These interblogs can be hard to keep up with. Once a Thirsty is posted, it must be read, then digested, and pondered for a while until a response occurs to the reader, which response must then be put into words and crafted into a written form that hopefully conveys a useful answer. By that time, the original Thirsty is last week's (or last month's) post. So I hope nobody will mind if I write a new post about Yaro's Summer Thirsty:
What would clear the air around our universities the way a thunderstorm clears the air in the desert?
This came to mind when I was recalling a trip of my own to the Southwest when I was in grad school - this one in winter, to Taos to ski. Not all of our group were as avid about skiing as I was, so we took a cheap motel in town, and I caught a shuttle bus to the ski area. It was a creaky old bus with a creaky old driver, of limited organizational skills. On the return trip in the afternoon, as you emerge from the mountain canyon, and turn south towards the town, there is a mountain straight ahead, rising from the plateau on the other side of Taos, where it dominates the skyline, especially after a winter storm when it is white with snow in the sunshine. One of the skiers nearer to the front asked the driver the name of the mountain.
"That there," he announced, pointing a shaky finger out through the windshield, "is Las Truchas Mountain." He paused momentarily.
"When I was a child," he went on, "we were taught.. that Las Truchas Mountain.. was the
highest mountain in the state of New Mexico!" His declaration was emphatic.
Overhearing this, I raised an eyebrow, because I new it wasn't. Just that afternoon, I had stood at the top of the chairlift and looked at Wheeler peak, while reading the signboard describing how the peak was hidden from the plateau behind lower mountains, and had not been properly measured until the mid 1950's when it was found to the the highest in the state.
But our driver wasn't finished..
"And then," he continued ruefully, "some goddamngeologists went and found another mountain up there somewhere." And he waved a dismissive hand towards the mountain range we had just left.
I was stuck by the resentment. Those Goddamngeologists! Those interlopers! That arriviste mountain whose name he would not speak! He was genuinely pissed off that anyone had discovered a higher mountain than the one he had been taught about as a kid.
I told this story to a colleague a while back, and his response was apt: "You can do all the science you want," he mused "but you'd better not mess with received wisdom."
Which brings me to my answer to Yaro's Thirsty: What would clear the air for me would be for people to welcome, rather than resent new knowledge. Wouldn't our lives (not just ours in universities, but everybody's) be so much simpler if we could welcome new more accurate understanding, and replace erroneous ideas without all the anger and resentment? I want to do my job in an atmosphere where knowledge is welcomed. I want the final arbiter of our work to be whether it aligns with external reality (my science roots are showing), not whether it makes us feel good. Or raises the university's profile. Or makes good marketing copy. Or sells newspapers. Or attracts tuition-paying students. In fact, I want knowledge to
be the whole point of what we do, and what people value us for.
But no. People want to believe the same thing on Wednesday that they believed on Monday -
no matter what happens on Tuesday.
Climate change,
Continental Drift,
Evolution,
The heliocentric solar system. Each met with hostility and resentment. Even raise an issue as trivial as whether Pluto should be considered a planet, and
everyone totally
loses their
shit.
I vaguely dream of some event that would confront people so directly with the real world that they would be forced to see the wisdom of accepting reality, and the folly of clinging to myth. Something to make people actively seek the solid info over the comforting illusion.
We touched on this idea a while ago in the comments about Cassandra's Doonesbury
post. Having to deliver real work in an job setting is one small form of external reality that students will eventually face. Individually. One at a time. What if everyone could face that "Aha" moment all at once.
But I fear the storm that would bring that clarity. What cataclysm would it take? How dark would the day be before humans are finally willing to admit that opinions/beliefs/hypotheses/notions aren't knowledge if they are at odds with the outside world? Would we even survive such an upheaval? For while a thunderstorm can sure clear the air, the flash floods make a real mess down here on the ground.
And more than I fear the storm, I fear that the storm would fail. I fear that after the storm, through the flotsam, and mud and receding floodwaters would come the
fools and the
hucksters. The
conspiracy theorists and the
charlatans. And people would cling ever tighter to their superstitions.
And so perhaps it's just as well this is nothing more than an idle daydream. We must instead go about patiently arguing for real standards, real thought and analysis, real knowledge. Slowly. One student at a time.
Sigh.
The esteemed English department at Trinity College, Dublin, recently added a frightening and powerful new professor to its ranks: Conan the Barbarian.