A coda, not an epitaph

LISTEN. Rationality meets once more this evening. It's Closing Day again. In addition to my standard exit lines (keep asking questions, nothing has concluded) I'll encourage us all (not least myself) to continue reflecting on the full meaning of rationality. Rational people try to achieve their ends economically and efficiently, they constantly interrogate themselves about the wisdom and humanity of their chosen ends, they never close the door on other possibilities, they intend and expect to feel at home in the world and to coexist with other rational agents whose various personal projects and faiths (hopes, dreams, delights) make the world a richer and more celebrative plurality.

I've started a little reading list, to support that encouragement.

Over the past 50 years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. Those merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.

Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and each other. And he traces the feedback loops between our polarized political identities and our polarized political institutions that are driving our political system towards crisis. g'r

 “...toxic systems compromise good individuals with ease. They do so not by demanding we betray our values but by enlisting our values such that we betray each other. What is rational and even moral for us to do individually becomes destructive when done collectively. How American politics became a toxic system, why we participate in it, and what it means for our future is the subject of this book.”― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized 

Why We Are Not Living in a Post-Truth EraAn (Unnecessary) Defense of Reason and a (Necessary) Defense of Universites’ Role in Advancing it by Steven Pinker

              

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."

"The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

And finally, another prescient Saganism stands as a cautionary coda for our course and our historical moment. I've shared it with Garrison Keillor's correspondents, one of whom solicited GK's wishes for the guy he calls The Orange Man. The semi-morose Minnesotan wrote "I don’t have an opinion on [Trump's] legal situation but I am hopeful that Republicans will give up on the lie of the stolen election. It’s a hole they’ve dug for their candidates and it doesn’t work to their benefit, as lies never do. The vast majority of Republicans know that it’s a lie. It’s dangerous to support a narcissist in politics." 

To which I say:

Unfortunately the vast majority of Republicans won't say it in public. In fact about 70% of them say they believe the Big Lie. Carl Sagan's sad observation of a quarter century ago rings true: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

And that's why Pinker says in his final podcast episode Being right that getting it right might mean admitting you're wrong, and asks What if we were to replace intellectual combat with genuine discussion and treat beliefs as hypotheses to be tested rather than treasures to be defended? We'd be less prone to bamboozlement, that's what. Less susceptible to the seductions of charlatans. Less confused and conflicted. More rational. More likely to flourish and be happy. 

Good luck, everyone. Sapere aude. 

When in doubt or despair, remember: Solvitur ambulando. 

And: there is more day to dawn.