To start, I had hoped to work in this quote from Isaac Asimov. “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
’” This quote is from 1980, and it’s been echoed by other great thinkers like Carl Sagan, who spoke about the public being unable to grasp the technology we all use every day, and having no ability to set their own agenda or ask the right questions, culminating in a celebration of ignorance. He said that in 1995. Even these two could not have foreseen how bad this has gotten in the 21st century, with people now questioning the shape of the Earth and the validity of basic arithmetic.
This anti-science fervor makes us easy to manipulate, because any contrarian message is bought en masse, no matter who is telling it or what their motives are. We are witnessing a multimodal anti-science empire operating through mass media and legislation, moving towards state-sanctioned pseudoscience. And we don’t have to speculate as to how harmful this can be.
We have history to reflect upon. Persecution of scientists under Stalin was widespread. Lysenko was a non-scientist who was promoted to a high scientific position under Stalin’s regime, and who convinced Stalin that genetics and relativity were evil.
He denied the existence of genes. To address agricultural problems, he promoted a pseudoscientific practice called vernalization, and millions died of starvation as a result of crop failures. Scientists who refused to renounce genetics were left destitute or even executed.
Are we at risk of repeating such events? Absolutely. Let’s face reality, Trump is going to win the election.
Could he bring a Lysenko-like figure into his cabinet and begin persecuting real scientists? Absolutely. Will he try to expand executive power and abuse his position to the point of authoritarianism?
Probably. And there are plenty of wealthy people who will help him try to do that. I won’t go into detail about Project 2025, but it’s not a conspiracy.
It’s a real plan to move America into the first stages of Christian theocracy, and it’s already under way. This is the evil upon our doorstep, and while it should receive far more attention than people like Terrence Howard, we should recognize that it’s all different shades of the same phenomenon. Anti-science sentiment does not arise out of thin air.
Science is becoming increasingly more complicated and therefore difficult for the public to understand, and some people lash out due to the discomfort this produces. But more importantly, there are vested interests in promoting this mentality stemming from Republican funded think tanks, the deliberate sculpting of a populace that is not only science illiterate but actively hostile toward science. Denial of climate change is in the interest of energy producers.
Denial of basic evolutionary biology is in the interest of Christian theocrats. These efforts go all the way up the ladder to figures like the Koch brothers. I’m not saying Terry is funded by the Koch brothers, but he rides this prevalent attitude of reality denial and hostility toward any form of expertise to this bizarre prominence that now has people questioning 2nd grade math.
To wield an agenda that is in opposition with science, one must popularize the notion that science is wrong and evil. Universities, the places where you gain knowledge, are evil. Don’t go there and learn things so that you figure out how to resist our brainwashing, and also how to organize and topple our political structures.
Universities are famously places that stand up against the powers that be, so they must be demonized. It is a successful campaign because many people are happy to have a reason to not learn anything and cling to primitive beliefs without basis or self-scrutiny. It goes without saying that religion is a primary driver of anti-science mentality because scientific progress, particularly as of late, has challenged many religious narratives, such as immaculate divine creation.
This triggers fear of mortality, as their narrative is eroded, and they lash out in precisely the same way as one would defend themselves against physical violence, with hostility and tribalism. At the same time this is not purely a religious issue, it has at this point completely permeated secular politics. I myself am not a Democrat and I no longer vote Democrat out of total disillusionment with the party, as it does not have the best interests of the American people in mind.
But the Republican party is cartoonishly apocalyptic in comparison. Know-nothing, proudly stupid, in denial of truly all science, actively pushing us back into the dark ages in terms of both ignorance and authoritarian control by the church. In the wake of this, to pretend that idiots like Terry should be given a voice is preposterous.
He is not the culprit but he exacerbates larger trends already in place. He does not deserve a platform. He is not part of any legitimate conversation.
And most of the figures with any kind of expertise that shoe-horn their way into the conversation have ulterior motives as well, and only serve to further confuse the public. Like Eric. So let’s get down to brass tacks.
What is anti-intellectualism at its core? It boils down to three principles. 1) Religious anti-rationalism.
Essentially emotions over facts. 2) Populist anti-elitism, or the rejection of intellectual institutions. And 3) Instrumentalism, the belief that pursuit of knowledge only serves practical means, namely profit.
This movement intends to halt the acquisition of new knowledge that would undermine groups with power and privilege. Misinformation that benefits those in power is perpetuated, and those who speak truth to that power are preemptively character assassinated. The educational sphere is not completely blameless, admittedly.
Part of the disdain towards academia is fostered by the increasingly high cost of education. But this is not in itself a justification for abandoning the sanctity of centers of knowledge. Corporations do not have their financial interests challenged when the public can not even identify the issues that they are harmed by, thus perpetuating their own subjugation.
We can historically blame the fossil fuel industry, the tobacco industry, and so forth, but we do not extend this to scientific knowledge itself. Politicians, corporations, and religious institutions stand to benefit the most from promoting anti-intellectualism. They enact the politicization of non-partisan issues, polarizing things like climate change so severely that simply acknowledging basic science gets one ostracized.
This spills over into the social realm just as easily. Anti-intellectualism breeds nationalism, or the same blind allegiance to a governing body that is actively sowing the seeds of division. This is the reason for equating Black Lives Matter or any other kind of social justice with “fascism”, and the justification for this always involves inventing violent intent out of thin air.
This in turn is used to justify a militarized police force under the guise of protection. And lastly, anti-intellectualism promotes being skeptical towards perceived authority while demanding that people blindly follow demagogues who are amplified by social media. People who fall into this way of thinking will place an unreasonable level of skepticism on the body of knowledge produced by tens of thousands of scientists operating all over the world under every type of government and in both the public and private sector, yet they place absolutely zero scrutiny on the figures who confidently feed them the narratives they enjoy, which are riddled with distortion and fabrication almost without exception.
These people find comfort in the strength and confidence such figures convey in an appeal to shared beliefs. That’s why Trump famously stated that he could shoot someone in the middle of fifth avenue and he wouldn’t lose any voters. Because their idolization of him is emotional, not logical.
In the end, and here comes Dave the broken record, anti-science mentality and reality denial is the single greatest threat facing mankind. Take a movie like “Don’t Look Up”. Though obviously satirical, the manner in which the general public in this modern era would react to any existential threat was depicted magnificently.
There is no issue that could be more non-partisan than a comet coming to kill us all. And yet, the comet was hyperpoliticized, people were brainwashed into believing the comet didn’t exist, and a megalomaniacal tech oligarch fucked us all. In my estimation that is roughly what would happen if there were another far deadlier pandemic or some other such situation.
And the culprit is not the scientific community. It’s the pundits and demagogues who abuse the power of the internet to warp public perception of reality. People like Rogan are not the main culprits but they also are not blameless, and deserve their share of criticism for amplifying the chaos for monetary gain.
And sadly, other than directly neutralizing sources of disinformation and promoting general science literacy, I don’t have a meaningful solution to this doomsday recipe. I don’t know how to fundamentally change human nature to be either less corrupt and manipulative, or less blindly credulous. I will admit, my youthful optimism has been diminished as I enter middle age.
But I’m not giving up just yet.
