
In the same vain, the corporativist in the article is tryign to co-opt at the same time the fanatics anti-green and the fanatics pro-science. See my point?
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
That gets a 24 (which I will really do by giving a 4 to 6 of your comments).
I'm very hesitant to discuss what made me think of it in that way, but I have to confess the idea is not completely original... Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
