By Jim Heffernan
There’s a saying that, “if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
I see big problems that impact all of us and my only tools are books. I keep thinking if I read enough books, I’ll have the answers. If I have the answers, maybe I can pass them on to others.
I see climate change, inequality, and debt as problems that are on a course to ruin us. By design, our attention is diverted from these genuine problems by our fixation on counterfeit issues like the Epstein files and immigration.
Maybe I’ve been too eager to go on to the next book. Maybe I should think harder about the answers. Maybe it’s time to re-visit some old friends.
Today I’m re-visiting a book I read four years ago, Jonathan Rauch’s, “The Constitution of Knowledge.” Events have made the book even more relevant today. I reviewed it for the Pioneer and you can find the review at https://www.tillamookcountypioneer.net/book-review-constitution-of-knowledge-a-defense-of-the-truth/
I think a better title for the book would have been, “A Primer for the Reality-Based Community.” In simpler times, I think most of us resided in reality-based communities . Today, the reality based community is a minority. Many of us live in a community that is based on whatever version of the truth we happen to choose from our media.
Before we had a reality-based community, our truth was what the Church told us. We weren’t supposed to ask questions, just accept what we were told.
The Scientific Revolution started around the 15th century and has been advancing us ever since. What we have in our minds cannot be considered truth unless external observations can verify it.
This worked very well for us for hundreds of years. Each generation was wealthier and lived longer than the last. I think it all started to deteriorate in 1958. Just look at the ’57 Thunderbird and the ’57 Chevy and see what they became in 1958.
In the sixties, we sang “There’s a whole generation with a new explanation.” Trouble was that not all the explanations were good ones, but we bought into them anyhow.
Today, each of us is daily exposed to a made-up reality. We are free to believe whatever we wish. Whatever our wishes are, we can find a source to confirm them. Truth has become flexible, personal, and subjective.
We like this new truth even as the ways others choose to their truth terrifies us.
It will be a struggle for America to become a reality-based nation again. With all the noise that surrounds us, our band of sisters and brothers in the reality based community seems small, but that’s just the noise distracting us.
It’s tempting to blame Trump for the problems we face today. But he’s not really that clever. For forty years we have exalted our individualism while we have let traditional institutions like our churches and the press wither. Trump saw a system he could exploit and his grifter instincts took over.
I think the best thing about Rauch’s book are the two rules he gives us on Pg. 115, the fallibist rule and the empirical rule. They are the basis of the scientific method that has given us 4 centuries of progress and form the foundation of a reality based community. Here they are.
The fallibilist rule tells us that nobody is infallible. Just because MS NOW or Epoch Times declares something to be a fact doesn’t make it so. Facts are not facts if they cannot withstand questioning.
The empirical rule tells us that knowledge is valid only if it can be supported by evidence and observation, evidence that everyone can find and does not change with the viewer.
My fondest wish/prayer is to replace the battle-cry “Make America Great Again” with “Make Lying Wrong Again”.
Book is available at Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and Tillamook County Library
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com