Better and more communication - it seems to be the answer to everything!

Scientist claim it and so do politicians: “What we need,” they say, “is more communication.” Then, so the belief goes, people will understand and everything will be fine.

Looking at an email from the European Commission’s DG CONNECT newsroom, I see that the new President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has made better communication with the public a priority. We are to be helped to understand what the EU does and how it affects us.

This implies that we are suffering from a deficit and that through communication we will be helped to realise just how wonderful the EU is, and then all will be well.

Let me now look at the best evidence for this statement. Oh dear! I cannot find any.

Now I turn to science. Here to we are being told that we are suffering from a deficit and that through communication we will be helped to realise just how wonderful Western science is, and then all will be well.

Let me now look at the best evidence for this statement. Oh dear! I cannot find any.

Best evidence it seems is something that arises when one is seeking to push a particular agenda, but at all other times, scientists are just like everyone else – expressing their beliefs and opinions, which is actually what they do when they pushing a particular agenda too, it is just that then they hide behind a cloak of respectability and say, in effect, “trust me I am scientist.”  Not a chance.

In both cases that I mentioned above, you will note that there are no thoughts that there may be things fundamentally wrong (in the first case with the EU and in the second, with Western science), with the result that we, the people, will always look upon both with distrust and scepticism.

So why is this important? In Europe we see a rise, once more, of nationalism and the nasty things that go with it – yet more dogma and perverse views. More extremism! And it may just be possible that the EU is responsible for this, and by refusing to consider the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong, the EU could be fuelling the rise of nationalism. It is the old problem of collective denial and delusion, and an inclination of the human mind to reduce matters to statements of simple problems with simple solutions. The same goes for scientists as well – simplification and reduction is what they excel at. And it is we ordinary people who will pay the price for this – more human suffering and misery resulting from the actions of  dogmatic people inflicting their simple solutions, their final solutions, on the rest of humanity.

It is time to take peaceful action to stop this while we can.