An op-ed column in today’s Sunday Star-Ledger (8/21/2016) by Brian Regal looks at denial, and in particular denial of science, history and reality in general. Regal teaches the history of science, technology and medicine at Kean University in New Jersey.
I will try to summarize without stepping on copyright. I am summarizing from a paper copy; I don’t have the link, but it may be available sometime tomorrow at Newark_Star_Ledger.
His first key point is distinguishing merely self-serving denial resulting from self-image or convenience from that which harms others around us and poisons the framework — social, technical, and economic.
Then he goes on:
When the United States was created, the Founding Fathers were rightly proud that they were forming a nation based upon enlightenment, science, rationality and widespread education.
(Before anyone says anything, yes, they were most of them willfully blind and inconsistent, and the “benefits of liberty” certainly and reprehensibly did not apply equally to women, African Americans, or Native Americans. But at least as an ideal, they almost all agreed to the principle.)
Today, however, we have begun to turn our backs upon the concept of reality to embrace the irrationality of denialism. We deny evolution, climate change, the Holocaust, the efficacy of vaccinations and the moon landing. We deny reality for fiction, science for nonsense, ... We deny that guns kill people, and that there is little evidence of voter fraud. [In every case,] despite the huge amount of evidence to the contrary.
...
[We make] an honorable soldier who died for our country a terrorist while a draft dodger is held up as a hero. [We see] doctors using a tried-and-true medical procedure as dangerous while an untrained enthusiast peddling cancer cures made of banana peels and old tea bags [as] a genius fighting an entrenched system.
That such a short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive and illusory world-view has been endorsed by many of the members of a major political party is frightening. It breeds schizophrenic thought. Still, blind acceptance is as dangerous as blind denial. What is needed is education, reason and critical thinking, and informed skepticism, not “petty jealousy, racial bigotry, bald-faced lies or childish petulance.”
Implied is that if our politicians — and in particular though not exclusively one party — keep being motivated by narrow self-interest to the exclusion of reason, knowledge, social awareness and the nation’s future, we are headed toward a future that all of us will very much regret.