We’re seeing renewed attacks on evolution, certain branches of scientitic research and conspiracy theories involving climatologists and Global Warming. At the same time supernatural thinking (new age, crystals, ID, deified interpretations of the Gaia hypothesis) are thriving. Should we be concerned by the level of magical thinking in our society? And if so what, if anything can be done about it?

MT: This is a continuation of a previous Brain Parade. You can see part one here (link)

Hal Duncan:
I worry that what we’re seeing is, as some have said, the End of the Enlightenment, but I hope that this is just a brief resurgence of the old Romanticism / Rationalism dichotomy that’s been screwing up Western thought for the last three centuries, a panic in the face of Modernity that sends people fleeing into superstition on the one hand and scientism on the other. Passion versus Reason. Faith versus Logic. At the moment the pendulum does seem to be swinging to the Romantic side of that on the big scale — with jihadists, crusaders and zealots royally fucking up the Middle East with their good guy / bad guy moralities based on fear, disgust and anger — and on the small scale — with the society of the spectacle and the cult of the celebrity suckering us into a feast of shit. You are what you eat, and that goes double for ideas.

As far as the Religious Right goes, well those fuckers are just fascists by another name; the whole idea of a “God Almighty” is, as far as I’m concerned, an absolutist symbolic equation of Might and Right. They’re facists and should be named and shamed as such. Unfortunately the Left seems to have disappeared up its own arse into a culture of New Age mumbo-jumbo, Oprah Winfrey self-help shite and chickenshit bourgeois apathy. With documentaries dumbed-down to the level of tabloid sensationalism, politics is reduced to conspiracy theory, and science — even global warming — is just another CGI catastrophe rendered unreal in the Hollywood movie of the mass unconscious. Even the BBC’s Horizon is more likely to run some bollocks about magma plumes or meteor strikes, these days, than deal with something more relevant but less ratings-grabbing. Fucking bread and circuses for the masses.

I don’t know what we can do about it, to be honest. Humour is always a good weapon against idiocy, so parodies and satires like the Church of the SubGenius or the Flying Spaghetti Monster really appeal to me; but I think it’s a mistake to react to that sort of runaway Romanticism with the scientistic antagonism of people like Dawkins. Too often we make the mistake of adopting science as a faith, of assuming and arguing that science can, and will in time, provide a rational explanation for everything. This is absolutist, it’s essentialist, it’s a mechanistic Newtonian faith in Order as a First Principle, and it’s a profoundly unscientific thought. As a statement it’s unprovable and unfalsifiable, so ultimately it takes the Rationalist into the theoretical territory of the Romantic, of convictions as opposed to certainties, where they cannot win. I think there’s a place for such advocacy as a counter-argument, an antithesis to the Romantic thesis, but it too is outmoded. Get with the Modern Era, baby; as long as you put Passion and Reason in opposition, force people to make a choice of one or the other, all you’re doing is creating a culture of — literally — half-wits.

Ultimately I think we have to break down that dichotomy, smash those two rival worldviews together and come up with something that fuses the best of both. Maybe popular fiction can help in that respect.
Hal Duncan is the scottish author behind Vellum

Kristine Smith:
I feel that there will always be some level of magical thinking, because there is a pervasive desire to believe that life possesses some mystery, that there is some purpose to all this, and something else at the end of it other than fire, or a box, or some other disposal method. Except for the furthest reaches of quantum theory, that brand of mystery isn’t really offered by science and what is offered isn’t easily explained or readily accessible. The idea that after death, part of one’s consciousness or consciousness-variant may survive in this or an alternate universe just doesn’t possess the appeal for many folks that seeing a long-dead pet at the other side of the Rainbow Bridge possesses. For the past to continue into the future. For a future that isn’t too new. For changes that don’t inspire fear and uncertainty. For the concept that one has control over one’s life. I think that’s what most people wish for. Until you eliminate those wishes, I don’t know if you can eliminate magical thinking. If you do eliminate that thinking, what are you left with? There is a gap that needs to be filled. What will develop to take its place?

I feel that the best weapon to counter the corruption of scientific thought is to teach and promote the ability to think critically, to look at the evidence presented and differentiate solid argument from obfuscation and pandering to base emotion from outright lies. To understand that just because B happens after A doesn’t necessarily prove that the two are related. To understand how science is argued, the concept of theory and hypothesis. To understand that answers aren’t always pat and don’t always consist of short sentences of monosyllabic words.

Whether that is what people really expect or simply what the media reinforces is another argument. Because a society of critical thinkers isn’t exactly an easy society to sell products or botched political concepts to, is it?

Kristine Smith is a John Campbell award winning science fiction author

Related posts:

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response to this post, or trackback from your own site. Wax-political uses threaded comments so you can reply to any comment directly by clicking on the relevent reply to comment link.