Welcome friends!
I was reading an article the other day on the peculiar fake science American conservatives in the supremely southern state of Alabama employed recently when explaining their new anti-abortion bill. It occurred to me conservatives and Republicans here in the USA are famous for espousing fake science in a variety of contexts including human sexuality and the climate to take two random examples. And it’s not just science. Our current conservative Republican president is famous for fakery in the form of stretching the truth, making things up, and basically just lying his backside off every chance he gets. We have a vast conservative “infotainment” industry devoted to peddling fake news to a clientele with an apparently insatiable appetite for fakery. So what is it with conservatives and fakery anyway? Why do they love it so much or at least not seem bothered by it at all? I’m starting to realize the conservative commitment to the unreal may be greater than I had previously appreciated. Indeed, they may see accepting convenient falsehoods as the fundamental and necessary basis of human society. How did I arrive at that conclusion? Well, that’s a funny story.
I had submitted one of my usual humble comments to the aforementioned article in which I suggested a love of fake science was central to conservatism and likely began with their fascination with the Queen of Fake Science, that fetid stew of hidden and mis-stated value premises, mathematical proofs of the obvious and unremarkable, and clueless amateur philosopher gobbledygook that is neoclassical economic theory and in particular the so-called welfare economics component of that theory. I suggested conservatives are committed to fake science the way they’re committed to fake news and alternative facts, and that it was likely because for conservatives words are always just a means to an end, a cheap attempt to manipulate other people through rhetoric and salesmanship. They never employ nor expect to employ words in an honest discussion of any value or issue.
In a short while a reply or really a riposte appeared from some fellow (I assume) rather drolly named Will Yum arguing what humanists like me fake is a “rationale for values” beyond the faith-based one. (A very typical rhetorical device for conservatives over the past several years has been to not bother denying or addressing criticisms but to simply lob the same criticism back in an attempt to establish what usually turns out to be a false equivalence. In this case Mr. Yum didn’t bother disputing the claim conservatives rely on fakery but predictably sought to establish humanists also rely on fakery thus apparently eliminating the problem in the us against them world of the conservative info warrior.) According to Mr. Yum’s comment “a totally materialistic and naturalistic universe doesn’t provide any moral guidance at all,” with the unfortunate consequence a regime like Nazi Germany for example could not be “shown to be evil.” This feat in Mr. Yum’s estimation can only be accomplished if one believes in “transcendent values,” which he suggested cannot possibly exist in a naturalistic universe.
I responded of course that I found his way of thinking somewhat peculiar and delivered the usual humanist response. I suggested the ultimate rationale for human values must be human emotion and reason. While I understood his desire to demonstrate Nazi Germany to have been evil in some absolute and indisputable way I suggested making things up to arrive at that result really only gives one the illusion of getting where one wants to go. It doesn’t really get one there. I argued we should face the world as it is, not as how we would like it to be. We may believe Nazi Germany was evil but the old Nazis clearly did not. That was the whole problem. We did not share certain values and emotions we each found important. That’s why we had to fight it out, because we had no other way to connect with one another and work it out peacefully. I suggested unfortunately that is what sometimes happens. That’s the way the world works. I did concede it would be nice if we could do a little science experiment or bit of math or logic or look deep into our collective conscience or whatever and get an answer we must all necessarily accept, but I pointed out that’s not how values and ethics actually work. I disputed the idea we shouldn’t support our own values unless we can show those values to have some superhuman validity or origin, that is, unless they’re something they’re really not, as just not really making a whole lot of sense. I urged Mr.Yum not to fake his or her way through life but to be real and face life. And there the exchange ended, except for a little coda in which Mr. Yum characterized my reply as breathtaking in its honesty but “utterly revealing of the vapidness of the revealed worldview,” to which I responded I was sorry he found reality so vapid, I hoped he would continue trying to make life more interesting for himself by making things up if he felt so inclined, but I thought it unreasonable of him to expect other people, particularly those seeking honesty and the truth, to join him there. After that the line as they say went dead.
But you know the larger issue for me was how did we get from fake science to fake religion and fake ethics anyway? It’s a funny sort of segue, although when I thought about it a bit I did seem to remember hearing a somewhat similar argument from some religious conservatives to the effect that if religion were not true we’d still have to pretend it is in order to have some basis for ethical reasoning. It occurred to me although Mr. Yum didn’t explicitly say so and indeed was ostensibly interested in establishing just the opposite, that non-religious people pretend to have a basis for ethics when they really don’t, perhaps the comment was in the order of a Freudian slip. Perhaps he was alluding in some way to the argument about the supposed necessity of religion. Perhaps what got him thinking about religion was the suspicion the conservative attachment to convenient fakery started not with the Queen of Fake Science, economics, as I had suggested but with religion and hence in their view the foundation of ethics. In a sense I wondered if he meant the conservative attachment or at least acceptance of convenient fakery was integral to their theory of the formation and continuation of human society. I mean, it would explain a lot wouldn’t it? Coming from that perspective, with society based on the Greatest Convenient Lie Every Told, who would bat an eye at the sort of falsehood and fakery we see in politics and economics? Could conservatism really be such a sad and inhuman creed? Could it really be eternally committed to the false and unreal? From what I’ve seen of it I think so. All the more reason for those who believe in the power of human reason and the truth to fight the anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, and indeed anti-social doctrine of conservatism. Vincit omnia veritas.
References
Conservatives’ junk science is having real consequences. Dana Milbank. May 17, 2019. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-states-are-laboratories--run-right-now-by-mad-scientists/2019/05/17/94da1a72-78aa-11e9-bd25-c989555e7766_story.html?utm_term=.b5f86bd3146f
