Dark Ages

In the 1950’s, Jane Jacobs was a voice of rationality in a world dominated by “urban planners” whose plans invariably threatened urbanity itself. In The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she reminded us why cities are such vital centers of human culture. Every few years since, she has published another thought-provoking, historically informed commentary on the relationships between public life, economics and the built environment. Her most recent book, Dark Ages Coming, assesses contemporary western society and finds evidence of serious trouble. One of her concerns is increasing disregard for scientific inquiry and a growing intellectual laziness, if not dishonesty—manifested in part by the substitution of “credentialing” for genuine education.

It is hard to argue with the examples Jacobs gives, but it is also hard to understand why Americans, who love the labor-saving appliances, technological gadgets and extended life span that science has given us, would reject it. Philip Green, a retired government professor, suggests one answer: in a recent article, he says that what we are experiencing is a revolt by neo-conservatives against the Enlightenment, with its insistence upon reason and empirical scientific inquiry.

Enlightenment philosophers—Locke, Mill, Hume and others—inspired America’s Founders; they created the basis for liberal democracy and capitalism. Green describes neo-conservatism as “the counter-Enlightenment,” as anti-modern, ideological fanaticism. From stem-cell research to environmental reports, “Careful and reputable scientific studies that contradict arguments made by the Bush administration or its supporters are simply suppressed or falsified: reasoned discussion is suppressed in deference to ideological correctness.” The basis of this anti-modernism, according to Green, is a peculiar form of religiosity, in which any science or analysis or opinion of any kind that deviates from biblical literalism is not simply wrong, but evil. (That would explain some of my “fan” mail!)

Early in the twentieth century, Alexander Meicklejohn opined that people afraid of ideas—any ideas—were people unfit for self-government. He didn’t mean that ideas do not have consequences, or that ideas cannot be pernicious or harmful. But it is infinitely more dangerous to refuse to reason, or to allow the government to decide what shall be considered “fact,” and what ideas its citizens may entertain.

In the past few months, the neo-cons have tried to keep theaters from showing Fahrenheit 9/11; the White House has ordered the EPA to rewrite conclusions reached by its own scientists; and the State Department has issued “reports” telling us that terrorist attacks are down when in fact attacks have increased. The administration has claimed availability of more than 60 lines of stem cells when there were actually fewer than twelve. Over and over, empirical scientific fact has been sacrificed to ideological “truth.”