Continued (2)
It seems that with the technological developments of the last 20 years, Generation Z (1995-2012), the Polars (2013 – Present), and a good share of the generations going back to my own (the Baby Boomers) have lost or never had any serious respect for actual science, including the science behind all the technology that dominates their daily lives and perceptions of reality. Again, it shows how easily sapiens is manipulated by whatever forces are loudest and repeating whatever their ‘message’ is, ad infinitum. Sapiens seems determined not to actually learn to think critically and slides easily into religion and irrational social/ scientific/political interpretations of almost everything. The list seems all encompassing: – the endless, ever increasing manipulations of consumerism, the blatant destruction of our natural world, disease phenomena such as epidemics & pandemics, the biological basis of gender. In societies outside those with some claim to “democracy”, reality is dictated by the state. And even some of those states undermine whatever meaning the word has and call themselves the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As a result recent film helped millions of viewers to understand, science made the horror of a nuclear bomb possible. And although it brought an end to the Japanese initiated conflict of WW2, it very significantly raised the bar of human self-destruction. In the years that followed, scientific research proceeded to improve the lives of the citizens of the country where these advances were made, ultimately enhancing the so-called superpower status of the United States. The list of inventions and discoveries from the late 1940’s through the moon landing of 1969 is indeed impressive.
Most began in a laboratory and of course took a years before the results reached commercial status or publication. Advances like the first commercial television broadcast (1951), the impact of Jonas Salk’s vaccine in pretty well eradicating polio (1955), publication of the studies (1948 and 1953) of American sexual behaviour by Alfred Kinsey, the 1953 announcement of irrefutable scientific proof that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”(1962) revealed the extreme toxicity of DDT and other chemicals foisted on the public to deal with “pests” but which are deadly to man, to bird life, and almost all living creatures. And finally, that era’s pinnacle moment of scientific achievement: the 1969 American landing on the moon. These clearly scientific events made nearly all Americans stand back in awe of how science can move our world forward. The focus was at the root, and the root was science.
So the question is, why did this focus and respect fade away in the consciousness of a large percentage of the population? While I cannot claim to grasp every facet of this phenomena but I can suggest a few possible reasons.
One may have its origins in the way the tobacco industry responded to the threat to their profits from the enormous hold on the public when the scientific truth about the link to ling cancer hit the media. The tobacco industry literally created an army of unethical fake “scientists” to counter the tested and retested findings. And in turn they developed media outlets to promote their lies. Considering how pervasive cigarette smoking was, and how seriously addictive smoking is, whatever fortunes were spent creating “fake” science and media, it no doubt was a drop in the bucket.
Fortunately the truth about the deadly connection between smoking and cancer succeeded in dominating the narrative. But sadly so many people from each subsequent generation have chosen to ignore the blatant warnings printed on each package. And they take up the habit, thinking it makes them “cool” ( a word I have always despised) and that somehow, they will not be among the unlucky ones.
What this particular consumer product drama initiated, the creation of a monstrous strategy by the most powerful corporations dedicated to doing everything possible to hide the truth of the dangers and deficiencies of whatever they are foisting on the public, has become pretty standard practice. Yes, environmental & consumer laws were enacted because of activists like Ralph Nader and groups like Greenpeace. But they are few and lack the monetary and political support needed to push back against multi-national corporations.
Even if a few more advanced “democratic” countries enact laws aimed at protecting nature and their citizens, these corporations simply push their lies and products in countries where there are few, if any regulations. For example, if a particular herbicide or insecticide is declared carcinogenic in countries of the “developed world” the corporations take their poisons and sell them in countries where awareness and education are so low that they scoop up the deadly chemicals and even think they have some miraculous quality to assure that their produce will thrive. For example, sadly I have seen poor farmers in Morocco totally engulfed in some powder they are spraying over their fields. It may well kill the particular bugs eating their plants, but it will also kill every other insect (especially the pollinators) and over time, the farmer himself.
With globalisation everything has changed, in my opinion, mostly for the worse. These global corporations have the power to play their games in each and every country without regard to anything other than profit which in most cases are not exactly shared in an equitable manner with the people doing the actual work. An army of lobbyists is ready to set the stage and buy off the officials. And so, it seems that technology (based upon certain scientific breakthroughs) took a leap frog forward, leaving science as the nebulous hinter-ground that gave birth to technology.
, or