Sometimes we think that an author said something somewhere but we can't find it. Ages ago, I thought that Poul Anderson had presented this argument:
if a liberal politician is successful, then he is intelligent;
if he is intelligent, then he knows that liberalism is a falsehood;
therefore, he is dishonest.
This argument, if it were presented, is impeccably logical although, of course, the premises can be debated.
I thought that the politician in question might have been Moriarty in The Boat Of A Million Years but could not find this argument on rereading the relevant passage of that novel. Now I think that I have found the passage that I had in mind:
"'Appropriate technology' is a slogan by which a few demagogues, some of whom must know better and are therefore consciously lying, rouse hordes of ignoramuses who can't be bothered to learn a little elementary science." ("Commentary," p. 258)
This argument is not quite as I had formulated it but close enough. I am a scientific ignoramus because, like Socrates, I have always preferred abstractions to technicalities. But, if current technology is destroying the environment, then some changes are necessary. Anderson continues:
"Nevertheless we are using up this planet at a rate that has become terrifying. There are right and wrong ways to provide for our needs, and turning Earth into a single slurb is not among the right ones." (ibid.)
He goes on to advocate space technology. I agree with that and it should have started decades ago but meanwhile Earth needs to be cleaned up as well.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
While I don't quite agree with Anderson on the speed of Earth being
"used up", I certainly agree on the necessity for getting OFF Earth before it gets too used up.
And I agree, frankly, with Anderson's contempt for left wing liberalism. But, he never said all left wing politicians were cynical demagogues knowingly peddling ideas they know won't work. Some will be well meaning fools who actually believe in what they say.
And the best way for cleaning up some of our problems on Earth now is for the free market and the LIMITED state to do that.
Sean
Intelligence isn't really correlated with ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood; it's more closely related to an ability to rationalize beliefs more effectively. This is why conscious hypocrisy is actually rather rare.
The human mind finds deliberate hypocrisy painful -- "cognitive dissonance" -- and if someone is forced by fear or circumstance to pretend to believe something they will, in many or most cases, gradually come to truly believe it. That's more comfortable and safer.
Mr Stirling,
I remember this point being made about the enforced Catholicism in Arminger's Protectorate.
The Party in 1984 develops cognitive dissonance to its fullest extent with "thoughtcrime" and "doublethink" and I think they had "blackwhite." Enemies were castigated for believing contradictions whereas Party members were praised for believing whatever the Party told them even if it was contradictory.
Paul.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree with what you said about the need, in extreme circumstances, for rationalizing beliefs and coping with cognitive dissonance. A classic real world example of avoiding the stress and pain of deliberate hypocrisy would be how many Russians came to "believe" in Marxism during the terrifying and bloody rule of Lenin and Stalin. Many, many Russians must have just rote parroted the doctrines and slogans of the Party simply to survive, not because they actually believed in Marxism. But, as you said, that kind of cognitive dissonance is painful and to actually believe it would relieve the stress.
Sean
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