One
of the standard plays of those who refuse to accept observations of
the paranormal involves assuming a sanctimonious “holier-than-thou”
attitude in regard to rationality. The skeptic will imply that he and
his ideological allies are rational thinkers, and that those who
believe otherwise are irrational. A lame example of this strategy is
to be found in a long essay recently published in The Atlantic.
The essay by Kurt Andersen is called “How America Lost Its Mind.”
The approach Andersen takes is to go throughout the past 60 years of
American history, and belittle a huge variety of observations,
theories or thought tendencies that he dislikes. He tries to trash
all such things by claiming that they were irrational, part of a
process of America losing its mind. The resulting critique,
involving a great deal of unfairness and poor logic, is a kind of
toxic soup that is served up in a cup marked “100% rational.”
Andersen
disparages the counterculture of the 1960's, trying to portray it as
some outburst of irrationality and reality-denial. This is quite
unhistorical. The hippie-movement or counterculture of the 1960's
largely arose as a reaction to the sins of 1960's America, which
included racial discrimination, conformist consumerism, and the
waging of a senseless war abroad in Vietnam in which more than
300,000 died or were maimed by bombs dropped by American bombers and
toxic Agent Orange sprayed by American personnel. Reacting against
such things was more like rationality and paying attention to reality than
the opposite.
Two
of the visuals of Andersen's article show peace signs and an “End
the War” sign among various other portrayals supposed to show
irrational Americans. Andersen says, “As the Vietnam War escalated
and careened, antirationalism flowered,” and then in the next
sentence he discusses a Vietnam war protest described by Mailer.
The
net result is we are left with the insinuation that opposing
one of America's most senseless wars was an act of irrationality. But it was
actually the opposite of that.
1960's: a rational response to an irrational war
Andersen
then attempts to make a list of various things that he thinks are
examples of America “losing its mind” and becoming “untethered
from reality.” Among the things he lists are Raymond Moody's book
describing near-death experiences, and Charles Tart's research on
out-of-body experiences. But what are these things doing in such a
list? Both near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences are
occasional parts of human experience, whatever their cause.
Documenting such experiences is an example of paying attention to
reality, not becoming untethered from it. Andersen gives us a bogus
claim that Charles Tart “proceeded to devote his
academic career to proving that attempts at objectivity are a sham
and magic is real.” To the contrary, Tart is a very serious
scientific researcher who has written many level-headed books dealing
with parapsychology research. I've read several of his books, and
they never presented any belief about magic. You can see Tart's
recent blog postings here, and you will find no sign of Andersen's
cheap-shot depiction being correct.
Andersen
then goes on to include UFO observers in his mudslinging, by saying,
“I’m pretty certain that the unprecedented surge of UFO reports
in the ’70s was not evidence of extraterrestrials’ increasing
presence but a symptom of Americans’ credulity and magical thinking
suddenly unloosed.” But there's no “magical thinking” in a
typical UFO sighting – a person simply reports some strange thing
he saw. Absurdly, Andersen tries to suggest that maybe we should have
denied Jimmy Carter the presidency because he saw a UFO. He states,
“Until we’d passed through the ’60s and half of the ’70s, I’m
pretty sure we wouldn’t have given the presidency to some dude,
especially a born-again Christian, who said he’d recently seen a
huge, color-shifting, luminescent UFO hovering near him.” Carter's
sighting (which actually occurred 7 years before he became president) was witnessed by other people. There's nothing irrational
about reporting what you and other witnesses have seen, nor is it
irrational to report what you alone have seen. Andersen's type of
“shaming the witnesses” talk is deplorable, the type of talk
engaged by those who wish to be shielded from some aspect of reality
they find disturbing.
Andersen
scorns those who have suspicions about evolution dogmas, but also
scorns those who believe in UFO's or ancient astronauts. What sense
does that make? If Darwinian assumptions are correct, we might
expect that there should be life on many of the billions of planets
in our galaxy. In that case we might well expect to have had
extraterrestrial visitors who visited in the past or are visiting
now. We may note the very arbitrary selectiveness of what Andersen
deems to be irrational. Why is the ancient astronauts thesis
advanced by von Daniken irrational, when the same idea was suggested
in print earlier by distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan, a hero of
people who call themselves rationalists?
After
engaging in many an unfair characterization, Andersen then goes on to
try to link these supposed examples of irrationality with the
baffling election of Donald Trump, using a kind of logic insinuating
that the election of 2016 was the result of seeds planted in the
1960's and 1970's. His reasoning is not convincing. When judging
claims that event X helped to cause event Y, we should always look at
the time between the two events. The longer the time between the
events, the less likely the two are to be causally related. In this
case there is some 50 years between the hippies of the 1960's and the
election of 2016. Any attempt to suggest the first “planted the seeds”
of the second is not believable. The “money isn't very important”
hippies of the 1960's criticized the “creature comfort goals” of
the moneyed establishment (to quote a phrase from a 1960's song), and
would not likely have approved of Trump's election.
The fact that Trump did not actually win the popular vote, and lost by nearly 3 million votes, is a fact inconsistent with Andersen's thesis suggesting Trump's election is a sign that America has lost its mind. You could just as easily argue the popular vote totals were a sign of America's good judgment.
The fact that Trump did not actually win the popular vote, and lost by nearly 3 million votes, is a fact inconsistent with Andersen's thesis suggesting Trump's election is a sign that America has lost its mind. You could just as easily argue the popular vote totals were a sign of America's good judgment.
A
close examination of the dogmas held by "holier-than-thou" rationalists
will show that these supposed rationalists are often people throwing
rocks from inside glass houses, because such thinkers are often
guilty of believing things every bit as irrational – or even more
irrational – than many of the beliefs they call irrational. Such an
examination will be found in past and future posts on this blog.
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