plindboe
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2003
- Messages
- 1,246
epepke
Philosopher
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2003
- Messages
- 9,264
plindboe said:
Is this a good article?
I suppose it's a start, and it's heartfelt, and it's nice to know that someone has made the switch.
However, while she repeatedly says that there is a culture clash, I don't see anything that resonates, even though anthropology is one of the few things that I grok pretty well.
I wonder if someone who is better connected could persuade her to come to these fora and speak about it, unless she is already here and does not want to reveal herself.
The best part was when she described the thing about the sense of mystery and how skeptics handle it better than newagers and the like. This is true. Richard Feynman on several occasions described science as a "satisfactory philosophy of ignorance."
However, that does not mean that skeptics do it particularly well, just at all, like Samuel Johnson's description of the mechanical dog. My major complaints with other skeptics all boil down to the limits that they set on skepticism. For instance, while I enjoy Penn and Teller, even though I lean toward libertariansim myself, they frequently come across as so cocksure of the rectitude of their politics (for want of a better word) that it's a turn-off for me.
I think that, at least occasionally, one has to wonder whether everything one knows might be wrong. (To the would-be wags in the audience: yes, that includes skepticism. A philosophy is only a philosophy, but a juiced-up brain can be something.) It doesn't have to be done every single day, but a good mental overhaul once every six months or so, like a trip to the dentist, can prevent a lot of decay. I even try to like Windows from time to time. But I digress.
The thing is that ignorance is terribly frightening. Admitting ignorance carries a high social cost in all cultures I know of. The person who succeeds is the person who is certain. Of what the person is certain and the justification for certainty is of far less important than the state of certainty. However, getting even approximate knowledge is hard work, and it's unsatisfying work to many, because the things we discover through, say, science, don't carry labels on how to use them. This is unsettling. And what greater certainty than the Tao or the Cosmic All or God or the Perfect Spirit or Whatever that must be prevented from corruption by emotion or intellect? It takes away all responsibility to try to figure out how to use all these frightening little discoveries, because the Whatever is always good by definition.
Therefore, mainstream medicine, which up until maybe a century ago really did probably kill more people than it cured, and now, though it does many wonderful things is far from perfect, is cold and bad. "Alternative" medicine, while it is far more harmful, is OK because it is good by definition. Furthermore, there's always that spirit stuff as a magician's out.
Actually dealing with mystery, dealing with a world in which the chair you are sitting on only has a very high probability of being there, is much harder than calling something "mystery" while secretly believing that you either grok it already or could grok it with just one more trip to the guru.
There's another thing to note: this "alternative" stuff always defines itself by what it is not, that it is opposed to anything mainstream. As with Nietzsche's ressentiment, it develops a morality which depends on its being apart. The trend to have homeopathic remedies in drug stores, long the case in Europe and recently infesting the US, may be lamentable for health reasons but may be the beginning of the end for newage. I found it odd that the original author listed codliver oil as an unusual item (let alone vegetarian!) as in earlier decades it was a staple of folk medicine. (Not such a bad thing, as it is high in oil-soluble vitamins, but it's pretty disgusting for all that.) I wonder if, once the FDA has been gutted and most physicians start prescribing 10 X No Brainum to their patients, will the woos start touting Amoxicillin as an all-natural Chinese herbal remedy? Stranger things have happened.
So, how can one reach someone whose very identity depends on opposition? Beats my feets. Maybe part of the image of skepticism is helpful. As long as skeptics are viewed as a bunch of extremist lunatics, well, at least that's something that newagers understand, and perhaps it can be twisted into making skepticism appealing.