The Age of Anti-Enlightenment

Although I and many of the people I know best and love are all members, graduates, or products of higher education, I have been noticing a recent trend in anti-intellectualism among politicians, society in general, and even among the members of my own family. Admittedly, those to whom I am closest (parents, cousins, aunts and uncles) are mostly in accord with my beliefs, but there is something deeply disturbing about the discovery that family and acquaintances do not share one's fundamental belief systems.

I'm not talking about religion, per se (this time). I have friends who are Christian, Jewish, agnostic, secular humanist, pagan, Wiccan, atheist, etc. They do not ask me to conform to their beliefs, and I do not ask them to agree with mine. But we do all share an affinity for knowledge - whether in terms of education or simply the desire to learn.

It is a passion that is, unfortunately, not shared by many people in our country.

People ask, often, why they should bother learning this thing or that thing. Why it matters whether something is fact or fiction. Why history is important.

This is not to say that I think everyone should learn everything - that's not possible, and we all know it. But there's no reason to actively avoid education. And no reason why on earth the majority of people in this country are unaware that we were not founded on Christian principles. For goodness sake people, why are most Europeans more well-versed in our history than we are? That's just sad.

It's a symptom of what Charles P. Pierce in Idiot America terms "a war on expertise" (8). He says,
The rise of Idiot America today reflects - for profit, mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and the pursuit of power - the breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. it also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people we should trust the least are the people who know best what they're talking about. (8)
In other words, we can't trust a scientist to know science, a historian to know history, or a doctor to know medicine. We (speaking here in the "Idiot America" sense) should rather trust, like Sarah Palin, in our instincts to guide us, in our knee-jerk reaction against anything new or unique, in our "common sense" - which, I would like to point out, is usually light-years away from "sense," however "common" it may be - to tell us that what we've always been told is true, despite the factual evidence to the contrary staring us incredulously in the face. We should agree that the snake is evil and that the fruit it proffers us is terrible despite the fact that it will indeed make us as gods.

Because that's what the story in Genesis all boils down to. The idea that knowledge is bad. That it is somehow evil to wish to be the best we can. To know truth from falsehood. The idea that discernment and conscience - that maturity - are corrupting forces that will sully the ignorant infantilism in which we (again, as "Idiot America") would prefer to wallow, our thumbs stuffed in our mouths and a glassy, glazed look in our eyes as we gaze upward, waiting for the beneficence of a giant Santa Claus to pat us on the head and give us presents.

Because if we take a bite out of the apple we might realize that there is no Santa Claus. That we are responsible for our own actions. That with knowledge comes power, that with power comes responsibility, that with responsibility comes maturity, and that with maturity comes wisdom. But if we never take that bite out of the apple, then we remain children, and someone else is able to tell us what to do, where to go, how to live, why we exist, and even who we are. Without knowledge and all that springs from it we are trapped in servitude, not to those with knowledge, but to the bullies who choose force over knowledge and fight to keep us away from knowledge because, ultimately, knowledge - the proverbial pen - is indeed mightier than the sword.

Apple, anyone? I hear they make a tasty pie. And what's more American than that?

Brought to you by the letter "A"

In this case, the "A" is not a scarlet fabric representation of marital (or extra-marital) infidelity emblazoned upon my breast so that the world can read my shame and shun me accordingly. However, I am fairly convinced that in some parts of the country (and the world), the "A" to which I here refer would in fact earn me far worse treatment at the hands of the local population. Fortunately for me, however, I live in a liberal American city that permits my special brand of atrocity.

"A," as will come as no surprise to my few regular readers, is for "atheism." Over the last week or so I have been reading John Allen Paulos' irreligion (which, in a side note, has a "0" on the cover, not an "A" or even an "i"), and a few weeks past had my class discussing such hot-button topics as "evolution versus creationism," "science versus religion," and "eugenics."

Some of the results of this have been interesting. Paulos is one of the more rational, reasoned atheist writers out there (he is a mathematician and much less angry than, for instance, Richard Dawkins), since he refrains from disparaging comments about believers and uses logic and probability to make his points. This is not to say that he doesn't season his book with a good deal of snark - there's plenty of that in there - but he tries to be tongue-in-cheek rather than abrasive.

One of the more interesting points he raises that I haven't seen in before is this: "Embedding God in a holy book's detailed narrative and building an entire culture around this narrative seem by themselves to confer a kind of existence on Him" (62). In other words, we'd feel awfully stupid in following the deistic tenets of our societies if we didn't believe in a god because then there is absolutely no reason for some of our laws, idiosyncrasies, and habitual practices. In other words, we justify our belief through the traditions that have grown out of it. Like saying that "Mommy and Daddy wouldn't put out milk and cookies if Santa Claus weren't real." The act itself neither proves nor disproves the existence of Santa Claus, just as the presence of religion neither proves nor disproves the existence of god.

And from this also springs the idea that people now have come to believe because they were not capable - as children - of making the decision not to believe, since they had not yet developed an adult's incredulity. We tend, as a species, not to convert to a wholly new religion in adulthood (it DOES happen, certainly, but it is less common than a perpetuation of childhood belief) because we are creatures of habit. As Paulos continues, "Suspend disbelief for long enough and one can end up believing" (62).