I have nothing against science per se. My problem is rather with scientism, which takes a limited tool for learning about the mechanics of the material world as the ground for developing a comprehensive worldview. Scientism is not science. It is, rather, "a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science." (Michael Schermer, editor of the magazine, Skeptic.)
Sounds ok, but the critical word here to define is "empirical." As Roszak says, "If the telescopes of Astronomers were to discover angels in outer space, science as a method of knowing would not be in any sense discredited; its theories would simply be reformulated in the light of new discoveries. In contrast to the way we use the phrase ‘world view’ in other contexts, science rests itself not in the world the scientist beholds at any particular point in time, but in his mode of viewing that world. A man is a scientist not because of what he sees, but because of how he sees it."
If he sees angels in what might be described as a paranormal state of mind, it doesn’t count, because "how" he sees them is not legitimate. He’s either crazy or it’s just an interesting aesthetic experience to be enjoyed like a fantasy as we experience them in the movies, but not to be taken seriously as real. Visionary experience is by definition excluded as real or truth revealing. Even if hundreds or thousands of people report having had such experiences. That’s data that has to be explained away on terms the naturalist defines as empirical. And yet what people learn in those experiences might be the most important thing of all to know.
I’d like to lean on Theodore Roszak today to help show to what this worldview leads.
His 1969 book, The Making of a Counterculture, has been sitting on my bookshelf for some time now, and I just recently began to reread it. It has aged well, and one realizes that this book, like The Greening of America that came out the following year, despite their notoriety at the time, described an "awakening" that was unable to sustain itself or establish a secure foothold in the mainstream public imagination. The myth of objective consciousness objectifies, and so we who live within such a mythos live in a world rich in objects, but poor in spirit. We’ve become all but soul dead living in this wasteland of things, things, and more things. Everywhere objects; here and there a few subjects
Or so it now seems. Perhaps it’s the old story of taking two steps forward and then a step backward. Some of us, me included, were naive enough to believe that Nixon’s political demise showed that the republic was healthy and capable of fending off such abuses of power. In retrospect, it would appear that the political class’s spitting him out was a temporary aberration. The forces within that class the Nixon represented had a temporary setback, and now are back in the driver’s seat. They brook no opposition. Even eager-to-please aspirants like Bill Clinton were not good enough for this resentful crew. He had too much of the stink of the counterculture about him to be acceptable, and so from Day 1 the backlash establishment ought to excrete him the way the pre-backlash establishment had excreted Nixon.
That’s not to say that the counterculture about which Roszak speaks has completely evaporated. It’s there at the fringes. The question is whether the world view of that counterculture has the vitality and the political wit to supplant the mainstream scientistic materialistic culture and its Bizarro doppelganger, the zombie traditionalist religious right. For both are trapped within the myth of objective consciousness, and neither offers us the alternative we all depserately need. For the only alternative worth supporting and working for will restore the soul-parched wasteland created by the myth of objective consciousness, so that once again the culture can become intersubjectively fertile.
I’m going to quote at length from Roszak here and build on this in future posts:
Objective consciousness begins by dividing reality into
two spheres, which would seem best described as "In-Here" and
"Out-There." By In-Here is meant that place within the person to which
consciousness withdraws when one wants to know without becoming
involved in or committed to that which is being known. . . .Whatever the scientific method may or may not be, people think they are
behaving scientifically whenever they create an In-Here within
themselves which undertakes to know without an investment of the person
in the act of knowing. The necessary effect of distancing, of
estranging In-Here from Out-There may be achieved in any number of
ways: by the intervention of various mechanical gadgets between observer
and observed; by the elaboration of chilly jargons and technical terms
that replace sensuous speech; by the invention of strange methodologies
which reach out to the subject matter like a pair of mechanical hands;
by the subordination of the particular and immediate experience to a
statistical generalization; by appeal to a professional standard which
excuses the observer from responsibility to anything other than a lofty
abstraction–such as "the pursuit of truth," pure research," etc.
All these protective strategies are especially compatible with natures
that are beset by timidity and fearfulness; but also with those that are
characterized by plain insensitivity and whose habitual mode of contact
with the world is a cool curiosity untouched by love, tenderness, or
passionate wonder.The spectating In-Here has been called by many names: ego,
intelligence, self, subject, reason. . . .What I prefer to emphasize is
the act of contraction that takes place within the person, the sense of
taking a step back, away from, and out of. Not only back and away from
the natural world, but from the inarticulate feelings, physical urges,
and wayward images that surge up from within the person. . . .The ideal of objective consciousness is that there should be as little
as possible In-Here and, conversely, as much as possible Out-There.
For only what is Out-There can be studied and known. Objectivity leads
to such a great emptying-out operation: the progressive alienation of
more and more of In-Here’s personal contents in the effort ot achieve
the densest possible unit of observational concentration surrounded by
the largest possible area of study. The very word "concentration"
yields the interesting image of an identity contracted into a small
hard ball; hence a dense, diminished identity, something which is less
than one otherwise might be. . . . Curiously, this great good called
knowledge, the very guarantee of our survival, is taken to be something
that is forthcoming only to this lesser, shriveled-up identity.The scientific observer who comes to feel that Out-There has begun to
implicate him personally–say, in the manner of a lover spellbinding
one’s sympathies so that one cannot tell clearly where one’s self
leaves off and the other begins–has begun to lose his objectivity.
Therefore, he must fight back this irrational involvement of his
personal feeling. . . . But if body, feelings, emotions, moral
sentiment, sensuous enchantment are all to be located Out-There, then
who is this In-Here that is so stalwartly struggling against the siren
song? .
. .As soon as two human beings relate in detachment as observer to
observed, as soon as the observer claims to be aware of nothing more
than the behavioral surface of the observed, an invidious hierarchy is
established which reduces the observed to a lower status. . . . For consider the gross impertinence of the act of
detached observation. Psychologist confronting his laboratory subject,
anthropologist confronting tribal group, political scientist
confronting voting public . . . in all such cases what the observer may
very well be saying to the observed is the same: "I can perceive no
more than your behavioral facade. I can grant you no more reality or
psychic coherence than this perception allows. I shall observe this
behavior of yours and record it. I shall not enter into your life,
your task, your condition of existence. Do not turn to me or appeal to
me or ask me to become involved with you. I am here only as a
temporary observer whose role is to stand back and later to make my own
sense of what you seem to be doing or intending. I assume that I can
adequately understand what you are doing or intending without entering
wholly into your life. I am not particularly interested in what you
uniquely are; I am interested only in the general pattern to which you
conform. I assume I have the right to use you to perform this process
of classification. I assume I have the right to reduce all that you
are to an integer in my science." . . .Already legions of scientists and military men throughout the world,
the products of careful training and selection, give themselves to
whole lives of ultimate objectivity. They systematically detach
themselves from any concern for those lives their inventions and
weapons may someday do to death. They do their job as they are ordered
to do it . . . objectively. For them the world at large has become a
laboratory–in the same sense that when they enter upon their
professional capacity, they leave their personal feelings behind.
Perhaps they even take pride in their capacity to do so, for indeed it
requires an act of iron will to ignore the claims that person makes
upon person. pp. 218-23
Our society’s primary institutions are dominated by the myth of objectivity as here described. In other words our society is controlled by these dense, flat-souled control freaks who require that anyone who seeks influence and power becomes like them. That’s Obama’s dilemma. I want to believe he is not like them, but he has to become like them if he is to avoid being labeled unserious, or worse, crazy as
Al Gore was. So as long as the freaks control the agenda, the wasteland cannot bloom. And they will control it until a truly robust alternative presents itself, and when/if it does, they will fight viciously to suppress it.
We’re not Burma. The repression is subtler here. And as of now there is no cultural or political force that poses a threat that worries the establishment elites. Critics can talk all they want because they have no power and they pose no threat. A guy like Obama doesn’t scare them. He can be easily co-opted, and if he resists, he will be made into an irrelevancy quicker than you can say Howard Dean.
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