The limits of science

[Eric the Green]

(12-20-2016, 02:41 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(12-20-2016, 02:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

"Science is essential to addressing humanity's problems, but it cannot address the human root causes that lead to them.

We need to expose the false logic of our current systems and behaviours and create new ones; only spiritual and cultural transformations and new narratives, can deliver them."

This view is understandable, but does not take into consideration recent advances in the intersection between the biological and social sciences, to wit, cultural evolution. The change the scientist despairs of is caused by cultural evolution, which takes time.  What the climate scientist find perplexing is given that global warming was established as reality almost fifty years ago why do so many still deny it?  They might see this in context if they noted than the fact that cigarettes cause cancer was established 80 years ago and yet folks still smoke.

The reason is simple.  The word that cigarettes cause cancer did not get out officially until 30 years after the discovery.   I was a kid in the 1970's.  All my friends smoked.  So did I when I was 15--but I quit before I got hooked.  We actually called them cancer sticks back then so you can't say we didn't know the danger, but teenagers are dumb.  I had no excuse my dad quit cold turkey when the warnings came our and my mom tapered off and smoking her last cigarette on Super Bowl 1970. My brothers both smoked too, but since have quit. By the 1990's young people had picked up on the idea that smoking was for losers.  My little brother in the Big Brother Program had one requirement for a Big, that he not smoke.  And then when he was 18 he fucking took up smoking, because he felt his life wasn't working and that he was sort of a loser so he might as well smoke.  With great effort he gave up seven years ago when his first child was born (I was so proud of him).  Today cigarette smoking is banned in most public spaces in many states.  Conservatives no longer smoke and so do not defend smoker's rights.  It is accepted that smoking is foolish, but that teens are often foolish.  Almost everybody finds efforts to get kids not to smoke are OK.

For climate change it took 20 years for the word to get out. It took another 15 to convince me, and I m a liberal. Today we are with climate change where we were with cigarettes in the mid-1990's.  Conservatives were still defending tobacco then.  You could still smoke in bars and restaurants, but big corporations were making it harder to do so at work.  That is, corporate America has realized climate change is real, but the (small business)man in the street isn't on board yet. In ten years this will start to change if the analogy holds.

I think those are good points. I know it took me zero time to be convinced of those things, once told of them, but that might not mean anything. The point the image's author raises goes deeper, though. Public attitudes may not be enough; the greed and selfishness of the corporate masters and their political representatives, may not yield to dissemination of facts. But I concede the point that it might eventually shift the balance of power, although it takes too long to avoid needless deaths and suffering. And even so, the "id" and the materialism that motivates the Trumps and Rex Tillersons and the other alligators in the swamp will still exist and cause other problems down the road. Some people are moved to change this course by a spiritual or religious transformation. It plays a role too.