So, I want to bring up a lazy Bill Maher opinion for your purview:
No, I don't think it's true that The National Review writer Charles Cooke thinks Tyson is awful because he is black. Not because I don't think that The National Review is capable of being totally racist. It's just that I know the work of Charles C. W. Cooke, who works the climate science beat, and I know that being anti-climate science is a thing that the publication is on about--as they would be. And I know Cooke has beat up on other climate science proponents like Michael Mann, who is currently suing to get his good name back after the job right wing columnists like Mark Steyn have done on him.
I see this criticism as being part and parcel of the epistemic divide, where the left has taken up for science and the right...regrettably, sees being pro-science as problematic. It is true that a countervailing opinion to climate change as 97% of scientists in related fields know it exists. But it is very true that many of them are weirdos and shills.
So when I encounter a missive from the right that implies that people who take Tyson and Cosmos seriously are nerds--I'm a bit pissed. Aw, is somebody sad as an Alpha Beta that Tri-Lams are running Adams College now? Guess what--denying science is the new not cool. Deal with it. Mad that knowing things is the new hotness? Well then learn a thing. NDT might teach you.
1 comment:
Hi Vixen, re “denying science is the new not cool”
I suspect this is part of the difficulty.
Regrettably, today what is “cool” is a reference to association with pop culture. Pop culture is cool, rap is cool, video games are cool, Lady Gaga is cool (or is she?).
But “cool” and pop culture represent the new bourgeoisie. Pop culture has come to occupy a significant footprint in our political life. And pop culture also defines what is cool. This means that much of our political thinking has been corrupted by bourgeois ideas.
Now I'm not trying to specifically make a comment about climate change. I am willing to be persuaded, but it doesn't really matter anyway, because most of the people I know don't even realize that there is a contention called climate change. (They have to work for a living and raise kids... And as you've probably noticed, my primary interests lie elsewhere.)
However, I have to notice that the invasion of pop culture and bourgeois ideas into a process that often requires serious thinking does not help our country come to grips successfully with a lot of issues. Bourgeois values and bourgeois thinking just remind us that vox populi is not always vox dei.
Post a Comment