Refusing The Quantifiable Reality - Or -The Consequences Of Post Truth Mendacity For Fun & Profit PT. 1
"Denialism is an irrational action
that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event
when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality."
That's how psychology defines it.
Most of our modern problems are a result of clinging to a desperate denial of something.
Reality and Science in particular.
Denialism is a sort of expansion of denial.
We might say denial and denialism are simply a subset of the many ways humans have developed to use language to deceive others and themselves.
Denial can be as simple as refusing to accept that someone else is speaking truthfully.
Denial can be as unfathomable as the multiple ways we avoid acknowledgement of our own weaknesses, fallibilities, or control scandalous desires.
Some degree of denial may serve a function, in that it lets socialization occur more smoothly.
Denialism however, is more than just another manifestation of the humdrum intricacies of our deceptions and self-deceptions that occur in the background noise of our brain operations.
It represents the transformation of the everyday banal practice of denial
into a whole new way of seeing the world
and – most importantly– it's a collective feat.
Denial is furtive and routine;
denialism is combative and unnatural.
Denial hides from the truth.
denialism builds a "whole new and better truth" based on fantasy, or nothing at all.
(save for the mere desire to see the world in a certain way that departs from honest observation).
In recent years, the term has been used to describe a number of fields of “non scholarship”,
whose non scholars engage in audacious projects
to hold back, against seemingly insurmountable odds, the findings of an avalanche of actual peer reviewed research.
They argue that the Holocaust (and other genocides) never happened, that President Obama was not an American citizen, that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a myth, that Aids either does not exist or is unrelated to HIV, that evolution is a scientific impossibility,
There's claims of the Earth being flat. That Elvis has been seen on Mars, That Queen Elizabeth, President Obama & pretty much anyone with a public profile are actually not human.
(They claim these folks are lizards from outer space - I kid you not).
All manner of scientific and historical orthodoxies that are evidence based are to be rejected.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a healthy skepticism but that's not what drives this fallacious movement.
In some ways, denialism is a problematic term.
No one calls themselves a “denialist”, and no one signs up for all forms of denialism.
In fact, denialism is founded on the assertion that it is not denialism.
(Yeah that's how far down the rabbit-shithole we as a civilization have gone.)
While no one wants to be accused of being “in denial”, and labelling people denialists seems to compound the insult by implying that they have taken the private sickness of denial and turned it into public dogma. Well...unfortunately that's exactly right.
While it's true that denial and denialism are closely linked; and what humans do on a large scale is mostly rooted in what we do on a small scale -denial differs from denialism in it's general purpose.
Denial can be harmful, it is also just a mundane way for humans to respond to the difficult challenge of living in a social world in which people lie, & make mistakes.
All that said, there is no doubt that denialism is dangerous.
Here are just a few concrete examples of denialism causing real and actual harm:
In South Africa, President Thabo Mbeki, in office between 1999 and 2008, was influenced by Aids denialists such as Peter Duesberg, who deny the link between HIV and Aids (or even HIV’s existence) They cast doubt on the effectiveness of anti-retroviral drugs.
Mbeki’s reluctance to implement a national treatment program has been estimated to have cost the lives of 330,000 people in his nation.
On a smaller scale, in early 2017 the Somali-American community in Minnesota was struck by a childhood measles outbreak, as a direct result of proponents of the discredited theory that the MMR vaccine causes autism, persuading parents not to vaccinate their children.
Often, denialism’s effects are less direct but even more insidious.
Climate change denialists may not have overturned the general scientific consensus
that it is occurring and caused by human activity.
What they have managed to do is provide support
for those opposed to taking needed actions to address this urgent problem.
Achieving a global agreement that could bolster a transition
to a post-carbon economy was always going to be a challenge.
Climate change denialism has helped to make the challenge ever harder.
We might say denial and denialism are simply a subset of the many ways humans have developed to use language to deceive others and themselves.
Denial can be as simple as refusing to accept that someone else is speaking truthfully.
Denial can be as unfathomable as the multiple ways we avoid acknowledgement of our own weaknesses, fallibilities, or control scandalous desires.
Some degree of denial may serve a function, in that it lets socialization occur more smoothly.
Denialism however, is more than just another manifestation of the humdrum intricacies of our deceptions and self-deceptions that occur in the background noise of our brain operations.
It represents the transformation of the everyday banal practice of denial
into a whole new way of seeing the world
and – most importantly– it's a collective feat.
Denial is furtive and routine;
denialism is combative and unnatural.
Denial hides from the truth.
denialism builds a "whole new and better truth" based on fantasy, or nothing at all.
(save for the mere desire to see the world in a certain way that departs from honest observation).
In recent years, the term has been used to describe a number of fields of “non scholarship”,
whose non scholars engage in audacious projects
to hold back, against seemingly insurmountable odds, the findings of an avalanche of actual peer reviewed research.
They argue that the Holocaust (and other genocides) never happened, that President Obama was not an American citizen, that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a myth, that Aids either does not exist or is unrelated to HIV, that evolution is a scientific impossibility,
There's claims of the Earth being flat. That Elvis has been seen on Mars, That Queen Elizabeth, President Obama & pretty much anyone with a public profile are actually not human.
(They claim these folks are lizards from outer space - I kid you not).
All manner of scientific and historical orthodoxies that are evidence based are to be rejected.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a healthy skepticism but that's not what drives this fallacious movement.
In some ways, denialism is a problematic term.
No one calls themselves a “denialist”, and no one signs up for all forms of denialism.
In fact, denialism is founded on the assertion that it is not denialism.
(Yeah that's how far down the rabbit-shithole we as a civilization have gone.)
While no one wants to be accused of being “in denial”, and labelling people denialists seems to compound the insult by implying that they have taken the private sickness of denial and turned it into public dogma. Well...unfortunately that's exactly right.
While it's true that denial and denialism are closely linked; and what humans do on a large scale is mostly rooted in what we do on a small scale -denial differs from denialism in it's general purpose.
Denial can be harmful, it is also just a mundane way for humans to respond to the difficult challenge of living in a social world in which people lie, & make mistakes.
All that said, there is no doubt that denialism is dangerous.
Here are just a few concrete examples of denialism causing real and actual harm:
In South Africa, President Thabo Mbeki, in office between 1999 and 2008, was influenced by Aids denialists such as Peter Duesberg, who deny the link between HIV and Aids (or even HIV’s existence) They cast doubt on the effectiveness of anti-retroviral drugs.
Mbeki’s reluctance to implement a national treatment program has been estimated to have cost the lives of 330,000 people in his nation.
On a smaller scale, in early 2017 the Somali-American community in Minnesota was struck by a childhood measles outbreak, as a direct result of proponents of the discredited theory that the MMR vaccine causes autism, persuading parents not to vaccinate their children.
Often, denialism’s effects are less direct but even more insidious.
Climate change denialists may not have overturned the general scientific consensus
that it is occurring and caused by human activity.
What they have managed to do is provide support
for those opposed to taking needed actions to address this urgent problem.
Achieving a global agreement that could bolster a transition
to a post-carbon economy was always going to be a challenge.
Climate change denialism has helped to make the challenge ever harder.
Denialism can also create an environment of hate and suspicion.
Forms of genocide denialism are not just attempts to overthrow irrefutable historical facts;
they are an assault on those who survive genocide, and their descendants.
The implacable denialism that has led the Turkish state to refuse to admit that the 1915 Armenian genocide occurred is also an attack on today’s Armenians.
Similarly, those who deny the Holocaust are not trying to “correct” historical record.
They are rehabilitating the reputation of the Nazis.
The dangers that other forms of denialism pose may be less concrete, but they are no less serious. Denial of evolution, for example, does not have an immediately hate filled payoff.
Rather it works to foster a distrust in science and research that feeds into other denialisms and undermines evidence-based policymaking.
Even lunatic-fringe denialisms, such as flat Earth theories, while hard to take seriously, help to create an environment in which real scholarship and political attempts to engage with reality, break down in favor of an all-encompassing suspicion that nothing is what it seems.
In the Disinformation Age, denialism has moved from the fringes
to the center of public discourse.
It's fueled by new technology.
As information and a host of disinformation becomes freer to access online,
as “research” has been opened to anyone with a web browser,
as previously marginal voices climb on to the online soapbox,
so the opportunities for countering accepted observable truths multiply.
Thanks to the convergence willful ignorance being enhanced by liars on the internet,
no one can be entirely ostracized, marginalized and dismissed as a crank anymore.
Hey, it's what plants crave.
The sheer profusion of voices, the plurality of opinions,
the cacophony of the manufactured controversies
are enough to make anyone doubt what they should believe.
Toss in the bad actors throwing gasoline on that fire.
What you get is a situation that is civilization ending.
Sorry, I wish I could give you some good news.
It should be pointed out that the movie "IDIOCRACY"
and George Orwell's book "1984"
are NOT instruction manuals.
PART 2 is published as well click here to continue to Part 2.
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