The extent to which some folks can wallow in illusions so far from reality has always amused, and sometimes terrified me. Of course, when we look back in history we can find plenty of examples where collective illusions led to not mere folly, but massive suffering and death. The Salem Witch Trials and the infamous Spanish Inquisition of 1478 come to mind. Today, we seem to have reached a whole new level of social delusion in a variety of places and contexts. Because of the growing domination of society by “technocracy,” and its increasing sway over public perceptions, we live in the shadow of that ancient curse: May you live in interesting times.
What IS an Expert, anyway?
Back in the day, professors and medical doctors ranked pretty high on the scale of respect for various professions. So did scientists and Supreme Court justices. Today, it’s a mixed bag of fear, resentment, and some awe and respect. In each of these professions, and others, the practitioners are experts in a particular field of knowledge and practice. Why would we not accept their expertise?
Now, I have to admit that I always take the position of a sceptic in considering any expert knowledge or, especially, policy claim that emanates from a particular expertise. My first question is, “Who benefits?” Scientists, justices, and doctors are all human, and all humans have biases, often in favor of ideas that increase their power and/or wealth. To fairly evaluate information we must consider the perspective of the purveyor of knowledge, especially if it has political, economic, or social implications for decision making.
So, while I must apply critical thinking to any claim to knowledge and don’t believe a claim just because the claimant is an expert, there I still something to be said for expertise. The conflict between the scientific estimates of various factors in climate change, and the politically/financially motivated claims denying the validity of climate science, illustrate the difficulties in establishing “truth,” even when the science verified facts are well known.
That is well expressed in the term, “truthiness,” coined by comedian and commentator, Steven Colbert, which implies the assertion of unsubstantiated beliefs as “truth” over even the strongest evidence to the contrary. Sometimes, well, quite often, a major conflict arises between some people’s notion of “truth,” which they and their associates have believed for a while, and was encouraged by fear-mongering demagogues, versus the “facts on the ground,” as determined by the latest scientific evidence.
Political manipulation of popular notions of truth, patriotism, and “The American Way,” is often designed to deflect attention from or deny facts that are not in the interests of the ‘rich and famous.’ The nation’s financial elites dominate most systems of mass communication. Usually, the implications of such facts, if implemented in policy or action, would be financially or politically damaging to powerful interests. Mass propaganda persuades the pubic to believe what is in the interests of the super-rich and the huge corporations
This of course, has too often damaged the reputation of genuinely honest experts in a particular field. This problem often distorts both the application of science to public policies and the judgement of individuals, who may be smeared for ‘telling the truth.’ The phrase, “speak truth to power,” has real meaning; that is why it is dangerous to the speaker.
In a recent book titled, The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols explains how the 24-hour news cycle and social media, influenced by the most powerful men, mostly old white men, in the world, have produced “an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger…” The Anti-Intellectualism in American Life described in his book of that name, and for which Richard Hofstadter won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964, is alive and thriving in 2021.
Evaluating Evidence and Expertise
Back a few decades, I was involved in a conference in which workshops on the new methods of environmental impact assessment and social impact assessment of government policies were discussed, along with their implications for “policy formation.” I was astounded by the assertions of a certain economist (who reminded me of Herman Kahn, the early advocate of nuclear weapons). This guy asserted that human life could be considered in shaping policies by putting a dollar value on each person’s life.
Yes, I know insurance underwriters do calculate the potential value of an insurance policy in relation to the premium and life expectancy as part of estimating the risk-reward complex in pricing insurance policies. But it is a whole different game to set a value on each human life that may be lost as the result of a nuclear explosion in relation to the ‘value’ of ‘winning’ a war, or the failure to develop a vaccine that will result in thousands if not millions of deaths.
Here is where human values must trump technical expertise. If a policy maker is willing to expend some number of lives in achieving some policy objective, we must challenge that objective on the basis of human value of life, not on the technical expertise of the analyst. I objected to this expert’s assertion of the appropriateness of his “method” of environmental impact assessment in terms of the economic value of a life lost, instead of focusing on the enhancement of human wellbeing.
The Value and Decline in Respect of Expertise
Clearly, expertise can be misused, misdirected, and misapplied, when it is framed in the values of aggression, domination, and control of other humans and even the Earth System itself. It gets right back to Vaclav Hamel’s argument in The Power of the Powerless (1978) against a political regime valuing the ‘needs’ of the system over the wellbeing of the people. To be expert in some field gives the expert, or those in whose employ s/he works, power over that domain. Power can be misused. If you value an economic or political system over the people who participate in it, then your expertise is not to be trusted—it intellectual and moral framing are corrupt. That is where we are today in the authoritarian federal regime, which has fired so many experts working in programs to support the wellbeing of the people—however imperfect those programs may be—and inserted political lackeys and sycophants with little or no expertise bent on destroying those programs. In this case, expertise is jettisoned in favor of the pursuit of power.
When the highest value of a regime is plunder, it never ends well. Society dis-integrates, and may even collapse, which eventually leads to the downfall of the fascist regime itself under the weight of its own destructiveness. In some respects, the trajectory of a fascistic regime is a study in the worst response to cognitive dissonance. The classic authoritarian personality is incapable of recognizing the dissonance between his/her beliefs about personal and political power and the facts of societal organization. By ignoring facts, the authoritarian framing of reality persists.
In societies that have achieved industrial modernity, the growing conflict between the system imperative that requires growth of capital over all human values, eventually results in a new great transformation of those societies. That is because unlimited growth in a finite system cannot be sustained indefinitely. Today, the findings of the best experts in climate science, ecological science, and even sociology, make it clear that modernity has reached its limits. The Limits to Growth, predicted by Donella Meadows and her colleagues at MIT in 1972, are measurably observable today.
The evidence is overwhelming, but the cognitive dissonance between the pervasive culture of economic growth and ecological/societal stability prevents many people from recognizing the inevitability of the New Great Transformation of both the Earth System and society itself. They refuse to acknowledge facts in favor of their prior beliefs. Their cognitive dissonance then produces anger, which in too many cases is expressed in political violence such as the January 6 insurrection at the nation’s capital.
However, as catastrophic weather events—heat waves, floods, more intense hurricanes, and droughts—directly impact the lives of more and more people, increasing numbers are resolving the cognitive dissonance between their beliefs and faith in the industrial-consumer political economy and the “facts on the ground” of Earth System destabilization. They are beginning to recognize the climate emergency.
Unfortunately, the forces of neo-fascism, especially in the United States of America, falsely resolve their cognitive dissonance by doubling down on their obsessions with increasing their control over the political system as a means of dominating society, even as society begins to crumble under the weight of not only Earth System destabilization, but the chaos and disorder of their autocratic attempts. They have abandoned expertise, even vilified it, in their quest for power without reference to facts or human wellbeing. They may be able to hold on to autocratic power for a while, but it will come back to bite them in the end, as it has for every fascist regime in history. That is why the people must take back control, ASAP, so that some semblance of a livable society can be reconstructed. That will be the optimal New Great Transformation.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 