Today is the day of mourning for the workers who have died due to a workplace injury or an accident. In this pandemic, many workers have died after contracting the disease. I dedicate this post to them.
I have been thinking about Carl Sagan and his passion for science.
I think we are living through some strong anti-science times that are fueled by the lack of trust that exists between many people and their governments. When governments aren’t transparent in their policies and when corporations fund political campaigns and manipulate the political landscape for their own capitalist agendas it makes sense that people refuse to believe anything they say.
When there are drastic cuts to publicly funded programs, when there is increased reduction in hiring new teachers, and cutting school programs, it makes sense that lack of scientific literacy grows.
I have been very sad, and at times horrified, at seeing the sheer number of people at these anti-lockdown, anti-mask, anti-many-things-depending-on-your-political-persuasions, in different cities in Canada. I’ve been sitting with this feeling for a while now.
I think civil disobedience is a powerful mode of resistance and I think resistance against unfairness is a normal part of human history and endevour. Protests and demonstrations, the ability to speak one’s mind without the fear of persecution, is one of the fundamental rights under democracy.
And I guess that’s the beauty and the ugliness of it: if I have the right to protest for the causes I believe in, others have the right to protests for the causes they believe in. And right now, I don’t believe in some of these causes.
But I think what upsets me these days, more than anything, is seeing the chasm that exists between us. I have seen and felt this chasm very keenly in my own family and circle of friends.
I have always understood the fear that some might have about vaccines, especially the flu vaccine and now the Covid vaccines, and I have made it a point to not ask people if they are going to get the vaccine. I understand the concerns and the arguments about the rapid production and the trial times of these vaccines.
But the amount of time I have been asked this question over the past year, by the people who are very close to me, and then to be questioned and criticized on my beliefs about science, has been maddening. I have been asked in a mocking way where I am getting my news from, by people who know I have my Ph.D., a degree that is entirely based on research and a line of work that is steeped in the ability to identify credible from non-credible sources and analyzing data against a vast ocean of theory.
“The poor graduate student at his or her Ph.D. oral exam”, wrote Carl Sagan,
“is subjected to a withering crossfire of questions from the very professors who have the candidate’s future in their grasp. Naturally the students are nervous; who wouldn’t be? True, they have prepared for it for years. But they understand that at this critical moment, they have to be able to answer searching questions posed by expert. So in preparing to defend their theses, they must practice a very useful habit of thought: they must anticipate questions; they have to ask: where in my dissertation is there a weakness that someone else might find? I’d better identify it before they do.”
This is what I do. This is what I have done for almost a decade doing graduate and post-graduate research.
I, too, have been upset about our government’s response to the pandemic. That is what I have in common with some of the anti-lockdown protestors. I’m angry at the lack of paid sick-day policy, I am frustrated about the slow vaccine roll-out, I’m sad about all the struggling small businesses such as my lovely yoga studio, and as an educator I feel for all the students and their parents and I wish we had done better for them.
And I hold on to science and my scientific understanding even when I feel I have stepped through the looking glass and have entered a different world, where its occupants do not hold the same world-view as me.
I have been finding solace in Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. I have been reading it again and finding the book like a candle in these dark times. I will dedicate some future posts to thoughts and ideas from this book.
So come back here if you are looking for some light, I will share my candle with you.
May we find each other in the dark and get through the darkness together.
Affects of Conflict 
I have also been really preoccupied by these issues, and wondered about your point of view, the idea of balancing the needs and interests between people coming from such different perspectives. In the last few years, I could (for the first time) street protests very empowering, attending women’s marches and climate marches, and marches in support of refugees and public education. But seeing anti-mark/lockdown protest has soured my taste for such things, What I actually HATE about attending protests in the idea that everybody there speak in a unified voice, I am highly allergic to call and response chants, I’m thinking now about the way that street protests simplify ideas that are complicated. But is that just an excuse to avoid engaging, I wonder, thinking about Civil Rights protests in the 1960s. Where would I have stood then? I know which side I’d take, but would I dare to right there in the fracas and the danger with the stakes so very high? The COURAGE required. And perhaps here is where the two sides of street protests differ. The people attending anti-lockdown protests are not courageous, they’re putting nothing on the line, They feel entitled to take up space, to bend the rules, and they are probably right that the system will bend for them accordingly.
I appreciate the way your ideas have made me think. thank you.
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I hear you. I have definitely attended protests that I had to stand to the side because I felt like I wasn’t agreeing with everything that was being said, and I felt like the complexities of issues were being glossed over. It’s so interesting how you said that a protest can simplify very complex issues. I am now thinking that I wonder if that’s part of the function of protests like these, to boil down the issue to its few most salient points for the masses.
And I think one of the biggest points of these protests is freedom. You have given me an idea about another blog post on freedom. I think folks who talk about absolute freedom to do anything, including recent free-speech campaigns, forget that we live in a community where there has never been and never will be absolute freedom. We are governed by the rules that we make and the social contracts that we set out for ourselves, and our actions will have reactions from other members of that community. It’s not like we can, or ever could, go around in our families or communities doing whatever we want. I think some folks forget what we owe each other and what our social responsibilities are towards other people, beings and the planet.
Thank you for engaging with my thoughts and giving me more to chew on.
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