Category Archives: Rationalism

After reading Saturdays Hastings Tribune featuring stories and letters about a Bigfoot conference, guns everywhere, a creepy Daddy/Daughter Date Night, media bias and some absurd political views, Ive come to the conclusion that many Americans are just plain dumb.

A recent Psychology Today article said Dumbness has been steadily defined lately, by a combination of irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video over print culture; a disjunction between Americans rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

Yes, there has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. Much of the reason is because of our declining state of education.

Im thankful we have a great learning environment here, including Hastings College, Central Community College-Hastings, and many scholarly public school teachers who place emphasis on science, research methodology and critical thinking.

Lets hope our teachers, friends and neighbors begin using their brains and the fad of increasing anti-intellectualism, now found in education, politics and business, and advanced by social media, is soon reversed and reflected in stories featured in the Tribune and elsewhere.

Continued here:

Americans 'plain dumb' - Hastings Tribune

We live in a disorienting world. In West Asia, the Islamic State uses displays of cruelty and religious fanaticism as a propaganda tool. In large swathes of Europe, far right nationalism is rearing its head for the first time since after the defeat of fascism in World War II. The worlds only superpower, meanwhile, has a president elected to office on an explicit programme of racial and religious bigotry, attacking Muslims and non-White Americans in his campaign speeches.

And, of course, closer home in India, the ideology of Hindutva, which considers India to be a Hindu nation, grows ever stronger, assaulting Muslims and Dalits in its wake.

In his new book, intellectual Pankaj Mishra tries to explain this fury enveloping the world. Titled Age of Anger: A History of the Present, the work traces traces todays discontentment to the rapid changes of the 18th century, when modernity was shaped.

You say that the enlightenment gave rise to some irresistible ideals: a rationalistic, egalitarian and universalising society in which men shaped their own lives. So why do so many people disagree with the way in which you see the enlightenment? Youve shown it to be a very positive thing. So how are, say, Islamists looking at it differently? Why do they disagree?Well, I am not sympathetic to their critique and I am not sure that theyre directly critiquing the Enlightenment rather than the consequences of the kind of thinking introduced by the Enlightenment philosophers in the late 18th century. And lets be careful here: many of the consequences werent anticipated by these philosophers themselves.

What they were talking about was a polity. And for them a polity was the church and then the monarchy. And they thought individuals could use reason since there had been enough scientific breakthroughs, enough revelations about the nature of reality out there. They did not need intermediaries like the church to tell us what to think about the world, what to think about reality. We could use our individual reason to construct our own worlds essentially and shape society. That was the fundamental message they had. They had no idea what would happen in the 19th century.

What happened in the 19th century was something very different: large nation-states came into being, the process of industrialisation started, the use of individual reason expanded, science took off, all kind of new technologies came into being, and large political and economic webs were built.

The Islamist critique of that would be: too much responsibility for shaping the world was placed upon the extremely fallible minds and sensibilities of the human individual. That this was going against centuries of custom, tradition and history. Human beings had always been seen as being very frail and weak creatures who needed some kind of constraint and that was the role of traditional religion.

Religion reminded humans being of the severe limitations that life imposes on everyone. Whereas the promise of freedom and emancipation sets off all kinds of unpredictable processes that result in actually more oppression and more pain.

So that would be or has been the modern critique of the Enlightenment which is shared by a pretty broad spectrum of people, not just the Islamists. Mahatma Gandhi himself voiced many of these critiques of modern science, modern industry and the modern nation-state. You have to remember that Rabindranath Tagore himself expressed those critiques. So we also have to look at these other critics of Enlightenment rationalism.

You go into some detail in describing Savarkar in the book. In many ways, a very good argument could be made that Savarkar was a rationalist. He said Hindus should eat beef, for example. How does a Savarkar then map to the more modern forms of Indian conservatism? How do you go from Savarkar to the current-day gau rakshak?I think Savarkar is essentially a child of Enlightenment rationalism despite all the claims made for an unbroken Hindu tradition. The important thing to note about the Savarkar variety of Hindu nationalism is that it is deeply European and deeply modern. Which was one reason why Gandhi was so opposed to it. He said this was the rule of Englishmen with the English in his book Hind Swaraj.

So Savarkar does not partake of a critique of the Enlightenment. He, in fact, in very much a product of 19th century Europe, which advances Enlightenment rationalism in unexpected directions. He starts to think of a national community of like-minded individuals. He starts to think of a past which can be recruited by the present, that can be deployed politically. Savarkar subscribes to everyone of these political tendencies which are elaborated most prominently by [Giuseppe] Mazzini. So he comes out of that particular tradition.

So this whole reverence for figures and symbols from the past which the gau rakshak seems to manifest is a total 19th century fantasy. People did not think of the past in that way before that century. The past was very deliberately enlisted into a nationalist project. Every nationalist and I write this in the book had made some sort of a claim upon the past, made some sort of connection.

We are now looking at history as a series of ruptures and new beginnings. In Savarkars case, the rupture would be the Muslim invasion of India. Thats also the case for [VS] Naipaul. That was the big rupture that violates the wholeness of the Hindu past. And now we are invested in a new beginning, which is the revival of Hindu glory.

This whole way of looking at time, of looking at human agency and identity is a product of the European 19th century. And thats where Savarkar should be placed. I think we spend too much time comparing him to the Germans and the Italians of the 1930s. I think we should go back and look at the 19th century more closely. And also look at Savarkar which Ive done in the book together with various other tendencies such as Zionism.

But its not only Savarkar whos doing this, right? Theres a whole galaxy of Indian leaders, right from Nehru to Jinnah, taking off from the Enlightenment. In your book, you quote Dostoyevsky, who underlined a tragic dilemma: of a society that assimilates European ways through every pore only to realise it could never be truly European. Is there anything that can be done to break this dilemma?The short answer would be a pessimistic one: that there is no way to break this. Because once we make that original break from pre-modern/rural/traditional society, break away from belief in god, from belief in a horizon that was defined by transcendental authorities, once you stop living in that world, then you are condemned to finding substitute gods. And the national community and the nation state has been that substitute god or transcendental authority for hundreds and millions of people for the last two hundred years.

And one reason it endures even though in many ways the nation state has lost its sovereign power after being undermined by globalisation is that as an emotional and psychological symbol, and as a way to define the transcendental horizon, the nation state is still unbeatable. So once we make that basic move away from the pre-modern modes of life into this modern, industrialised, urbanised mode of existence, we have basically embarked on a journey where theres no turning back. Theres no breaking out of that.

Where do you situate Modi on this scale?I think Modi is an interesting case. Hes not only someone who incarnates the tendencies that we identify with Savarkar who is a model for Modi but also mirrors many contemporary tendencies which one can identify with a sort of aspirational neoliberalism. The man from nowhere who makes it big: thats the story that Modi has tried to sell about himself. That hes the son of a chaiwallah who has overcome all kinds of adversity including violent, vicious attacks from the countrys English-speaking elites who wanted to bring him down but failed. And he has overcome all these challenges to become who he is. And he invites his followers to do the same.

So, in that sense, he not only is a Hindu nationalist in the old manner of thinking of India as primarily a country of Hindus and as a community of Hindus which needs to define itself very carefully by excluding various foreigners, but also someone who is in tune with the ideological trends of the last 30 years, which place a lot of premium on individual ambition and empowerment, not just collective endeavour. So he is a very curious and irresistible mix, as it turns out, of certain collectivist notions of salvation with a kind of intensified individualism.

You used a very interesting phrase there: aspirational neoliberalism. In the book, you use another term, neoliberal individualism. In my opinion, you take a negative opinion of this sort of individualism. Could you tell us what neoliberal individualism is, how is it different from, say, Enlightenment individualism and why are you taking a negative view of it.Individualism really is synonymous with modernity, which is all about individual autonomy and reason. The most important difference is that the previous forms of individualism had certain constraining factors. There would be religion, the nation state, the larger collective.

When [Alexis de] Tocqueville goes to America and begins to describe individualism at work in the worlds first democratic society, he is aware that all of this is made possible because religion is a very important factor. There are many intermediate institutions there to mediate between individuals and the larger reality of society. So these factors were extremely important for individualism to actually work properly.

What neoliberal individualism proposes, though, is essentially that we dont actually need these intermediaries. It buys into a kind of extreme libertarian fantasy of the kind we see people like Peter Theil [co-founder of PayPal and vocal Trump supporter] expressing. Theyre saying, we dont need government, we dont need collective endeavour of any kind, we dont really need notions of collective welfare, general welfare or common good.

They believe individuals pursuing their self-interest can create a common good. And the marketplace would be where these individual desires and needs could be miraculously harmonised. So its a kind of mysticism, really, neoliberal individualism. It basically argues that we dont need any constraining factors. We do not need any intermediate institutions of the kind Tocqueville argued for in America. Neoliberal individualism says, all we really need is individual initiative, individual energy, individual dynamism and, of course, individual aspiration. So this is how neoliberal individualism is different from previous forms of individualism.

It is interesting that you mention Peter Theil, a major supporter of Trump. Is neoliberal individualism then powering Trump?Well, no. Thats the thing. There are many contradictory elements in this mix. To go back to Modi, he comes from a party which has as part of its extended family the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. The Manch believes in Swadeshi but Modi wants to attract foreign investment.

I think we have to start thinking of a world where archaisms, modernity, post-modernity all exist simultaneously yet differently. You can think of it as different territories. Trump can therefore mobilise a whole lot of disaffected individuals who have believed in the neoliberal ideology and have felt themselves victimised by various technocratic elites and attract a figure like Theil, who claims to be a libertarian, and at the same believe that economic protectionism is the way to go.

I think there are many different contradictory tendencies that have come together to produce events or personalities like Donald Trump and Modi. I think if we were to follow this old analytic method of either/or we would miss many of these contradictory aspects of modern politics and economics. In the same way, Erdoan mixed in neoliberalism with Islamism and Putin mixed in Orthodox Christianity with Russian Eurasianism. There are all kinds of mixtures on offer.

The central argument being that they correspond to the acute, inner divisions of human beings. Of people wanting individual power, expansion and at the same time wanting identity, longing and a sense of community. So this is, in a way, a little snapshot of where we are a kind of endless transition.

Age of Anger: A History of the Present, Pankaj Mishra, Juggernaut Books.

The rest is here:

'Modi combines Savarkar and neoliberalism': Pankaj Mishra on why this is the age of anger - Scroll.in

Sasa Radulovic and Johanna Hurme from 5468796 Architecture discuss previous projects they have worked on during their lecture Feb. 15. They highlighted the struggle of being creative while operating within the margins. Alex Kelly/Iowa State Daily

The status quo is never easy to change.

Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic discussed Wednesday about how to go about changing the status quo in regard to architecture at Iowa State.

The two are the founders of an architecture firm, 5468796 Architecture, which began in 2007 Winnipeg, Canada. Their discussion focused on a single theme: they believe students and future architects can shape design.

Hurme began the talk by comparing the similarities of Winnipeg to cities in the Midwest.

One of their main points was to show how in many of their designs, they have tried to cut down on interior space in order to expand exterior space.

Its about the stuff that happens between buildings, Hurme said.

The firm believes by doing this, it can offset a trend in much of the United States in the design of apartment and condo buildings, where the living space is cramped, leaving little room for social gatherings.

There is this Finnish word, 'piha,' which sort of means collective outdoor space, and as kids we would say we were from the piha, not the building, and we wanted to impose that onto people, Hurme, who is from Helsinki, Finland, said.

A theme that Hurme and Radulovic also discussed was the idea of hyper-rationalism in architecture.

We often get accused of doing things for the sake of their aesthetic, but often that way is the best way to do it and [it] becomes necessary, Hurme said.

Radulovic presented a project they worked on that exemplified this thought. Their firm designed an elevated, circular condo building, with two stories of living space. Hurme mentioned that while building an elevated condo may seem irrational, it ended up being the most efficient way for the building to come to existence.

The architects also spent time discussing the business side of their firm and architecture in general.

Its our [architects'] responsibility to know our value, so that we know when we should work for free, or when we should be paid, and how much, Hurme said.

Hurme advised students to avoid putting themselves into the two common boxes the corporate architect and the struggling designer architect and to be successful in whatever way they are able to.

This facet of the discussion is what stood out to senior architecture student Amanda Hoefling.

A lot of the architects that come talk about their projects, but fail to talk about the business side, so I absolutely love how they mentioned that, because thats real life, Hoefling said.

One of the most important topics Hurme and Radulovic talked about was the ability for anyone to make an impact, even in smaller areas such as Winnipeg, or even Ames and Des Moines.

Radulovic said they believe many of their designs have had impacts in their community on social, environmental and economic levels. They have been able to be who they want to be and have success.

One thing that comes from the reality of living in a city with a smaller population is that the feedback you receive from users and people familiar with your project is very quick and direct, Radulovic said.

Throughout the lecture, the pair of architects stressed the importance of staying true to oneself and the ability each design student in the room had to impact the world. It was their belief as well, that the opportunity for impact was greatest by practicing architecture in second and third cities.

Dont abandon the place, make something out of it, Hurme said.

Read the original here:

Canadian architecture firm discusses design in the Midwest - Iowa State Daily

Alas, we cant even go to the bathroom in peace. The Texas Legislature is considering a law similar to the so-called bathroom bill of North Carolina, mandating that people use bathrooms and locker rooms matching their biological gender. While it is astonishing that we even need such a law, nevertheless, similar to the North Carolina boycott, the NFL is threatening to block future Super Bowl games from being held in Texas if the Lone Star State goes through with such legislation.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is having none of this nonsense, tweeting in Trump-like fashion: NFL decision makers also benched Tom Brady last season. It ended with NFL handing the Super Bowl trophy to Brady. In other words, there are forces here at play that are a lot bigger than you, NFL commissioner.

And Abbott has a point; Why would the NFL care what Texas does with its bathrooms? And why would the NFL take up a cause that has nothing to do with its customer base, the vast majority of which come from the Midwest and South who could care less about transgender politics?

One would think the NFL would have learned from their drop in ratings due to Colin Kaepernick and the national anthem controversy. There is, however, a rather clear rationale for why the NFL and other sports leagues are insisting on a corporate solidarity with transgenders, and it finds its origins in globalization and sports journalism.

Considered the defining trait of modernity, globalization involves what is in effect a worldwide transnational economic system held together by telecommunications and technology. What is crucial for us to observe is that globalization involves a social dynamic known as disembedding, which is a propelling of social and economic factors away from localized control toward more transnational processes. For example, think of your local mall: In one sense, the mass shopping complex is in fact local in terms of its proximity to consumers; but notice that the retail outlets that comprise the various stores at a mall are not local but rather national and international chains and brand names. This is especially the case with the latest releases at the movie theater or the offerings at the food court.

However, it is not merely economic processes that are arrested from provincial control; such dislodging also involves localized customs, traditions, languages and religions. Whereas premodern societies are characterized generally by provincial beliefs and practices considered sacred and absolute, globalized societies offer a range of consumer-based options that call into question the sanctity of local beliefs and practices, relativizing them to a global food court of many other creedal alternatives.

This social order of consumer-based options tends to forge a new conception of the human person as a sovereign individual who exercises control over his or her own life circumstances. Again, traditional social structures and arrangements are generally fixed in terms of key identity markers such as gender, sexual orientation and religious affiliation. But globalized societies, because of the wide array of options, see this fixedness as restrictive. And so traditional morals and customs tend to give way to what we called lifestyle values. Lifestyle values operate according to a plurality of what sociologist Peter Berger defines as life-worlds, wherein each individual practices whatever belief system he or she deems most plausible. These belief systems include everything from religious identity to gender identity.

Thus, lifestyle values and identities are defined and determined by consumerist tendencies and norms. Commercial advertising is not merely central to economic growth, it is also of central influence to inventing the self through offering variant lifestyle features and choices. I would therefore argue that corporations such as the NFL promising to boycott Texas are not so much for LGBT rights as they are against arbitrarily restricting lifestyle options, since such limitations are deemed inconsistent with a society that includes consumer-based self-expression.

Along with globalization is the pressure from sports journalists, who are notoriously liberal. This comes largely from journalisms secular turn at the beginning of the 20th century, when they adopted scientific rationalism as a method for so-called objective reporting, that is, one based on verified facts and data irrespective of the journalists personal biases and preconceptions.

However, scientific rationalism erects new boundaries of knowledge that effectively censor religions, traditions, customs and cultures from the realm of what can be known. Indeed, scientific facts are considered objective precisely because they transcend the biases and prejudices innate to cultural values and norms. And so what emerges from this pre-commitment to scientific rationalism is what has been called a fact/value dichotomy: Facts are objective while values are subjective, facts apply to all while values apply only to some. Thus, as the journalist transforms into an impartial observer of economic, political and social events, he or she begins to view moral and religious sensibilities in terms of you guessed it! personal lifestyle values that are relative to individuals or cultures. Today, virtually every media outlet features prominently a Lifestyles section where we can learn about everything from the sex habits of entertainers to our horoscopes.

And so, globalization and liberal sports journalism together reimagine sports as an expression of consumer-based lifestyle values. Under their auspice, the human person has been redefined as a mere consumer, a chooser of lifestyle identities, and nothing more. In this sense, the transgender community has more in common with the dominant beliefs of the NFL than do traditionalists.

Its time for sports fans to realize that the NFL couldnt care less about their traditional values and customs, but have rather embraced, along with so many of its reporters, economic- and media-based biases that are thoroughly anti-traditional and anti-cultural.

Perhaps the real boycott is about to begin.

Read more:

Why sports industry sides with transgenders - WND.com

13 Feb 2017, 1:04 p.m.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Western Australian Liberal Party's unprecedented decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals at the upcoming state election, a deal that has been defended by Mr Joyce's federal Liberal partners.

Prime Minister and Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull with Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop. Photo: Andrew Meares

Trade Minister Steven Ciobo has defended One Nation's record defending the government, while Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has warned the deal could cost the Liberal Party government in WA. Photo: Andrew Meares

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Western Australian Liberal Party's unprecedented decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals at the upcoming state election, a deal that is splitting opinion in the federal Coalition ranks.

Striking a different note to Liberal colleagues, former prime minister Tony Abbott agreed with the argument that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was a "better person" today than when she was previously in Parliament but said the Nationals should be preferenced above all other parties.

While Mr Joyce described the deal as "disappointing", cabinet colleague and Trade Minister Steve Ciobosaidthe Liberal Party should put itself in the best position to govern and talked up Ms Hanson's right-wing populist party as displaying a "certain amount of economic rationalism" and support for government policy.

Mr Joyce said the conclusion "that the next best people to govern Western Australia after the Liberal Party are One Nation" needed to be reconsideredand the most successful governments in Australia were ones based on partnerships between the Liberals and Nationals.

"When you step away from that, there's one thing you can absolutely be assured of is that we are going to be in opposition," he told reporterson Monday morning.

"[WA Premier] Colin Barnett has been around thepoliticalgame a long while and he should seriously consider whether he thinks that this is a good idea or whether he's flirting with a concept that would put his own side and Liberal colleagues in opposition."

The deal will see Liberals preference One Nation above the Nationals in the upper house country regions in return for the party's support in all lower house seats at the March 11 election.

The alliance between the more independent WA branch of the Nationals and the Liberals is reportedly at breaking point over the deal, which could cost the smaller rural party a handful of seats.

"Pauline Hanson is a different and, I would say, better person today than she was 20 years ago. Certainly she's got a more, I think, nuanced approach to politics today," Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB.

"It's not up to me to decide where preference should go but, if it was, I'd certainly be putting One Nation ahead of Labor and I'd be putting the National Party ahead of everyone. Because the National Party are our Coalition partnersin Canberra and in most states and they are our alliance partners in Western Australia."

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declined to criticise the deal, stating that preference deals in the state election were a matter for the relevant division who "have got make their judgment based on their assessment of their electoral priorities".

Mr Ciobo joined the Prime Minister and other federal Liberal colleagues in defending the WA division's right to make its own decisions.

"What we've got to do is make decisions that put us in the best possible position to govern," he told ABC radio of the motivations of his own branch in Queensland.

After Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos called the modern One Nation more "sophisticated" now, Mr Ciobo also praised the resurgent party.

"If you look at, for example, how Pauline Hanson's gone about putting her support in the Senate, you'll see that she's often voting in favour of government legislation.There's a certain amount of economic rationalism, a certain amount of approach that's reflective of what it is we are trying to do to govern Australia in a fiscally responsible way.One Nation has certainly signed up to that much more than Labor."

When in government, former Liberal prime minister John Howard declared that One Nation would always be put last on how-to-vote cards.

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The story Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Warrnambool Standard

13 Feb 2017, 1:04 p.m.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Western Australian Liberal Party's unprecedented decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals at the upcoming state election, a deal that has been defended by Mr Joyce's federal Liberal partners.

Prime Minister and Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull with Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop. Photo: Andrew Meares

Trade Minister Steven Ciobo has defended One Nation's record defending the government, while Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has warned the deal could cost the Liberal Party government in WA. Photo: Andrew Meares

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Western Australian Liberal Party's unprecedented decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals at the upcoming state election, a deal that is splitting opinion in the federal Coalition ranks.

Striking a different note to Liberal colleagues, former prime minister Tony Abbott agreed with the argument that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was a "better person" today than when she was previously in Parliament but said the Nationals should be preferenced above all other parties.

While Mr Joyce described the deal as "disappointing", cabinet colleague and Trade Minister Steve Ciobosaidthe Liberal Party should put itself in the best position to govern and talked up Ms Hanson's right-wing populist party as displaying a "certain amount of economic rationalism" and support for government policy.

Mr Joyce said the conclusion "that the next best people to govern Western Australia after the Liberal Party are One Nation" needed to be reconsideredand the most successful governments in Australia were ones based on partnerships between the Liberals and Nationals.

"When you step away from that, there's one thing you can absolutely be assured of is that we are going to be in opposition," he told reporterson Monday morning.

"[WA Premier] Colin Barnett has been around thepoliticalgame a long while and he should seriously consider whether he thinks that this is a good idea or whether he's flirting with a concept that would put his own side and Liberal colleagues in opposition."

The deal will see Liberals preference One Nation above the Nationals in the upper house country regions in return for the party's support in all lower house seats at the March 11 election.

The alliance between the more independent WA branch of the Nationals and the Liberals is reportedly at breaking point over the deal, which could cost the smaller rural party a handful of seats.

"Pauline Hanson is a different and, I would say, better person today than she was 20 years ago. Certainly she's got a more, I think, nuanced approach to politics today," Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB.

"It's not up to me to decide where preference should go but, if it was, I'd certainly be putting One Nation ahead of Labor and I'd be putting the National Party ahead of everyone. Because the National Party are our Coalition partnersin Canberra and in most states and they are our alliance partners in Western Australia."

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declined to criticise the deal, stating that preference deals in the state election were a matter for the relevant division who "have got make their judgment based on their assessment of their electoral priorities".

Mr Ciobo joined the Prime Minister and other federal Liberal colleagues in defending the WA division's right to make its own decisions.

"What we've got to do is make decisions that put us in the best possible position to govern," he told ABC radio of the motivations of his own branch in Queensland.

After Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos called the modern One Nation more "sophisticated" now, Mr Ciobo also praised the resurgent party.

"If you look at, for example, how Pauline Hanson's gone about putting her support in the Senate, you'll see that she's often voting in favour of government legislation.There's a certain amount of economic rationalism, a certain amount of approach that's reflective of what it is we are trying to do to govern Australia in a fiscally responsible way.One Nation has certainly signed up to that much more than Labor."

When in government, former Liberal prime minister John Howard declared that One Nation would always be put last on how-to-vote cards.

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The story Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - The Northern Daily Leader

"Please let us remember that to investigate the constitution of the universe is one of the greatest and noblest problems in nature, and it becomes still grander when directed toward another discovery."

Climate scientists stand up outside the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco

IN THE age of Trump, the person writing those words has much to teach us about the impending scientific struggles of our own time.

So spoke Salviati on day two of his debate with Sagredo and Simplicio in a hypothetical discussion imagined by the great scientist and astronomer Galileo Galilei, for his book Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632.

In the Dialogue, Galileo puts forward his heretical view that the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun in opposition to the Catholic Church-sanctioned Ptolemaic system in which everything in the universe revolves around the Earth.

Galileo hoped that by adopting a conversational style for his argument, it would allow him to continue his argument about the true nature of the universe and evade the attentions of the Inquisition, which enforced Church doctrine with the force of bans, imprisonment and execution.

However, Galileo's friend, Pope Urban VIII, who had personally authorized Galileo to write the Dialogue, didn't allow sentimentality to obstruct power. Galileo was convicted of heresy and spent the rest of his days under house arrest--the Dialogue was banned by the Inquisition, along with any other book Galileo had written or might write.

Typically portrayed as the quintessential clash between religion and science, Galileo's conflict with the Papacy was, in fact, just as rooted in material considerations of political power as it was with ideas about the nature of the solar system and our place within it.

Amid parallels to today's conflict between Donald Trump and the scientific community over funding, research, unimpeded freedom of speech and the kind of international collaboration required for effective scientific endeavor, neither situation exists solely in the realm of ideas.

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GALILEO'S CONTROVERSIAL and extended trial on charges of heresy coincided with the political and military problems faced by Pope Urban VIII.

Under pressure from what came to be known as the Thirty Years' War raging across central Europe between Catholic and Protestant armies, Urban was attempting to shore up and re-establish the might of Rome through the Inquisition, racking up massive Papal debt from increased military spending, while promoting rampant nepotism and corruption.

The analogy with the U.S. of 2017 and the political and economic situation is quite striking, as today's right wing seeks to assert its authority and impel the country politically and socially backward by launching attacks on immigrants, Native Americans, women and reproductive health, unions, and the gains of the LGBTQ, environmental and civil rights movements. These attacks have been extended across a broad swathe of society, encompassing both the arts and sciences.

After reports emerged in the first days of the Trump administration that he intended to defund the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities--responsible for 0.01 percent of the federal budget--Suzanne Nossel, writing in Foreign Policy, called this "an assault on the Enlightenment."

Meanwhile, with the election of Trump and his comments on climate change, scientists in charge of the Doomsday Clock moved it another 30 seconds closer to midnight. This is the closest it's been to midnight since 1953, at the height of the Cold War and following the decision by the U.S. to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with thermonuclear weaponry.

"The Trump administration needs to state clearly and unequivocally that it accepts that climate change is caused by human activity," theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss said at a press conference announcing the Doomsday Clock time change. "Policy that is sensible requires facts that are facts."

Unfortunately, fact-checking website Politifact has shown that 71 percent of Trump's public statements range from "mostly false" to "pants on fire" levels of absurdity.

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WITHIN HOURS of Trump's inauguration, rumors began to circulate that government agencies such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had been ordered to scrub references to climate change from their websites. There were other reports of gag orders on the Department of Agriculture and a freeze on EPA grants.

NASA climate scientist James Hansen was famously gagged during the presidency of George W. Bush, along with hundreds of others at seven different federal agencies who were ordered against using the term "global warming."

However, scientists at the EPA say Trump's mandate that any data collected by them--including information that is of direct consequence to people's health and that of the planet--must first undergo political vetting before being release to the public takes things much further down the road to outright censorship.

As far as gutting the EPA entirely, it's certainly not beyond possibility, considering that a key adviser to Trump and his head of transition for the EPA, Myron Ebell, called environmentalists "the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world."

One wonders if he had in mind an editorial in Nature, one of the world's leading science journals, which, under the headline "Scientists Must Fight for the Facts," described Trump's energy plan as "a product of cynicism and greed" for its adherence to talking points taken directly from the fossil-fuel industry.

As bad as our air, water and soil is today, we know before the EPA's creation under Richard Nixon in response to a wave of gigantic pro-environment marches in the 1960s and '70s, things were much worse.

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IN RESPONSE to these attacks--and the resulting increase in stress and anxiety over job security--scientists have called a March for Science on Earth Day, April 22, in Washington, D.C. Like the giant Women's March on Washington the day after Trump's inauguration, the science march has already spawned calls for solidarity protests in other cities across the country.

One-fifth of scientists in the U.S. are immigrants, meaning the lives of thousands of scientists and science students have already been affected by the travel ban, leaving people traumatized, but also mobilizing for the protests. A petition drawn up by academics against the anti-Muslim immigration ban, Academics Against Immigration Executive Order has garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including over 50 Nobel Laureates.

The head of the largest professional science organization in the world, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, physicist Rush Holt described the change under Trump as taking long-standing attacks against science in the U.S. to another level: "In my relatively long career I have not seen this level of concern about science...This immigration ban has serious humanitarian issues, but I bet it never occurred to them that it also has scientific implications."

But resistance from scientists is emerging from all quarters. As Republicans tried to pass a bill to sell off more public land to corporations and fossil-fuel interests, workers at the National Park Service went rogue around the country, setting up their own social media sites to combat disinformation and let the public know what was happening.

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PREDICTABLY, THE March for Science has drawn controversy for "politicizing" science, even though scientists have signed a range of open letters calling for stronger action to combat climate change, and climate scientists have already held a rally in San Francisco in December last year protesting Trump's election victory and his anti-science rhetoric.

By selecting Earth Day, the march is clearly connected to Trump's specific and highly political attacks on government bodies and scientists associated with climate change research and other environmental concerns.

Despite this, renowned Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker tweeted: "Scientists' March on Washington plan compromises its goals with anti-science PC/identity politics/hard-left rhetoric"--apparently because the website included information about the importance of diversity and intersectionality.

Meanwhile, science writer Dr. Alex Berezow, who penned a blatantly political book about the supposed anti-science proclivities of the left, tells us he won't be on the march because it doesn't mention white men, Christians or privately-funded science research.

More seriously, Robert Young, one of the co-authors of a report on rising sea level and its impact on the coastline of North Carolina--which drew the ire of the real estate lobby and conservative politicians, along with scathing humor from Stephen Colbert--argued in the New York Times that the march is a bad idea:

A march by scientists, while well intentioned, will serve only to trivialize and politicize the science we care so much about, turn scientists into another group caught up in the culture wars, and further drive the wedge between scientists and a certain segment of the American electorate.

On the other side of the debate, biologist Christina Agapakis tweeted, "Is it going to be a fuck yeah science facts march or a science is political and made by humans march?"

Agapakis importantly went on to argue that not having political demands doesn't make any sense nor help achieve the goals of the scientists: "If 300 years of scientists pretending to be apolitical wasn't enough to convince someone that climate change isn't a hoax, then erasing political issues from the march isn't going to change anyone's mind either."

As far as the substance of this discussion is concerned, one immediate and obvious question would be to ask who is "politicizing" science?

Given Trump's rejection of climate change, his attacks on science, his appointment of the former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and his intended appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA--a federal department which Pruitt spent his tenure as attorney general of Oklahoma suing over a dozen times--if anyone is "politicizing" science, surely it's already being done by the president.

Indeed, when the editors of the thoroughly mainstream USA Today issue a statement calling for Pruitt's rejection as head of the EPA because Trump "couldn't have nominated someone more opposed to the agency's mission," you know you're involved in politics.

Although Texas Republican Congressman Lamar Smith might disagree. The inveterate climate denier and anti-science champion--but nevertheless somehow chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology--has said that listening to President Donald Trump, as opposed to the media or scientists, was likely "the only way to get the unvarnished truth."

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TO TALK of a supposedly apolitical science is wrongheaded to begin with. Science has been political since its modern inception with the Scientific Revolution, which began in part with Galileo's experiments on projectile motion for the highly political purpose of launching more accurate cannonballs.

Science is as much a cultural artifact of society as art, music or fashion. Of course, science is about investigating the natural world through rationalism and empirically verified investigation, but the questions asked by scientists, what they obtain funding to investigate, and the methodology they use are all contoured and distorted by the society within which they are embedded.

We can see that contradiction with climate change research itself.

The reason we know so much about the atmosphere and climate is because climate research grew out of the military's need in the 1950s to track wind currents so it could predict where radioactive fallout would be most severe following nuclear war (which scientists working on the Manhattan Project had made possible in the first place).

In the U.S., that research gave rise to the building of the interstate highway system to facilitate military transportation and the evacuation of population centers--which in turn generated the phenomenon of the suburbs and the growth of a culture centered around the automobile and fossil fuels.

There is a difference and a contradiction between the philosophy and method of science based in empirical evidence and rationalism and how it is practiced in a class-stratified society, by people just as subject to social prejudices and norms as anyone else.

Though some individual scientists may profess and even believe they are disinterestedly studying the way the universe works merely for the sake of it, science is part of class society. As such, it is faced with the same contradictions as any other facet of an unequal and exploitative social system.

However, because scientific explanation for the way the natural world works needs to correspond to objectively observable and experimentally verified facts and rationality, the contradictions inherent to it and the field's intrinsically political nature are often more clearly expressed than other areas of human culture.

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AS HAS been repeatedly shown through history, science can be used to bolster the political status quo or help tear it down.

Famed American sociologist of science Robert K. Merton argued in the 1940s that science was a collective endeavor for the civic good, in which sharing of ideas within the scientific community and the wider public was a paramount consideration.

"The communism of the scientific ethos is incompatible with the definition of technology as 'private property' in a capitalistic society," Merton wrote. "Patents proclaim exclusive rights of use, and often, nonuse." According to Merton, science would come into conflict with rulers whenever efforts were made to enforce "the centralization of institutional control."

One of the most infamous stories in the history of science is scientists' role in justifying the characterization of racial superiority of the so-called "white race" with the rise of scientific racism in the 19th century--a precursor to Hitler's anti-Semitic policies of the 1930s.

Another example of science justifying the status quo: Social Darwinism is rooted in the idea that we are genetically predisposed to behave in greedy and selfish ways--these human attributes are naturalized in modes that just happen to coincide with the values necessary for capitalism to survive.

And of course, it was scientists and engineers who developed atomic weapons, nerve gas, pesticides and fracking.

Conversely, a better understanding of the natural world through science also gives us wondrous things: birth control, modern medicine and vaccinations, to list only a tiny fraction of the vast contribution to socially useful knowledge and technologies we have obtained through scientific experiments and theoretical development. We are going to need to apply this knowledge and technology to avoid dangerous, human-induced climate change.

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THESE EXAMPLES illustrate what really irks Trump about science--and why the March for Science in Washington is such a crucial development.

Here it's important to be clear about what Trump isn't doing. He's not saying corporations or private funding for science should be cut, only government funding of science--particularly climate science, while carefully exempting the military. The question Trump is ultimately posing--and what scientists and everyone else need to understand--is this: Should there be any science in the public good?

Trump is not telling businesses to stop doing science. He wants the federal government to stop doing science in the public interest. He wants an end to fact-based discourse wherever the facts run counter to right-wing ideology.

Understanding his assault on science in this manner connects it to the wider Republican and corporate attacks on public education and health care. It is the logical endpoint of capitalism in its most unrestricted form.

As such, it is an intensely political attack that can only be successfully repelled by a similarly political response.

We want and need more funding for all branches of science in the public good and an increase in research into areas of climate change, agro-ecology, renewable energy technologies, medical research and so on. We can only justify these on the grounds of our values, values that emerge from our political orientation and desire for just social outcomes with regard to health, clean air, and unpolluted soil and water.

This is really what scientists who are genuinely opposing the "politicizing" of science--as opposed to those with conservative politics using the complaint to oppose protest--mean: science can furnish us with facts about the way the physical world works, but it doesn't tell us anything about what to do with those facts once we have established them.

For example, science and technology have furnished humans with the ability to hunt down and drive whales to extinction. But it tells us nothing about whether we should or not. Which is to say, science tells us nothing about what is right or wrong--that comes down to our values and is therefore an ethical and political question.

But most people would decry such a rigid attempt at fence-sitting, particularly when people's lives and the health of the biosphere are at stake. And especially when one considers the already highly political nature of scientific research, grants and so on under capitalism. As radical educator Paolo Freire commented, "To sit on the fence in the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor means to take the side of the oppressor, not to be neutral."

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THOUGH TRUMP is clearly attempting something even more extreme, we can learn much about state repression of publicly funded scientific knowledge, research and communication from the behavior of the conservative administration of Canada's former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Under Harper, Canadian scientists were followed, threatened and censored, while libraries were closed and science research programs cut.

Noting that 24 percent of Canadian scientists reported being required to exclude or alter scientific information for non-science-based reasons, Robert MacDonald, a Canadian federal government scientist for three decades, commented:

That's something you would expect to hear in the 1950s from eastern Europe, not something you expect to hear from a democracy like Canada in 2013...And I think, by all indication, that's what our sisters and brothers are going to be faced with down in the United States.

The attacks, cuts and muzzling of scientists by the Harper government, particularly in any field even remotely connected to climate change, were extensive and systematic, undermining any claim to a democratic, truth-oriented administration.

Highlighting the purpose of the censorship, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations explained in the run-up to Canadian demonstrations by scientists in 2013:

In the absence of rigorous, scientific information--and an informed public--decision-making becomes an exercise in upholding the preferences of those in power.

In Canada today, as in most of the developed world, power has become increasingly concentrated in fewer hands-- hands which are inevitably attached to the bodies of big business and the state. And in light of Prime Minister Harper's agenda to rebrand Canada as the next energy superpower, it would seem that both the corporate interests and the state are focused on the expansion of the resource extraction industry in Canada.

In the federal capital of Ottawa, hundreds of scientists clad in lab coats carried a coffin in a funeral procession to mark the "death of scientific evidence." This and dozens of smaller marches elsewhere had an observable impact on people's perception of the Harper government.

In a lesson U.S.-based scientists should take to heart, the decline in popularity of the Harper government--and the subsequent electoral victory of Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party, signaling a more positive, less hostile approach to science, if not a break with big business, including the energy industry--can be traced in part to the 2013 marches by scientists.

Hence, for all the naysayers in the scientific community who want empirical evidence about the efficacy of a political protest, look no further than the Canadian experience. According to one of the organizers with the group behind the protests, Evidence for Democracy--which is advising U.S. scientists on their march--commented, Trump's attack on science:

absolutely echoes what we saw under George Bush in the States and what we saw under Harper, except it's so much swifter and more brazen than what we saw under Harper...But at the same time there's been a huge resistance coming out of the scientific community and that's been really heartening to see.

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MICHAEL MANN, one of the world's leading climate scientists, has written that "scientists are, in general, a reticent lot who would much rather spend our time in the lab, out in the field, teaching and doing research." Nevertheless, Mann went on to call for a "rebellion" against Trump, due to the severity of Trump's assault.

As Dr. Prescod-Weinsten, a cosmologist and particle physicist at the University of Washington, commented: "What history has taught us is that...[w]hen we work with extremist, racist, Islamophobic or nationalist governments, it doesn't work for science." Nor one could add, for humanity.

The assault on science must be recast and seen as entirely political. It is being made in order to further the interests of fossil fuel-based corporations. Beyond that, it is part and parcel of a larger political project to drive society back and call into question all forms of publically funded scientific, fact-based research, data gathering and dissemination in the interests of ordinary people and the public good.

Which brings us back to Galileo and what should be the purpose of scientific endeavor.

One of the other things that so angered the Inquisition was that Galileo chose to write his treatise not in Latin, the language of academia and the well to do, but in the language of common people. Galileo quite deliberately wrote his book in Italian so that it would be widely read--before being banned, it was a best seller--and discussed.

Galileo was doing science for the common good--presenting a fact-based, better understanding of the world to more clearly inform people of how their world worked. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in his essay on "Writing the Truth," "The truth must be spoken with a view to the results it will produce in the sphere of action."

Scientists must be political in order to be more effective scientists, not less effective. The struggle is really about the question and need to further democratize science. That means scientists seeing themselves as "citizen scientists"--in the mold of Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould.

For Commoner, scientists are obligated to rebel to fulfill their mission of science in the public interest and for social good. He wrote:

The scholar's duty is toward the development of socially significant truth, which requires freedom to test the meaning of all relevant observations and views in open discussion, and openly to express concern with the goals of our society. The scholar has an obligation--which he owes to the society that supports him--toward such open discourse. And when, under some constraint, scholars are called upon to support a single view, then the obligation to discourse necessarily becomes an obligation to dissent. In a situation of conformity, dissent is the scholars duty to society.

If science is all about taking a critical eye toward the investigation of natural phenomenon for the betterment of humanity, then rather than seeing protest and public involvement as somehow detrimental to that project, these should be seen as at the heart of the process.

We must pose the question: What are the goals we want for society? How can we help society realize those goals? To effectively answer those questions, scientists must necessarily dissent from those in power who seek to stifle empirical research and do so by informing and involving laypeople to aid their cause.

Making the March for Science on Earth Day big and political as possible is the best way to help further that process, push back Trump's right-wing agenda and enlist more people to support science in the public good."

Read more here:

Will science go rogue against Donald Trump? - Socialist Worker Online

Valentines Day is Tuesday, and I have something suitably romantic for you.

Being romantic or a romantic means different things to different people. Most commonly, of course, it means valuing the experiences and forms of falling in love and being in love -- what my fifth-grade daughter dismisses, with a grimace, as all that yucky kissy stuff.

Theres also the literary and cultural sense of Romanticism, the 19th-century European movement that was partly a reaction against industrialism and its midwife, Enlightenment rationalism. That romanticism elevated nature, the past, the individual in his susceptibility to emotion, the importance of intuition, the power of the sublime, and so on impulses and attitudes expressed in the poetry of Wordsworth or the portraiture of Caspar David Friedrich.

A lot of people consider themselves romantics. My father, who retired two decades ago from his career as a surgeon, liked to say about himself that he was a romantic in an unromantic profession. Im not entirely sure what being romantic to him, but I know it included the feeling that he didnt share a sensibility with most physicians he knew. To him being a romantic partly meant enjoying experiences rather than analyzing causes. It meant loving the surfaces of things the look, feel, sound and mood rather than the machinery below (he had suffered through one year of engineering school, basically flunking out, before landing in a liberal arts college). It meant loving music and singing. It meant admiring The Great Gatsby, and vaguely wanting to write something Gatsby-like himself. And certainly it said something to him about the stringencies of coming, as he did, from a working-class family with a no-nonsense father who himself had quit school after eighth grade to help support his widowed mother, and who would have had little patience for Wordsworthian ramblings from his son, the first in any branch of the family to go to college.

Another basic part of being romantic is the inclination toward nostalgia and its fascination with time, change and memory. As I have written before in this space on the topic of music boxes nostalgia was long thought of as an illness. The term was coined by a Swiss physician whose 1688 dissertation cobbled together two Greek words to fashion a neologism for the pain of homecoming. The impulse has been particularly powerful among Germans, with their worship of Heimat, but animates other European traditions as well, from Poland, with its odes to nobility, to Portugal with its swooning fado music.

At any rate, you can find my own expression of romance here, in a short essay, Dreaming of Gerry, published in the current issue of Hartford Magazine. Like those homesick Swiss soldiers of yore, listening to their music boxes, I was moved by the memory of a song, and the role that song played on a long-ago day in my life.

I dont think of the ranks of Commonweal readers as rife with hopeless romantics. But the Catholic tradition did supply the obscure Roman martyr whose annual feast was eventually transformed -- by European Romanticism -- into the modern Valentines Day, in all its kissy yuckiness. So this is for the romantics among you. RRC

More:

Valentine's Day and Romance - Commonweal (blog)

Runny nose? Sore throat? Wheezing? Painful joints? No you are not going to die. It is just a winter flu. Probably. Bolstered by antibiotics, brandishing an inhaler and slurping chicken soup, you will likely live to fight another day.

Not so in the past. Then a sore throat could mean death by dinner time. Nearly every generation has had to deal with a widespread infectious disease that swiftly strikes down otherwise healthy individuals. Plagues kill a whole bunch of people. And they can take society and the economy down with them.

The notion that in this interconnected world were not likely to experience a massive epidemic is too good to be true. Maybe not this year. Maybe not in your lifetime. But its not a question of whether humanity will face another plague. We will. And then we will be faced with how to handle that plague when it comes. Will we respond with science, stoicism and compassion? Or will we just burn our neighbors as witches?

The answers to these questions likely come from the past. Here are some of the most gruesome plagues from my new book Get Well Soon: Historys Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them and what we can learn from them.

There was no chance that the Antonine Plague which is thought to have been smallpox could be cured when it broke out in Rome in 165 AD. It could barely even be treated. The best the prominent physician Galen could do was provide notes on the symptoms that people who seemed likely to die showed and what symptoms those likely to recover showed. Thousands died each day its thought at least 10 million perished.

While Emperor Marcus Aurelius advocated a calm rationalism in the face of disaster, the populace did . . . not. They embraced charlatans like Alexander of Abonoteichus who sold magical disease-repelling charms. Many Romans blamed the outbreak of the disease on Christians and proceeded to kill them. (The phrase Throw the Christians to the lions! is thought to have originated during this period) Meanwhile, Germanic tribes, recognizing the empires weakened state, began crossing the Roman border. Civilization hung by a thin thread.

But Marcus Aurelius, with his stoic disposition, held Rome together. He passed legislation subsidizing the cost of funerals to keep bodies from piling up in the streets. When the army was short on recruits, he conscripted gladiators. When the army could not pay the cost of new soldiers needed to replace the dead, he sold off his imperial possessions to finance the effort. He was able to see a problem, solve it, then see another problem and solve that one too without giving way to panic.

Marcus Aurelius successor, Commodus, didnt do nearly as good a job when it came to fighting the plague in his midst. He spent most of his time committing incest with his sisters, trying to rename the calendar after himself and fighting harmless animals like ostriches in gladiatorial games. The Antonine Plague segued into the Cyprian Plague, which didnt die off until around 270 (by which time the Roman emperor had been captured by the Persians). Alas, you cant count on having someone like Marcus Aurelius in power forever.

In July 1518 in Strasbourg, a woman named Frau Troffea began dancing in the street and could not stop. People speculated that she was doing this because her husband, who hated dancing, had told her to do something she did not wish to do.

Within a few days, 30 other townspeople followed her lead and began dancing. They danced until bones poked out of their feet and fought against any attempts to restrain them.

The miraculous part of this plague story is that the community came together to use compassion and kindness to help solve a problem.

Theres some debate regarding whether this frenzy might have been due to ergot poisoning, which causes muscle spasms and contortions in the afflicted. However, given the fact that every firsthand account describes the afflicted as dancing, not spasming, it seems mostly likely that it was an outbreak of mass hysteria. But remarkably especially in an era where witch burnings were common the town did not declare the dancers all demons. Instead they devoted their resources to trying to help them.

First, they hired professional musicians and staged dances, thinking that perhaps those afflicted just needed to dance it out. This was not effective. Then the town officials instituted directives against holding dances for by doing so they take away the recovery of [the afflicted]. Finally, they decided to send the afflicted to the Shrine of St. Vitus, the patron saint of dancers (and one of the so-called Fourteen Holy Helpers the saints who were supposed to offer special aid to Christians). Amazingly, most of the victims were cured. They simply stopped dancing. This isnt the most magical part of this story, though. The miraculous part of this plague story is that the community came together to use compassion and kindness to help solve a problem and, in the course of doing so, saved many lives.

If you dont allow for investigative journalism, people die. Theres no clearer time to witness this fact than during 1918 when the Spanish Flu broke out.

The Spanish Flu was no ordinary illness. While most flu viruses attack the elderly and the very young, the Spanish Flu produced a reaction called a cytokine storm that essentially turned healthy immune systems against themselves. The stronger the immune system response, the worse the illness, so the flu was deadliest to the healthiest in the prime of their lives. In under two years, it would kill somewhere between 20 million to 50 million people worldwide. But if youve never heard of it, dont worry thats because journalists were afraid to report on it.

The plague broke out during WWI after a morale law had been put in place in 1917. The law dictated that journalists shouldnt report anything negative about the US government that might demoralize the populace for instance, that a disease was spreading through the populace that they had no idea how to combat. If you defied the law, you could go to jail for up to 20 years. The epidemic was called the Spanish Flu not because it originated there (it most likely came from Kansas) but because Spanish newspapers, who had no such laws, reported on it with great frequency as early as May 1918.

Back in the US, as late as September 1918 the El Paso Herald was still running articles like Vicious Rumors of Influenza Epidemic Will Be Combatted. This ignorance led to calamitous results in late September in Philadelphia when thousands gathered for a parade. A health expert named Dr. Howard Anders begged newspapers to warn against gathering in close proximity, but they refused. By early October, 117 Philadelphians had contracted the disease, prompting the Philadelphia Inquirer to write, Worry is useless! Talk of cheerful things instead of the disease. By Oct. 10, 759 people in Philadelphia had died. The disease would ultimately kill 675,000 Americans. It was never cured. It simply faded away as mysteriously as it broke out. Really, it would have been better if people had worried a little more.

In a 1952 national poll of Americans fears, polio ranked second, right after nuclear war. The disease was so terrifying because it mostly affected children, and, in many cases, left them paralyzed. The cost of caring for a stricken child could ruin families. There also was a social stigma against the disease, as some people believed, The world has no place for a cripple.

That was before Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was hit by the disease at age 39 in 1921, became president in 1933. While FDR tried to maintain an appearance of vitality despite being largely confined to a wheelchair, he couldnt hide the fact that he too had been paralyzed by the disease. Thousands of children with polio and members of their families wrote to him. One mother wrote, Your life is, in a way, the answer to my prayers. Soon, Birthday Balls were being held across the US on Roosevelts birthday, with all funds going to fight polio.

Roosevelt helped found the nonpartisan National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1938. Seven million Americans volunteered to help the organization, more than have volunteered for any cause that was not a war effort.

In 1947 the NFIP funded a lab for Jonas Salk, who would go on to create the polio vaccine in 1955. When Salk was asked who held the patent for his work, he replied, The people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?

If you want an example where everyone does everything wrong basically the polar opposite of the handling of polio then look back at the history of the AIDS virus.

AIDS acquired immune deficiency syndrome first appeared in the US in 1980. In 1982, when the Reagan administration was asked about it, they ignored it.

Reagan himself didnt discuss AIDS until 1985, by that time it had killed tens of thousands. That same year, he cut federal funding to combat the disease.

Meanwhile, communities who might have rallied to help fight the outbreak were told by religious leaders that the disease was Gods punishment for homosexuality. A California congressman said everyone with AIDS should be wiped off the face of the earth.

If the public had received better leadership and information would it have made a difference? Its impossible to say. But the only reason this plague didnt spread faster is due to groups of largely afflicted individuals like ACT UP and the Gay Mens Health Crisis, who protested and fought relentlessly for their right to live. While their grass-roots efforts made a difference, AIDS continues to affect people around the globe, with around 40,000 Americans diagnosed each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.1 million people around the world died of AIDS-related causes in 2015.

See the rest here:

Here's what to do when the next big plague hits humanity - New York Post

The expressions of communal harmony such as Muslims distributing water and eatables to Hindus during the Ramanavami procession to the kawariyas in Sawan, or Hindus giving sweets to Muslims during Eid Milad-un-Nabi and Muharram juloos, or Sikhs organising langars (free food distribution) for the poor are, today, rare occurrences in our communally-charged society. We cherish such instances of communal harmony, but the truth is that the secular fabric of our country is in grave danger. We must not forget to realise how the politics of religion has transformed after Indian independence. The idea of coexistence has to be looked at historically, with respect to pre-colonial and colonial India.

Mughal Emperor Akbar ruled on the basis of Sufi doctrines of Mohabbat-i Kul (Love for God) and Sulh-i Kul (Tolerance for All). These gave Akbar an ideological basis to rule, where there was room for debate on religious matters based on reason, scepticism, and questioning: abolition of Sharia, prohibition of cow slaughter, checks on sati are just some instances. These doctrines provided a non-discriminatory and non-sectarian foundation to the Mughal state during the late sixteenth century. Today, however, the very notion of religious tolerance and coexistence has eroded.

In India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, rationalists, who criticise or ridicule religious leaders in an attempt to advocate rationalism and scientific temper, are facing persecution and are even murdered. Govind Pansare and MM Kalburgi, who propagated rational ideas, were killed by Hindu fanatics, Avijit Roy in Bangladesh was killed by Islamic fundamentalists because he did not conform to their religious teachings and doctrines. In contrast, during Akbars regime, when a Brahmin in Mathura was executed for his blasphemous crime of allegedly insulting a prophet, Akbar was appalled and immediately intervened to abolish Sharia. It is also interesting to analyse the thoughts of Abul Fazl on prophets, which were radical as well as blasphemous in nature. He says, Prophets have pretended that they can be rulers of the world by virtue of their religious character. They are tricksters. Abul Fazl also says, What kind of society are we living in where anger is quick to break out over supremacy of one religion over another, and there are clashes among people.

In colonial India, the British resorted to divide and rule to further their imperial agenda. During the British period, communal clashes were widespread. Can the killings of millions during the Partition be attributed to the British policies towards religious communities? Probably. On the other hand, there were several cross-cultural traditions which planted roots in Indian society. Phoolwalon ki sair was one such tradition started in 1811 by Mumtaz Mahal, wife of Akbar II, for the safe return of her son, Mirza Jahangir, who was exiled by the British. She commissioned the flower sellers of the city and organised a procession from the dargah of Sufi saint Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki to the temple of goddess Jog Maya. This practice is continued even today with great pomp. The festival of Basant Panchami too continues to be celebrated in Nizamuddin Dargah.

We live in a society which showcases not merely diversity in culture, traditions, and rituals, but most importantly, differences in ideologies, opinions, and thought. Paradoxically, while we are progressing towards an era of bullet trains and 5G spectrum, we have stagnated ourselves with our rites and rituals, which are devoid of scientific validation and rational thinking. Recently, a Jain girl died after fasting for 40 days, as part of a religious practice. Triple talaq is still prevalent in the Muslim community; women are falsely accused of witchcraft and even burnt to death. Today, it is very easy to identify Muslim and Hindu localities with flags on their rooftops. We must rethink secularism. If we really want a peaceful, harmonious, and secular society, the State must do away with religion in the public space. The society should be built on an intellectual basis, for justice and welfare, peace and harmony, and promotion of knowledge and rationalism. Religion is a matter of personal faith and therefore belongs in the private sphere.

Send your edits to gennextedit@dnaindia.net

Read more from the original source:

When religion rules social life - Daily News & Analysis