FEBRUARY 2021

SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE

For those of you that did not come of age during the early years of MTV, when they just played music videos, the headline to this paragraph is of course the title to the Thomas Dolby song…more famous for the bizarre video than the actual song. In fact, I do not remember ever hearing the song on the radio…only “seeing” the song, if you will, on MTV. I suspect there were many songs like that during that era. They were composed merely as vehicles for the frustrated cinematic aspirations of the songwriter. Dolby admitted as much in 2011 when he was interviewed about the song’s origins.

I mention it here not only because so many of those early MTV videos still cling to my grey matter like lichen to a stone (such is the brain of a teenager), but also because I’ve noticed a curious trend regarding the role of science in our politics.

The Conservative sensibility tends by nature toward “adherence to the old and tried as opposed to the new and untried”, as Lincoln formulated it. This makes it naturally more circumspect when it comes to embracing the latest “thing”, scientific or otherwise. Chesterton, unsurprisingly, wonderfully articulates the virtues of conservatism with his famous thought experiment about “the fence”:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

GK Chesterton

Of course, human nature being what it is, thoughtful resistance to radical change can morph, whether thru fear or selfishness, or both, into the reactionary posture most famously represented by the Luddites.

Conservatism’s opponents long ago seized on the Luddite caricature to tar all of conservatism as anti-science and anti-progress. Countless disingenuous portrayals of the conservative as an unapologetic Luddite saturate our media and popular culture. These portrayals, usually beginning with Galileo and his spat with Pope Urban VIII, have been largely successful in cementing the public perception that progressives desires are motivated solely by the cold, hard facts of science, while conservatives “cling to their guns and religion”, as a prominent progressive once famously proclaimed.

Of course the conceit that Progressives are simply “following the SCIENCE” when crafting their political positions was always just that–a conceit. Their fidelity to “SCIENCE” (as they always seem to prefer to type it) is tenuous at best.

Take, as just one example, Progressives’ full fledged endorsement of the radical transgender agenda. It doesn’t get more scientifically basic than the biological fact that XX is not XY. Yet, we are told to ignore this fact in service to the ludicrous concept that it is a fundamental civil right to not only decide for yourself you no longer wish to be the sex you were biologically assigned, but also to force the society in which you are blessed to live to acknowledge your new identity as a civil right. Just ask those girls, who are being forced by the Biden Administration to compete with…and lose to…biological males in high school athletics, what they think of Progressives’ commitment to science.

Or, what about the issue of abortion? In an ironic twist, the ongoing advances in science and technology have served to undercut the political position of most progressives. Abortion supporters long standing claim that the choice a woman makes when she has an abortion does not involve the killing of a human being is becoming nearly impossible to honestly defend.

Any parents of school aged children out there? At this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, when numerous private schools have figured out a way to get kids back into classrooms successfully, where is the science behind the refusal of so many public schools to reopen? Progressives craven political calculus-that fealty to the teachers unions is their most pressing concern-is the only whiff of science you’ll find there.

Funny thing, science. It doesn’t care about your feelings, or how you wish reality to be, or even which political constituency you find yourself needing to placate. Facts are stubborn things, as the saying goes. The Luddites found that out. Now, despite their snarky putdowns and sanctimonious preening, Progressives are having to face the facts as well, and it isn’t pretty. There is no bigger tell of the cognitive dissonance they are experiencing than their annoying habit of putting the word “science” in all capital letters whenever they type it. That’s the written equivalent of someone yelling at the top of their lungs in an argument. Dr. Freud might call that overcompensation. When the facts are not on your side in a debate, you have two choices: Concede the argument, or yell louder. Who is clinging desperately to the past now, Mr. Obama?

ON LENT

The Lenten season has begun. Six weeks of trying to refocus our priorities to what’s important. Interestingly, speaking of science, research has shown that in order to make any lasting habitual changes, we humans need 66 days on average to imprint the new behaviors. A Lenten commitment to change our ways puts us well onto that path to success. Maybe the Church was not so anti-science after all?

The fact is the Church has never been anti-science. That is a myth. Many of the great discoveries of science were made by “church men”. Science and religion are not antithetical. They simply are exploring different questions. What really troubles those steeped in post modern, purely “scientific” modes of thought is the Church’s small “c” catholicism. By that I mean, her comfort in embracing all modes of thought and being, material and non-material, and her ability to embrace paradox and revel in the mysterious.

As Chesterton observed…there’s that guy again! Do yourself a favor this Lent and discover Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Start with his own story of conversion, Orthodoxy. It is a short book, which is good, because you will want to read it several times…anyway, as Chesterton observed, modern rationalism seeks to explain everything with reason. It wants to do away with the jagged edges of humanity and existence, smoothing everything out into a perfect sphere of logic and rationality. That is why the perfect symbol for modern thought is the circle. Of course, Chesterton notes, the circle also represents madness. Modern rationalism just goes around in circles, like the ancient symbol of the serpent eating its own tail.

A madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

GK Chesterton

The symbol of Christianity is, of course, the cross–the ultimate paradox. The cross is the physical representation of paradox, the holding of two opposing ideas at once: the horizontal and the vertical. Christ on the cross is the spiritual representation of paradox and the essence of the faith. One will never be able to embrace that faith until one is able to accept the ultimate mystery of the crucifixion and resurrection.