I’ve been recording the audio version of my new book, The Bug in our Thinking. In it I quote Carl Sagan from 1996:
We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it? …
Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking. A way of sceptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask sceptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be sceptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.
Sagan was on the money. Every day brings news of more absurdities from charlatans in science, education, politics and media. To quote myself, from the same book: “Never have so many been so wrong about so much.”
Why is this happening?
If I could answer that in a couple of paragraphs I would not have had to write a whole book. Here, I will focus on just one element. Underneath all the dangerous and troubling beliefs about gender, climate, race, migration, medicine and vaccination lies a psychological problem. Too many people believe things that are not true. This is the new normal. Let’s call it the Pandelusion.
The Pandelusion – thinking and doing the ‘right thing’ – is the worldview relentlessly promoted by most of the media and driven by bad science and big money.
This doesn’t require a conspiracy by the way. That is just what the profit motive will do when untrammelled by conscience or virtue. For the controlling minority of society it is extremely lucrative to promote the Pandelusion. For the majority, the result is an expensive, destructive, disempowering rip-off.
It would take an encyclopaedia to itemise and refute each of the delusions one at a time. In fact it already has. On websites and Substacks and in books and scholarly journals millions of words have been written refuting every one of the dominant delusions with rational argument and factual evidence – yet the delusions are still in the ascendant. The encyclopaedia of hard evidence and common sense is ignored by most of the mainstream media and censored or ignored by complicit scientists.
It is extremely depressing to see that the majority of the population remain convinced by the Pandelusion. They are accustomed to being guided by orthodoxy. In good times that is not such a bad strategy. In hard times, and very specifically in these hard times, it does no good at all. All around us are hundreds of thousands of people who have been seriously injured by doing what they were told was ‘the right thing’. It takes time, independence, courage, humility, encouragement and good fortune to build the habit of trusting your own judgement even when all the facts are not available.
Now that lockdowns and the uptake of the staggeringly ‘safe and effective’ vaccines have set the precedent, the next bonanza is the climate emergency and orthodox opinion is being boosted, adjusted and streamlined to serve the interests of those who have positioned their investments to profit from it.
Externalities
Do you remember when environmentalists used to talk about ‘externalities’? Externalities, you may recall, are the costs of a service or product which are not paid by the immediate user but by society at large. The costs of driving a car, for example, are not just purchase, fuel and maintenance. The external costs are exhaust emissions and tyre wear particulates, the motorways, the loss of mediaeval town centres to create road systems and car parks, the loss of market share for public transport, the cost of road traffic accidents, and so on and on.
It is helpful and illuminating to consider externalities when assessing the overall impact of a policy. Recently, however, the term has fallen out of favour amongst governments, environmentalists and the mainstream media. Why might that be?
The externalities of Net Zero are mind-bogglingly vast: environmental, economic, social and, for some, existential. Consider just one small element of the path to Net Zero: electric vehicles. The carbon cost of their manufacture means they have to be driven for nearly 10 years before there is a net carbon benefit. Cobalt mining in the Congo is environmentally destructive and exploitative of the local population. Dependency on manufacture in China creates huge political and economic weaknesses. I could go on, but you already know this and much, much more.
The externalities of lockdown were destructive beyond measure: the emotional abuse of elders dying alone, the sabotage of education in schools and universities, the bankruptcies and destruction of thousands upon thousands of small businesses, the depression, the abuse, the suicides and more.
The externalities of Covid vaccination, as we all know, without a shadow of a doubt, are ‘extremely rare’ because the vaccines are so very, very, very, very safe and effective. Nevertheless the vaccines have a remarkable correlation (not causation! Heaven forfend) with a plague of evil coincidence fairies and uncounted cancers, TIAs, myocarditis, heart disease, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and a huge range of other ailments, injuries and disabilities.
The externalities of catering to a tiny number of transgender activists are expensive, disproportionate and insulting and dangerous to women.
The externalities of woke policies in education include rendering academics too frightened to promote independence of thought. Not a great outcome for education.
I can stop listing externalities now – you can think of plenty of them that follow from every Government policy from migration to taxation.
No wonder the mainstream doesn’t talk about externalities any more. They are not to be mentioned.
The orthodoxy has aligned its messages across different platforms by means of helpful, fact-checking, billionaire-backed NGOs. All the bad science, the abstract thinking, the experts, the absurdities from wokery to environmental zealotry, the emotional incontinence and plain stupidity have become one overarching right think’.
It is all a single dictatorial blob of grandiose self-righteousness. The Pandelusion with its Pharisaic acolytes guides 100% of BBC output and at least 90% of media content throughout the Western world.
The power of the Pandelusion is immense.
That is terrifying and horribly depressing.
Some days I feel utterly defeated as I read, yet again, of more moronic orthodoxy.
And yet, and yet, I see a glimmer of hope.
Here is the weakness. Precisely because the Pandelusion has become a single, overarching, dominant orthodoxy, any flaw or weakness in any part of it can affect the whole thing. One tiny little crack anywhere in the whole monstrous edifice has the possibility of advancing, little by little by little, so that it will all, eventually, fall down.
All is not lost. We don’t need to challenge the whole Pandelusion or the big, embarrassing controversies about climate science confirmation bias or the magnificent safe and effective vaccines (Blessings be upon their profits forever, Amen). Now we can just chip away at one small, apparently insignificant, peripheral belief and open up one little crack. Then we can walk away and let the crack spread throughout the whole belief system – all by itself.
Those undiscussed externalities are impinging on more and more people’s everyday lives and they don’t like it. As people reject heat pumps, sabotage Ulez cameras, refuse smart meters, and electric cars, and protest against LTNs and 15-minute cities, they are discovering that those who claim to ‘know better’ know very little at all, and often, it turns out, are misrepresenting the science and even sometimes are lying. And the more they research the more inconvenient facts they unearth. In Germany a rebellion against dominant orthodoxy has gained power in a district council election. In the Netherlands the Farmer-Citizen movement (the BBB) has become the third-largest political force in the country. In Spain, Sweden and Italy there are flickers of sanity.
Let’s talk
So let’s talk about externalities. Not the big ones, just the little ones. Like, “Oh Net Zero! Yay! but… I’m not totally sure about the cost-effectiveness of heat pumps.” Let’s say “Yay, Electric vehicles! … except how quickly, I wonder, will the authorities be able to upgrade the national grid to cope with charging them?”
Let’s talk about how 15-minute cities could be utterly brilliant – except maybe there might lots of traffic jams on the ring roads when you take your kids to karate. Let’s talk about how marvellous furlough was, it’s just a shame about inflation.
Let’s talk about how puzzled we are about the little white lies from our governments, about the police who have stopped policing, and the strange, inexplicable inaccuracy of predictions that haven’t come true.
Let us keep tap, tap, tapping away at the monolithic Pandelusion until we make the smallest little crack. Then in that crack, plant tiny little seeds of doubt – and walk away. The light of day will nourish those seeds and the seedlings will enlarge the crack and reality will finish the job. The hypnotic trance can be broken.
There has already been too much death, destruction and conflict. There will be more. But perhaps if we all keep talking we might be able to save some people and salvage a society worth living in.
The Bug in our Thinking and the Way to Fix It is available in the U.K. here. For the rest of the world, for the ebook – and in a week or two the audiobook – you can find it on your national Amazon store.
This article has been corrected. An earlier version incorrectly stated lithium rather than cobalt was mined in the Congo and that an electric car battery would need replacing after five years.
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Yes, keep tapping at the little things,but use ridicule not anger. One of the destructive acts against the USSR and Communism was the humour and ridicule that came from the people.
It rots a system. We can do the same.
Humour, indeed. And the beauty of humour is that the nasty barstewards must laugh along. Because if they don’t, they will reveal that the joke is TRUE!
Except that the woke dont understand humour, hence the treatment of Gervaise because they didn’t realise he was using it to make his points.
I think one of the best soviet jokes was that they could make a nuclear bomb that fitted in a suitcase.
Only Problem was they didn’t have any suitcases!
Says it all in one joke.
A friend of mine lived in North Korea. Called him up one day and asked “how’s it going over there”?
He replied “I can’t complain!”
Or “What is the difference between a Just Stop Oil Protester and a plank of wood”? —————The Grain.
An evolutionary clinical psychologist I rather like (Dr Doug Lisle) says that the best way to have discussions on difficult topics with people is to start by saying “I don’t have all the answers” (apparently it’s disarming and takes people off the defensive). Then you can ask gentle questions like “I don’t know, do you think furlough, for all the support it provided, maybe has led to all this inflation?”)
That’s the only way people can stomach discussion, if you start with humility (even if it’s a bit contrived!!).
I find it impossible to appear humble without appearing patronising.
But the main point being, however you say it, say it. Just try to keep it impersonal. And stay optimistic; always try to present the way out.
Yes, quite right. No point just steaming in there with facts and logic. It hurts them. As a salesman of some experience, I can say that the best way of influencing the buyer standing in front of you (and who usually hates you) is initially to concede something – a sop to the buyer’s vanity. Throw in phrases like “You know more about this than I do” – give them the moral high ground, and then, as you say, ask a question or two – allow them slowly to realise that they’re not actually standing on the high ground, or maybe that there isn’t any high ground. This way you can get them to a position of a kind of parity. Often it’s best to stop right there – without trying to make any kind of factual point (such as that the Covid vaccine doesn’t work, or tranny “women’ are not female). First, instil the ideas that 1) You are not an expert, 2) That neither is the ‘buyer’, 3) That the actual experts don’t half get it wrong sometimes, don’t they! Then walk away. It’s all we can do.
Excellent article
You have said it for me- thanks Marcus.
The picture needs a caption: ‘Gis a job, I can do that‘ springs to mind
Plenty of people “understand science and technology”, we aren’t in positions of power, or funded bysupra-national organisations
The author comes across as one of thiose sneering humanities types, that thinks becauase somebody of his “towering intellect” doesn’t understand it, nobody can.
The image attached reminded me of the identity of one of that groups funders: Dale Vince. Quite recently, the Foreign Office funded branch of the propaganda channel did a decent item about him and his background. They went so far as to say that he had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), as well as commenting on his educational history. Quite a few bugs in his thinking, a cynic might say.
It could be argued that many senior leaders are often abnormal in some shape or form, otherwise they wouldn’t be there.
“This doesn’t require a conspiracy by the way. That is just what the profit motive will do when untrammelled by conscience or virtue. For the controlling minority of society it is extremely lucrative to promote the Pandelusion. For the majority, the result is an expensive, destructive, disempowering rip-off.”
Sorry but doesn’t this paragraph contradict itself? It seems to me to describe a conspiracy, or a series of related conspiracies. It is not describing cock-ups.
A good piece and it mirrors my own thinking. Personally, I don’t believe we win any hearts and minds by shouting “they’re trying to kill us all!” or “they’re injecting people with a bioweapon!”. Regardless of what I actually believe, I always go with slowly, slowly, catchy monkey. I’ve found that appearing to be a little confused about things generally creates a mirror response and sets the cogs of alternative thought in motion. Sowing a seed seems to be a better approach than planting a fully grown oak tree in someone’s front garden.
‘Too many people believe things that are not true.’
Nailed it.
That is the major fault line in democracy (the least worst form of government).
Impossible to replace the people.
After a conversation I had over the weekend with an Italian acquaintance, I give up.
“I don’t follow politics, I’m not political……Meloni is a fascist…..I got covid on holiday, I’ve been vaccinated three times…..during covid I had to wear a mask for a year at work, take a test every day and get vaccinated otherwise I would be suspended without pay indefinitely from the my government teaching job….”
(For those who don’t follow Italian politics, Meloni wasn’t in charge during covid – it was a “left wing” government, which couldn’t possibly be “fascist”).
It isn’t always that things are “Not True”. There can be an element of truth to it. The Climate Crisis eg is a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency for which no evidence exists. But this allows for policies to be put in place because proponents of climate change can say that “climate change is real”. Which has to be one of the most absurd statements I have ever heard. But often the best political slogans are so ambiguous they can mean anything that the person uttering them wants them to mean. ———-eg “Vote for Change”. ——-But Change from what and to what? How many people do you know who go around saying “I want Change”? ——It doesn’t mean anything at all, but it sounds like it does. So, it isn’t always just a case of things being TRUE or FALSE or BLACK or WHITE. It is just that the focus is all on the BLACK, making it appear there is no WHITE.
That is because they are being taught things that are not true in schools.
A good article Hugo and Carl Sagan’s quote resonated with me – I am saving that.
I am science trained and follow much of this closely. So, in the interests of accuracy you might want to fix a couple of errors of fact which to me undermine your case.
You simply don’t need to change electric car batteries every 5 years, they degrade slowly and predictably and in general will be usable for hundreds of thousands of miles. EV manufacturers fully warrant their batteries for 7 or 8 years. Of course there will be a few hard failures with time and that’s a risk but overall quite a small one I believe.
Secondly lithium is not mined in the Congo, they don’t have any significant reserves. I think you are confusing it with cobalt, which is used in some (but not all) lithium based EV batteries. Manufacturers such as Tesla are working to eliminate cobalt from all their batteries in the future.
Great article. Perfect quite from a very wise man.
But when people are bombarded every day with a barrage of politicised absurdity masquerading as some kind of ultimate truth then what can you expect? People are busy with work and family life and don’t have time to investigate every issue. They think and expect that Investigative Journalists are doing that for them. —-Alas NO. They are NOT.———— Mainstream Journalism is mostly not about investigating things, but about pushing political agenda’s and the five main ones are Equality, Diversity, Race, Gender and Climate. —–Propaganda is a very powerful tool and it very often achieves its objective. On the issue of climate eg instead of asking questions, many people brainwashed by the stream of misinformation will tend to glue themselves to the road and buildings clamouring for their own impoverishment and acting as useful idiots for their eco socialist pretend to save the planet governments.