From our perspective as a modern society, the actions of the Xhosa would seem foolhardy, even insane. First let me say, I’m not at all against alternate energy, or improved or even different technology. Heck, I drive an electric car myself and have done two solar power projects. But Waxman-Markey, if enacted, will be the equivalent of killing all our cattle at once. It took us over 100 years to get where we are now, we can’t expect change overnight, it must be gradual.
If NASA’s James Hansen can be an advocate, then I may as well suggest that you send this story to your elected federal representatives and to your local letters to the editor, as is our right in the US Democracy constititional republic – Anthony
Death of a Civilization
by David Deming
Over the past several years we have learned that small groups of people can engage in mass suicide. In 1978, 918 members of the Peoples’ Temple led by Jim Jones perished after drinking poisoned koolaid. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult died after drugging themselves and tieing plastic bags around their heads. Unfortunately, history also demonstrates that it is possible for an entire civilization to commit suicide by intentionally destroying the means of its subsistence.
In the early nineteenth century, the British colonized Southeast Africa. The native Xhosa resisted, but suffered repeated and humiliating defeats at the hands of British military forces. The Xhosa lost their independence and their native land became an English colony. The British adopted a policy of westernizing the Xhosa. They were to be converted to Christianity, and their native culture and religion was to be wiped out. Under the stress of being confronted by a superior and irresistible technology, the Xhosa developed feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. In this climate, a prophet appeared.
In April of 1856, a fifteen-year-old girl named Nongqawuse heard a voice telling her that the Xhosa must kill all their cattle, stop cultivating their fields, and destroy their stores of grain and food. The voice insisted that the Xhosa must also get rid of their hoes, cooking pots, and every utensil necessary for the maintenance of life. Once these things were accomplished, a new day would magically dawn. Everything necessary for life would spring spontaneously from the earth. The dead would be resurrected. The blind would see and the old would have their youth restored. New food and livestock would appear in abundance, spontaneously sprouting from the earth. The British would be swept into the sea, and the Xhosa would be restored to their former glory. What was promised was nothing less than the establishment of paradise on earth.
Nongqawuse told this story to her guardian and uncle, Mhlakaza. At first, the uncle was skeptical. But he became a believer after accompanying his niece to the spot where she heard the voices. Although Mhlakaza heard nothing, he became convinced that Nongqawuse was hearing the voice of her dead father, and that the instructions must be obeyed. Mhlakaza became the chief prophet and leader of the cattle-killing movement.
News of the prophecy spread rapidly, and within a few weeks the Xhosa king, Sarhili, became a convert. He ordered the Xhosa to slaughter their cattle and, in a symbolic act, killed his favorite ox. As the hysteria widened, other Xhosa began to have visions. Some saw shadows of the resurrected dead arising from the sea, standing in rushes on the river bank, or even floating in the air. Everywhere that people looked, they found evidence to support what they desperately wanted to be true.
The believers began their work in earnest. Vast amounts of grain were taken out of storage and scattered on the ground to rot. Cattle were killed so quickly and on such an immense scale that vultures could not entirely devour the rotting flesh. The ultimate number of cattle that the Xhosa slaughtered was 400,000. After killing their livestock, the Xhosa built new, larger kraals to hold the marvelous new beasts that they anticipated would rise out of the earth. The impetus of the movement became irresistible.
The resurrection of the dead was predicted to occur on the full moon of June, 1856. Nothing happened. The chief prophet of the cattle-killing movement, Mhlakaza, moved the date to the full moon of August. But again the prophecy was not fulfilled.
The cattle-killing movement now began to enter a final, deadly phase, which its own internal logic dictated as inevitable. The failure of the prophecies was blamed on the fact that the cattle-killing had not been completed. Most believers had retained a few cattle, chiefly consisting of milk cows that provided an immediate and continuous food supply. Worse yet, there was a minority community of skeptical non-believers who refused to kill their livestock.
The fall planting season came and went. Believers threw their spades into the rivers and did not sow a single seed in the ground. By December of 1856, the Xhosa began to feel the pangs of hunger. They scoured the fields and woods for berries and roots, and attempted to eat bark stripped from trees. Mhlakaza set a new date of December 11 for the fulfillment of the prophecy. When the anticipated event did not occur, unbelievers were blamed.
The resurrection was rescheduled yet again for February 16, 1857, but the believers were again disappointed. Even this late, the average believer still had three or four head of livestock alive. The repeated failure of the prophecies could only mean that the Xhosa had failed to fulfill the necessary requirement of killing every last head of cattle. Now, they finally began to complete the killing process. Not only cattle were slaughtered, but also chickens and goats. Any viable means of sustenance had to be destroyed. Any cattle that might have escaped earlier killing were now slaughtered for food.
Serious famine began in late spring of 1857. All the food was gone. The starving population broke into stables and ate horse food. They gathered bones that had lay bleaching in the sun for years and tried to make soup. They ate grass. Maddened by hunger, some resorted to cannibalism. Weakened by starvation, family members often had to lay and watch dogs devour the corpses of their spouses and children. Those who did not die directly from hunger fell prey to disease. To the end, true believers never renounced their faith. They simply starved to death, blaming the failure of the prophecy on the doubts of non-believers.
By the end of 1858, the Xhosa population had dropped from 105,000 to 26,000. Forty to fifty-thousand people starved to death, and the rest migrated. With Xhosa civilization destroyed, the land was cleared for white settlement. The British found that those Xhosa who survived proved to be docile and useful servants. What the British Empire had been unable to accomplish in more than fifty years of aggressive colonialism, the Xhosa did to themselves in less than two years.
Western civilization now stands on the brink of repeating the experience of the Xhosa. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, Europe and North America have enjoyed the greatest prosperity ever known on earth. Life expectancy has doubled. In a little more than two hundred years, every objective measure of human welfare has increased more than in all of previous human history.
But Western Civilization is coasting on an impetus provided by our ancestors. There is scarcely anyone alive in Europe or America today who believes in the superiority of Western society. Guilt and shame hang around our necks like millstones, dragging our emasculated culture to the verge of self-immolation. Whatever faults the British Empire-builders may have had, they were certain of themselves.
Our forefathers built a technological civilization based on energy provided by carbon-based fossil fuels. Without the inexpensive and reliable energy provided by coal, oil, and gas, our civilization would quickly collapse. The prophets of global warming now want us to do precisely that.
Like the prophet Mhlakaza, Al Gore promises that if we stop using carbon-based energy, new energy technologies will magically appear. The laws of physics and chemistry will be repealed by political will power. We will achieve prosperity by destroying the very means by which prosperity is created.
While Western Civilization sits confused, crippled with self-doubt and guilt, the Chinese are rapidly building an energy-intensive technological civilization. They have 2,000 coal-fired power plants, and are currently constructing new ones at the rate of one a week. In China, more people believe in free-market economics than in the US. Our Asian friends are about to be nominated by history as the new torchbearers of human progress.
May 13, 2009
David Deming [send him mail] is associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
George Santayana
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana
So after the cattle were slaughtered and people died of starvation, did global temperatures magically drop due to less c02?
What!!?? a blocked comment? What happened to my reference to a substantial printed work titled “The dead will arise” By Jeffrey B. Peires that bears directly on the veracity of certain aspects of the ‘story’ written by David Deming?
Google Book Link
Okay, okay. Maybe ITS vercity is being checked …
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REPLY: No blocked comment, just a long URL that earned it a flag in the spam filter automatically. As you can see it has been restored.
Not that Wikipedia is any final authority on things, their writeup supports Demings view, though lung disease also figures in. I’m reposting it here for posterity in case it gets edited by the World Climate Police Team (Petersen/Connolley) that purges Wiki entries that connect to unfavorable views on climate. – Anthony
From Wikipedia:
Xhosa cattle-killing movement and famine
The Xhosa tribes gave the colony few problems after the war. This was due, in large measure, to an extraordinary delusion which arose among the Xhosa in 1856, and led in 1857 to the death of some 50,000 people. This incident is one of the most remarkable instances of misplaced faith recorded in history. The Xhosa had not accepted their defeat in 1853 as decisive and were preparing to renew their struggle with the Europeans.
In 1854, a disease spread through the cattle of the Xhosa. It was believed to have spread from cattle owned by the Settlers. Widespread cattle deaths resulted, and the Xhosa believed that the deaths were caused by ubuthi, or witchcraft. In April, 1856 two girls, one being named Nongqawuse, went to scare birds out of the fields. When she returned, she told her uncle Mhlakaza that she had met three spirits at the bushes, and that they had told her that all cattle should be slaughtered, and their crops destroyed. On the day following the destruction, the dead Xhosa would return and help expel the whites. The ancestors would bring cattle with them to replace those that had been killed. Mhlakaza believed the prophecy, and repeated it to the chief Sarhili.
Sarhili ordered the commands of the spirits to be obeyed. At first, the Xhosa were ordered to destroy their fat cattle. Nongqawuse, standing in the river where the spirits had first appeared, heard unearthly noises, interpreted by her uncle as orders to kill more and more cattle. At length, the spirits commanded that not an animal of all their herds was to remain alive, and every grain of corn was to be destroyed. If that were done, on a given date, myriads of cattle more beautiful than those destroyed would issue from the earth, while great fields of corn, ripe and ready for harvest, would instantly appear. The dead would rise, trouble and sickness vanish, and youth and beauty come to all alike. Unbelievers and the hated white man would on that day perish.
The people heard and obeyed. Sarhili is believed by many people to have been the instigator of the prophecies. Certainly some of the principal chiefs believed that they were acting simply in preparation for a last struggle with the Europeans, their plan being to throw the whole Xhosa nation fully armed and famished upon the colony. Belief in the prophecy was bolstered by the death of Lieutenant-General Cathcart in the Crimean War in 1854. His death was interpreted as being due to intervention by the ancestors.
There were those who neither believed the predictions nor looked for success in war, but destroyed their last particle of food in unquestioning obedience to their chief’s command. Either in faith that reached the sublime, or in obedience equally great, vast numbers of the people acted. Great kraals were also prepared for the promised cattle, and huge skin sacks to hold the milk that was soon to be more plentiful than water. At length the day dawned which, according to the prophecies, was to usher in the terrestrial paradise. The sun rose and sank, but the expected miracle did not come to pass. The chiefs who had planned to hurl the famished warriors upon the colony had committed an incredible blunder in neglecting to call the nation together under pretext of witnessing the resurrection. They realised their error too late, and attempted to fix the situation by changing the resurrection to another day, but blank despair had taken the place of hope and faith, and it was only as starving supplicants that the Xhosa sought the British.
Sir George Grey, governor of the Cape at the time ordered the European settlers not to help the Xhosa unless they entered labour contracts with the settlers who owned land in the area. In their extreme famine, many of the Xhosa turned to cannibalism, and one instance of parents eating their own child is authenticated. Among the survivors was the girl Nongqawuse; however, her uncle perished. A vivid narrative of the whole incident is found in G. M. Theal’s History and Geography of South Africa (3rd edition, London, 1878). The depopulated country was afterwards peopled by European settlers, among whom were members of the German legion which had served with the British army in the Crimea, and some, 2000 industrious North German emigrants, who proved a valuable acquisition to the colony.
Historians now view this movement as a millennialist response both directly to a lung disease spreading among Xhosa cattle at the time, and less directly to the stress to Xhosa society caused by the continuing loss of their territory and autonomy. At least one historian has also suggested that it can be seen as a rebellion against the upper classes of Xhosa society, which used cattle as a means of consolidating wealth and political power, and which had lost respect as they failed to hold back white expansion.
I think the difference now is the general population is quickly understanding, they just don’t say much. One day the dam will break and it will be onto something else to worry about. We have had nucular war, ice ages, ozone holes, rocks from space, have I missed anything. We as a species seem to need something to worry about. This too will pass.
geoffchambers (09:35:12) :
As a right-wing, God loving and proud subject of Her Britannic Majesty can I just say I agree with every word you say (this time)
Smokey (16:00:14)
Joe Romm and all those others who are starting to panic that Man Made Climate Change is, well, not working out, can relax. There are plenty of clever people out there that will find something else for us to be guilty of. Next.
-Jim– that’s an interesting source. Mine was a dimly remembered-set of BBC programmes on Zulu expansion that a friend taped for me once. I agree, on reflection, that things sound a little too ‘pat’. Thanks for the link to the books
Jim – Thanks. Your link also includes: “The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw.”
I’d post that to RC or CP, but I doubt they’d understand it.
So when things start to go to hell, we can eat [snip]
Therein lies the danger of humankind. We are far more driven by internal tickling than we are by dry observation. Even when observations are to the contrary, humans tend to go the path that tickles their innards. Internal motivation, that of the emotions and gut, has far more potential to draw both small and large groups of people together and to their own demise, often taking the opposition with them. We are, by and large, still animalistic in our group behavior and will readily throw our collective selves off a cliff.
Wow, all the analysis, examination of theory,
alternative conclusions to observation, and
it all boils down to a bucket of stupid.
Sir George Grey, governor of the Cape at the time ordered the European settlers not to help the Xhosa unless they entered labour contracts with the settlers who owned land in the area.
I just knew the empire would have done everything it could to help ease the situation.
At least when you’re dealing with empires you can be pretty sure that they are working for the best interests of the said empire. I’m not sure this cult we’re up against at the moment has anyones interests at heart.
Good intentions still sink ships. The downside is that it is MUCH harder to defeat good intentions than it is obviously evil ones. Why? Because we get blindsided by it. Belief among a large group of people is always peppered with talk of good intentions and beneficial outcomes. While there is always a fringe of evil intentions (how can I make hay out of this), by and large the group-think is one fueled by public thoughts and desires of benevolence wanting to be shared with the larger population for their own good. So the larger population is willing to tolerate these missionaries because we feel they are only trying to do what they do for our good. Until that is we find ourselves fighting a, for example, school board that has quietly (but with good intentions) morphed into a structure that now has the power to impose belief, not just share it.
They have the interests of the climate-industrial complex at heart.
We already are confronted with problems caused by the current economic crises and the cold spell damaging crops:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=101581
Or do we believe that the currrent AGW/Climate Change doctrine is the only arrow on the bow of the scaremongers who intend to bring humanity on her knees?
I really enjoyed this article.
Great analogy. I prefer “when the lunatics are in charge of the asylum” myself.
“Wayne Liston (10:43:22) :
I am greatly concerned that the earth’s rotation is slowing and feel as a precaution we should introduce human sacrifices at noon to lower inertia and ensure that the sun will go down each day.”
No No No
Call in the spin doctor
I wish I had not read this article. Now I will be awake again at 3am staring at the walls. We have seen a another disaster in the last ten years when Mugabe began stealing farms and giving them to his thugs who did not know how to farm. I said when I read about it, that Zimbabwe would go from a food exporter to famine within a few years. When it was a British colony the life expectancy for women was 65 years. It is now the lowest in the world at 34.
Over the last year, there has been a lot of sleepless nights. After a while fear turns into hate. The GCCI report from NCDC with its deceit did not help. Nor did, “Despite decades of research vindicating the insecticide, the World HealthOrganization recently announced plans for a “zero DDT world.” 100,000,000 dead of malaria since DDT was banned. (Mostly children)
Maybe it was watching the violence in Iran, but today I found myself doing a line fit to the year and the spacing between assassination attempts. It’s down to 2 years. Last one in 2001. Std Dev.= 5, correlation=-0.86 What was scary is the google search for the numbers showed it was a very common search topic. I need more sleep.
“Just Want Results… (15:10:15) :
I’m not good with chop sticks so I’m not interested.”
Me either… I’m for America, God and apple pie.
Or, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Prof Deming is, of course, describing a millenarian movement, a phenomenon that includes the example another poster gives: cargo cults.
The definitive book on the millenarian aspects of environmentalism is perhaps: Gelber, Steven M. and Martin L. Cook (1990) Saving the Earth: The History of a Middle-Class Millenarian Movement. University of California Press, 1990.
Cognitive dissonance is not confined to millenarian movements, but it does explain the defence mechanisms used by the adherents to dismiss inconvenient observations. We are all prone to such defence mechanisms. As Carl Sagan put it: ‘Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.’ This is why celebration of dissenting view is inherent to science and the cognitive dissonance device of ‘denier’ is anathema to science.
I discuss this in my 2007 book Science and Public Policy: The virtuous corruption of virtual environmental science. The relevant passage (if Anthony will permit me a very ling post) is as follows:
Modern environmentalists would nevertheless do well to ponder where a rejection of humanist values and a belief in a transcendental ecocentric value system might lead them, just as there is value in studying the resonance between the Nazi war on cancer and their wars on communism and Judaism, which were included in their cancer metaphor. In this regard, Ehrlich’s invocation (1968: 152) of the metaphor of cancer to describe human population growth in The Population Bomb is somewhat disconcerting. But it is simplistic in the extreme to suggest that environmentalism leads to the gates of Auschwitz. It is equally mistaken however, to assume that that environmentalism somehow precludes such a path and leads instead to some progressive future. There are indeed some worrying connections between ecologism and various extreme political views, not least of which are the celebrated racist views of Haeckel, the father of ecological science. It is more plausible to suggest that there are many complex factors at work. Indeed, Nazism and ecofacism or other darker contemporary manifestations of ecological thought are better seen as reflective of similar underlying factors in history and culture.
Both might also be seen as millenarian movements, for example. This is quite clear with Nazism and its ‘Thousand Year Reich’, but there is a similar appeal to a stable utopian end point after apocalyptic collapse in much environmentalism (Gelber and Cook, 1990). The neo-Malthusian spectre of the Club of Rome was one of rapid, catastrophic growth in population and economy, demanding ‘zero population growth’ and ‘zero economic growth’ or (in its more sophisticated forms) a ‘stable state society.’ The origins of the word ‘sustainability’—‘that magic word of consensus’ as Worster (1993: 144) puts it—lie in the concept of ‘sustained yield’ which emerged first in scientific forestry in Germany in the late eighteenth century. As Robert Lee (cited by Worster, 1993: 145) has noted, it came not just as a response to the decline in German forests, but as a response to the uncertainty and social instability which wracked Germany at that time (and which were responsible at least in part for the decline in German forests). It was an instrument of a strong state for ordering social and economic conditions which stood as a ‘necessary’ counterweight to emergent laissez-faire capitalism.
There is a long tradition of Western thought involving decline, often catastrophic decline, from some idyllic past—usually as a result of some sin or degeneration. Hanson (2006) lists Hesiod (the 8th-century BC Greek poet), Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, the Biblical Fall, and numerous others through Rousseau, Nietzsche and Spengler to Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and Jared Diamond. Diamond, author of two hugely popular books in Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, manages in one to attribute the success of the West, not to freedom, rationalism, individualism, and consensual government, but to inanimate, natural forces at work; and in the other, the forthcoming collapse is predicted on the basis of a few atypical examples (Easter Island, Greenland, Pitcairn Island, and so on) because the failed societies degraded their environments through ignorance and greed and thus deservedly disappeared.
What is telling is that environmental activists, most social scientists writing about environmental issues, and many ‘activist’ environmental scientists still cling to the myth of the ‘balance of nature’ that has long been rejected by ecology (Scoones, 1999). By accepting this myth in the face of the scientific evidence, any change in ecosystems or climate can be attributed to human agency, and imparted with deep social meaning—either apocalyptic or (if promising some eventual return to stable state of grace) millenarian. Regardless, Hanson suggests that such pessimism fulfils a need in affluent but guilty Westerners to feel bad about their privileges without having to give them up.
There have been numerous analyses of environmentalism in millenarian terms. For example, Buell, (1995) has analysed ‘environmental apocalypticism’, while Killingsworth and Palmer (1996) and Lee (1997) have described the millenarian aspects of the contemporary environment movement. Stewart and Harding (1999: 289-90) saw environmental concerns as but one of a number of fin de siecle concerns:
During the 1990s, apocalypticism, and, somewhat less flamboyantly, its millennialist twin, have become a constant and unavoidable presence in everyday life. Idioms of risk, trauma, threat, catastrophe, conspiracy, victimization, surveillance; social, moral, and environmental degradation; recovert, redemption, the New Age, and the New World Order permeate the airways.
Stewart and Harding also point to attributes of apocalypticism that describe the constant ascribing of sinister motives to those who present dissenting views: climate sceptics are in the pay of fossil fuel corporations, Lomborg’s analysis will assist these interests, and so on. Such conspiracy theories at once serve to defend the prevailing paradigm, reinforce solidarity among the adherents and reinforce their sense of purpose:
Conspiracy theories can identify absolute truths about the world while dismissing holders of power as sinister, corrupt, and deceptive; they can also resurrect agency and the sense of a privileged community ‘in the know,’ and an otherwise bleak present can become charged with purpose and focus (Stewart and Harding, 1999: 294).’
Scientists such as Lord May who commit the genetic fallacy, attributing the dissident views of climate sceptics to the ‘sinister, corrupt and deceptive’ antics of ExxonMobil, and who make statements that are logically identical to accusations of witchcraft, probably do not think that they have much in common with pre-Enlightenment societies. But the mixture of climate change and witchcraft is not a new one (Behringer, 1995), and there is no reason to suppose that scientists are above the defensive psychology Festinger (1962) termed ‘cognitive dissonance’ — coincidentally developed in an earlier study of the state of denial found in millenarian movements when their prophesies failed to materialise (Festinger, et al, 1964). But May (and others) have agendas, are ‘concerned’ scientists, and no matter how much they consider they operate cognitively, this brings an ‘affective’ dimension too their thinking and they cannot rise above the same psychology all humanity exhibits. It is only scepticism and criticism that limits the extent to which affective factors intrude into science, and it is the nobility of the cause and thus the availability of strong moral arguments to disarm critics which facilitates it.
Nazism and environmentalism are by no means the only movements in the Western mainstream which can be analysed in millenarian terms. Both Nazism and environmentalism may well both contain elements of the romanticism Jeffrey Herf (1984) called ‘reactionary modernism’ but this is not to say that either necessarily entails or leads to the other. Two other movements which can be subjected to a millenarian analysis are Marxism (which promises an unchanging communist utopia after a period of revolutionary upheaval) and Christianity, especially in those manifestations which emphasise the heavily millenarian Book of Revelation. It is facile to suggest that either entails or leads to the other, and it is similarly facile to suppose that environmentalism entails or leads to Nazism—though (as noted above) it is wise to exercise caution about some of its darker possibilities. But this analysis shows how wrong it is to assume that environmentalism somehow entails a liberal democratic political philosophy, or the social democratic ideology that is described as ‘liberal’ in the United States. Classical liberalism, with its emphasis on the separation between the individual and the state, nevertheless provides a protection against the darker possibilities of environmentalism.
Culture and language might reflect and reinforce deep-seated cultural differences in responses to environmental threats: German environmental language frequently not only increases the threat image (‘Klimakatastrophe’) but also promises more control and salvation via state action (‘Klimaschutz’) (Boehmer-Christiansen, 1988). Steven Kelman has identified some aspects of Swedish political culture which he considered helped explain its position at the vanguard. Sweden has a somewhat circumspect political culture, institutions described as accommodationist, and a tradition of the ‘overhet’ state: ‘The people were expected to accept the notion of the good that the rulers defined.’ To illustrate the point, Kelman quotes the words of an eighteenth-century Swedish poet inscribed over the entrance to the main hall of Uppsala University: ‘To think freely is great, to think correctly is greater’ (Kelmann, 1981: 121).
Culture, of course is a holistic concept, and political cultures cannot be readily disaggregated into neat constituent parts. Language, religion and attitudes are simply three facets of political culture. What is of interest here is the possibility that such cultural factors could exert an influence on the conduct of science. There is a range of possibilities in environmental concern, some ‘progressive’, some much darker. Environmental science does not lead ineluctably to ‘progressive’ political outcomes, and there are dangers in assuming that it does.
Science can be affected by values and interests, and the seeming impossibility of achieving ‘objective’ knowledge of any phenomena—natural or social—is sometimes taken to enfranchise a kind of ‘anything goes’ approach to knowledge often found in postmodernist texts, and endorsed by Feyerabend, sometimes referred to as ‘postnormal’ science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). All attempts to develop knowledge are, according to this view, ‘just texts’. Any text becomes as ‘valid’ as another. But it does not follow logically that contamination of science by values and interests means we should assign it all some kind of equivalence. To draw attention to the pernicious effect of the extreme relativism of postmodernism on the use of science in the progressive cause Alan Sokal (1996) submitted and had published as a genuine paper a satire on postmodernist philosophy of science that mocked the idea of reality being inherently something of which we are unable to derive objective knowledge (as opposed to our understanding of it being always at risk of error and social construction). Sokal saw himself as a member of the progressive Left and lamented what had become of the place science as a progressive force under the postmodernist enthusiasm that was sweeping the humanities. (He invited those who thought that science was a mere construction to test the Law of Gravity from the window of his high-rise office at Columbia University).
We do have canons which help us tell good science from bad. Insistence on consistency of argument and adherence to the scientific method has brought numerous advances, not just in knowledge, but also in human welfare, with improvements in life expectancy, for example, that are more than ‘just text.’ And (though the pitfalls might be larger) the same holds for the social sciences: for all its limitations, economics plays its part in improving welfare; political science helps improve the making of public policy decisions. Indeed, the great advances in life expectancy for ordinary people during modernity came about through the design and financing of great public works projects such as the sewering of Victorian London (ironically, based on the erroneous miasma theory of disease) rather than on advances in treatments based on medical science. Contemporary environmentalism too often entails a rejection of modernity, rationalism and the Enlightenment. These attributes are not just found in environmentalism as an ideology, but they are deeply ingrained within ecological science itself.
My God.
Solzhenetsyn said that to do a great evil. one must beleive he is doing a great good.
http://www.scragged.com/articles/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-spitting-in-the-face-of-evil.aspx
That great writer new evil up close and personal.
The great leap forwards is period in history that comes to my mind. A economic and social plan to jumpstart China into a modern communist society wich eventually lead to somewhere between 20 to 43 million deaths.
And if you look to the whole AGW and green movement you see a lot of things the sound very familiar. Perhaps they should organise a 100 Flowers Campaign.
D.King (17:25:13) Thanks for coming out and posting an intelligent addition to the commentary. What a contribution. Stick around to discuss your position further. I am curious of your views and the basis for said views. Perhaps no one here is capable of comprehending those views due to our limited capacity. It is probably a waste of your valuable time to speak with us. But here is your chance to give us rational arguments that will at least plant the seed in our minds, so it can grow into complete understanding one day when we are deemed worthy. (Using a manure spreader to lay on the sarcasm, and it is certified organic sarcasm to boot).
And in remarkable contrast to D. King, Professor Kellow’s analysis is balls on.
We are confronted with an ontology in modern environmentalism — more than a world view, an ontology is a perception of reality that describes “reality” and so might be thought of a world, rather than a mere view. The world they live in is different from the world we live in.
Cognitive dissonance implies a clash (conflict) between ideology (expectation) and empirical fact (observation). Yet those who live in a different world see “reality” entirely differently, and do not experience any clash between expectation and observation.
Is “science” immune from ontology? Absolutely not. Nor is rationalism, for what may be irrational in one world can be consistently rational in another. The peers of witch doctors are other witch doctors, not medical school graduates.
Separate ontologies present a seemingly insurmountable barrier to communication. There can be no useful debate when the two “sides” have completely separate epistemologies. The would-be debaters make speak the same language, but the concepts expressed are differently understood, and the epistemological gap itself is obscure (or invisible) to both ontologies.
It’s frustrating, perhaps to both sides. Nothing I say can make you understand, and vice versa, because we live in separate realities. Anger is a common reaction to the communication barrier.
And there may be no cure. You might get Al Gore in a sound-proof room and smack him around, but you will never change his mind. Multiply Al by millions and the conflict is insoluble by anything short of lethal elimination on a mass scale. Hence the propensity of humanity to engage in Holocausts, World Wars, ethnic cleansing, jihad, and other forms of the Final Solution drenched in blood.
But we must persevere in good faith and with respect for each other, no matter how challenging the communication barriers might be. One thing I admire hugely about WUWT is the tendency toward grace manifested by the proprietor. Nobody is perfect, but Anthony sets a fine example (most of the time), especially in comparison to alarmist websites.
And who knows? Maybe grace will dissolve the barrier eventually. There really is only one planet, one world, and the various ontologies all live together on it. Warmer is Better, in matters of climate and in matters of co-existence and communion.