The Future of Europe is Not Science

Gathering this week in Portugal, the deluded and the damned, otherwise known as European scientists, along with their close allies known as industrialist, will discuss the notion that the Future of Europe is Science. At this science party rally, industrial era scientists and industrialists, both born in the same Enlightenment stable and sharing very similar dogmas, will discuss 21^st century issues, using their 18^th century minds.

On the agenda are topics such as improving human health and the condition of the environment, but being as they are, highly reductionist, with very fragmented minds, which think of the nature as a complex machine, it is unlikely that they will be recognising that many so called problems in the modern world are not problems at all, just symptoms of a science and industry that is bound up with a way of thinking and operating that is no longer fit for purpose. Instead, they will conspire together, in trying to deal with these symptoms, to create more problems. It will be very much a case of doing even more intensely, that which is the problem. As I said, they are the deluded and the damned.

The future of Europe is most definitely not science. The past was science, and a pretty messed up world science created, not to mention all the death and destruction that can be laid at the door of science, as well as some very perverse systems of government. And clearly many have not learned the lessons of the 20^th century, and once again technocracy and the madness of rational thinking is beginning to pave the way towards a new European horror, which is something that Europeans excel in creating.

The way ahead lies down a different route. Finding that route is the one of the most important challenges of our age. So far I have yet to find evidence that the challenge has been taken up in any significant way. Most of what I have discovered could be called, the existing system trying to regain legitimacy. There will be more about this in future blogs.

Hubris will always meet its Nemesis. The time for European science to meet its Nemesis has arrived. The future of Europe is a return to humanity, treating people better, and celebrating the oddities and the irrationalities that make people human. Those in power in Europe, or who are accruing power and influence, like scientists, need to stop seeing people in a utilitarian way, and above all, the system of which they are a part needs to halt the process of abandoning the people of Europe to the power of money.

More humanity is needed in policy making, not more of this perversity called European science. We need a different science, and one thing that is fairly certain is that the majority of those gathering in Portugal this week are not likely to be the ones who will develop it. For this we should look elsewhere, to a culture that is not founded on the Abrahamic obsession of revealing, of constructing, the sole truth.

And now the battle lines are drawn. It is time for peaceful resistance. It is time for people to begin to disengage from this unsustainable world created by Europeans – a world based on the European values of control, conquest and domination, and making a virtue out of living life like a plaque of locusts.

The weapon of choice is the pen – through the power of words the climate of thought will be changed. And the brush too will play its part. It is time for the Anne Glovers of the world to discover the real value of literature and art, and why over many years, all those authoritarian regimes restricted what writers and artists were allowed to do. And the Anne Glovers will also discover that, out of literature and art will emerge a new science quite different to the one that now toys with art, but largely on its own terms and conditions.

And it is here in this encounter that people will decide their future and that of their children, and their children, for be in no doubt, that once science and reason take power, there will be no way back, and, as I said at the end of my book Encounter with a Wise Man:

“I have also encountered, over the centuries, many people who have foolishly predicted the end of the world, yet life goes on. I am wise, hence I know not to make such predictions, but in many respects it would be better for you all if such end-of-the-world prophecies were to one day come true, for death will seem a better alternative to the hell that ideology will have created.”

Be in no doubt that science is an ideology – one with a very pernicious dogma that is ripe for ridicule, as are the why so smart yet so dumb people that so often make an ass of themselves in public.