This is my first diary, a post from my own blog that I've decided to repost here. It is based on an article that I read earlier today over at Technology Review by way of Rawstory about the staggering levels of scientific illiteracy in America. There are few things that squash my nuts quite like the dead weight we have to carry as a species due to the rejection of fundamental scientific truths by a major segment of the citizenry.
Cross-posted at UNFETTEREDMIND
Throughout the brief and mostly dark saga of human history, iridescent wisps of brilliance have struggled against the pervading blackness of ignorance to lead humanity towards a future rooted in reality and focused on harmony. Time has always venerated the great achievements of human thought, however it has also provided for an ever-expanding chasm that threatens to swallow whole the progress our species has made towards understanding the strange environment that nurtures and supports us.
Nothing illustrates this more than the rate of scientific illiteracy that utterly dominates the human population. Raised in the chains of religious orthodoxy and distracted by the fruits of technological innovation, the vast majority of people do not understand how we've come to grasp nature, instead content to apathetically accept our ability to control its mechanisms with total disregard for the consequences of such reckless exploitation. Even the cosmic truths that may seem obvious and incontrovertible are the targets of shallow derision and politically motivated cynicism propagated by ideological fundamentalists. Whereas the spheres of theology and philosophy are to pose the great questions of existence, it is the realm of science to evaluate our environment to provide the answers. Ultimately, both have succeeded in their tasks, however in practice, each has failed to engage the general population in such a way as to produce a symbiotic relationship that pushes our understanding, and has left us with a bitter parasitic system of dialectical doubt that tears community apart at the seams and ensures that progress be derided as a utopian fantasy.
The article I linked to is the first of a three part examination of our collective illiteracy. Coincidentally, I happen to be reading Cosmos, by Carl Sagan (whom David Ewing Duncan quotes and uses as a framework for his article) - a man whose very goal, as a "science popularizer," was to bridge the gap of ignorance with the wonders and ultimate connectedness of our existence. This is a theme that I have decided will be a focal point for my future, and I will return to this topic frequently in hopes that others will be inspired or, at the least, a little better informed.