OBLIGATIONS, PRIORITIES, AND THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY or HOW TO DESTROY TRUST IN OUR INSTITUTIONS
In order to have a civilization we need to have trust in our institutions. I think that’s irrefutable. But are those institutions and the professionals entrusted with sustaining them helping this cause? That’s a question that seems worth asking.
At the moment there’s a curious phenomenon of experts vociferously spouting off across the news and social media in defence of their colleagues, the managerial class and the institutions those folks run, and the popular media who also act as their billboard, megaphone, and cheerleader. And those outputs feel extraordinarily propagandistic. Why? Because they arrive not when these individuals and organizations deserve it, when they have made good choices and helped the public, but in the midst or wake of a whole series of tragic errors and lies that have gone unexplained and uncorrected and, needless to say, for which no one has ever apologized.
Worse, they gladly use all their status and influence to argue that anyone who might have some disagreement with them, regardless of that person’s expertise or sources of information, is a dangerous lunatic (or part of a troll/bot army enlisted by a dangerous lunatic). More often still, they'll simply mute or block any voices of dissent. Anyone found failing to blindly defend the worst policies of the university, an organization delivering essential services, or the present government has, at minimum, a wicked agenda informed by their undeclared conflicts of interest (ones so transparently corrupted by their wayward political beliefs and blinding ignorance.) They, by contrast, with their PhDs and Orders of Canada, hold and disseminate only the goods and only the most potent and purified extractions — distilled, of course, by the divine radiance of their omniscience. And yet, to read or listen to their offerings is to become immediately aware that they commonly engage in cheap, advertising industry-grade sophistry. All too often they trade in combinations of missing the point altogether, failing to provide any relevant context, contradicting sources with far better information, going after the lowest hanging fruit and their own silly strawmen, and all while demonstrating no self-reflection or even, so it seems, awareness of their surroundings.
Yes, I agree, those appear to be harsh charges and a little vague, too. Well, so, let’s get specific. As of late, many in the medical community, like Dr Black (BSC MD FRCPC), for just one local example of so very many, have been outspoken and spent day after day going after anti-vaxxers. We could agree that doing so is a perfectly good use of their spare time; after all, they are experts in medicine and public health, vaccines save lives, and folks preventing their kids from receiving well-trialed and long-used vaccines for what can be catastrophic preventable illnesses often does more than simply harm their own children, which would be bad enough. But what is the context within which he and so many others have suddenly taken to doing this, and so publicly and forcefully? Well, I think the context is everything and couldn’t be more obvious, particularly to the good doctor and all of his colleagues making similar choices and noises.
Comments