Recently I published a small essay on one of the other sites where I post, that sounds a bit too radical even to myself. Yet, in the light of recent events (or maybe I should say "in the dark of the recent events" - there is not much light out there nowadays) its polemic force may be even appropriate.
Yet, the responses to it were surprisingly friendly - or, at least, non-hostile.
Here it is, below the double line. What do you think about this polemics of mine?
(Have in mind that it was written for another audience, one that is not very knowledgeable about the topics we usually discuss here.)
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There is a religion nowadays that is a most dangerous enemy – essentially of mankind as a whole, dare I say it. What is sad, however, is that this exact religion once was a mankind’s greatest friend.
Once this religion was genuinely beneficial – in matters both fundamental, pragmatic and public. For the first time in its known history providing it with knowledge that was universally verifiable and falsifiable, thus not requiring any adherence to, and reliance on, authority. It is also allowed people to initiate an unparalleled surge of technical innovation and development, opening countless new possibilities and increasing the quality of life to the heights once undreamed. And it became a catalyst for many positive social and cultural development as well, becoming one of the main sources of inspiration and argumentation for the liberatory forces.
Yet, after just a few centuries, this once-great religion changed for the worse in such a horrid fashion that it is no longer recognizable. Nowadays, it is no longer a provider of knowledge – it is its destroyer, hell-bent on discreditation, suppression and concealment of any objective facts deemed inconvenient for its dogmas. It is no longer a creator of technologies – it is persecutor and defamer of the technological innovation that contradict the theoretical foundations it finds acceptable, any empirical confirmation of a technology’s successful functioning notwithstanding. And – which is the most painful – it no longer a friend of freedom, but its archenemy, ever ready to provide deceitful justifications for the most restrictive and repressive policies imaginable, even enthusiastic to become an ideological foundation for the most monstrous and inhuman regime imaginable – the digital totalitarianism being built before our very eyes.
As all of you have probably understood already, this once-great yet now-fallen religion I talk about is the mainstream science.
Its path of demise was long; and, as any other such path, it started in the times of triumph, in the era than the religion of science enjoyed its highest successes – in the second half of the 19th century. It was the time when science suddenly encountered the phenomena which objective existence it could reliably verify, yet was entirely unable to explain – unable even to hypothesise what the possible explanation may look like. It was psychic phenomena – the detectable interventions of the extraphysical consciousness into the functioning of the physical systems, that forced the latter to behave in a way contradictory to the fundamental physical laws that were previously considered absolutely inviolable. Science, being exceptionally successful in its explanations of the physical phenomena, and being persuaded that the extraphysical ones are either nonexistent or, at least, exist parallel to the physical ones and cannot interfere with them in any way, was shocked. Essentially, they faced the painful dilemma: either to denounce the very basic foundations of the scientific religion, or to dismiss the inconvenient facts. Understandably, it was the latter that was chosen by most scientists in the end: psychic phenomena was banished from the scientific mainstream, and the few heretical researchers who continued to study them was anathemised as “pseudoscientists”.
Of course, this single area of inconvenience was not enough to bring down the church of science – after all, it still could easily demonstrate its genuine power in the area of the physical; at worst, it could provoke a small-scale, non-lethal schism, when a few heretics parted their way with the scientific canon and chose the research path parallel to it. And it was exactly how it happened: parapsychologists, damned and disowned for their supposed “pseudoscience”, continued to study psychic phenomena – ever finding more and more confirmatory facts, but never being able to formulate even a semblance of an explanatory model (understandably, since psychic phenomena, being fundamentally different from the physical ones, simply cannot be successfully conceptualised in the fashion the latter are). But the negative impact of the anathema that was declared on the parapsychological heresy and the bunch of schismatics practicing it was in fact quite severe: for the first time scientists learned that what one cannot explain, one can simply deny; and, even worse, that might makes rights even in the matters of science – the cumulative might of the respectable scientific organizations denouncing parapsychology crushed the parapsychologists’ right to present the objective evidence in defence of their heresy without obstacles. Scientists learned that in a battle between socially entrenched falsehood and socially deviant truth the latter invariably fails.
And the temptation to repeat the successful anathema was great.
***
The second half of the 20th century was the time of the beginning of the end for the mainstream science; it was the time when it received the wound that will prove to be incurable, and that will ensure its death. This wound was institutionalisation, which turns mainstream science from a relatively informal community of researchers into a power structure, entrenched in, and interconnected with, all other power structures of the society – governmental, corporate, any other.
Such inclusion into the halls of power was the most poisoned “gift” science could have ever received. Now, in addition to the antics of its own internal power structures, it was subjected to the whims of the whole range of external ones – and, thus, become a hostage in the power struggles of all types, with each sides of any power conflict willing to ensure that the ultimate cultural and ideological power that the science possessed it is on its side.
And, very predictable, the objective truth – one that the science was once devised to seek and provide – was the first victim of social power struggles, sacrificed without hesitation to the demands of power. Examples of such sacrifices are innumerable; I will mention only a few of them that were the most crucial, the milestones on the science’s path to demise.
There was the cold fusion – or low energy nuclear reactions (LENR), as it was also called. A promising invention in the energy production, it was suffocated short after inception, due to its painful inconvenience to the whole network of vested interests and entrenched prejudices both inside and outside of academia – from the energy companies not willing to lose their profit to the theoretical physicists unwilling to tolerate an affront to their established models. In the end, it was doomed to the damnation and banishment into the forbidden realms of “pseudoscience” as parapsychology once was.
Conversely, a highly and unpredictably dangerous GMO technology was enthusiastically, even fervently, promoted by the mainstream science, since it provided both prestige and profit to them and to their cherished allies in the biotech industry and governmental regulatory agencies. In this case, it was critics, rather than proponents, of technology who suffered censorship and persecution.
But the real fall from grace for the mainstream science started with the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) model – the example of the politicisation of knowledge that was so extreme as to be almost tragicomical. Another tragicomical aspect of it is that it reveals the ultimately religious nature of science as such, being a science’s own apocalyptic prophesy and an ersatz millenarianist faith for countless people around the globe. It is the example how a whole system of the power institutions and social groupings promoted and supported by htem, motivated by everything from cynical aim at sheer profit or the gaining of social status to the sincere and ardent quasi-religious inspiration and desire to avert the perceived catastrophe, has created a modern chiliastic movement of unprecedented reach and power – and a highly questionable and dubious foundation in fact, since any evidence and any argument inconvenient for the faith is being preemptively dismissed, and any unlucky truth-teller presenting them is subjected to the harsh treatment reserved for the modern heretics and schismatics.
The fall accelerated greatly once the modern debate around vaccines, their efficacy and their side-effects and dangers, was ignited. One who thought that the AGW heretics were treated unfairly, and that the AGW model was a bit too religion-like in its shameless selection of the evidence and arguments convenient to it and dismissal of anything (and anyone) that (or who) was not so convenient, can still be shocked of the sheer fanatical fervor of the full-front attack on the vaccine blasphemers, who were persecuted and censored to the yet-unseen despicable degree.
***
And then, it has suddenly come to an end: mainstream science has recently died. The date of its death will be remembered in history: the year of 2020, when an epidemic of neither very dangerous, nor very contagious respiratory disease – Covid-19 – was informationally intensified to the size of a apocalyptic planetary catastrophe and used as a pretext of an unprecedented, insane attack on freedom and liberty around the globe – all with an enthusiastic praise of the scientific “authorities”.
What is especially horrible about the recent situation is that it is entirely clear-cut, so to say. If in all of the examples I mentioned above – from LENR to GMOs, from AGW model to the vaccine side-effects – the proponents of the mainstream science still has some chance to defend their side against the critics’ accusations; yet, in the Covid-19 situation, such possibility is totally absent: nearly all data used to justify the apparent “pandemic” and completely all measures supposedly directed at “combating” it, are totally divorced from the empirically observable reality, lack any objective foundation, being maintained and promoted only by a constantly repeated, furious appeal to the illusive “authority” of the “experts”. And these atrociously restrictive measures are being brutally and violently enforced nearly everywhere, while the persecution and censorship of the dissenting voices, including the ones of people who themselves possess “expertise” in the relevant areas, is becoming almost absolute. It is evident now that the mainstream science has finally given up on objective truth completely, becoming no more than a mere propaganda arm of the societal power.
It is painful, but it is true: after 2020, mainstream science is beyond repair – and beyond redemption. There is nothing left of it but the once-famous name, nothing worthy of an ounce of faith and trust. It is dead as a doornail.
***
Is there any hope for the people who still strive to obtain an authentic knowledge about the world? Is there a chance that a miraculous resurrection of science will happen one day, and the scientific endeavor will start anew? Maybe; but, if it is to happen at all, it is to happen far outside of the halls of the rotten and corrupt academia, outside of any system of power. The informal organizations and communities of the scientific heretics, schismatics and blasphemers labeled as “pseudoscientists”, “antiscientists”, “science deniers” etc. are exactly the environment where such rebirth may take place one day – nowadays, they are the only ones who still believe in the objective truth and knowledge not just in word, but in deed, effectively being the keepers and guardians of the initial inspiration to obtain the objective knowledge that lead to the creation of science centuries ago.
I wish them luck. And strength. They will need it.