Whatever You Want, Dear

What if a particular political point of view could get its way about EVERYTHING? I seem to recall a STAR TREK episode in which the space travelers encountered a society that was totally bound to a single way of living and thinking. The locals were arrogant and fearful, not happy. Once the people who question or invent or present alternative perspectives in science, education, art, fashion, etc. are silenced, what’s left?

When an attractive face and body is preferable for reporting biased information instead of a good mind or evidence, the film IDIOCRACY is no longer funny. News doesn’t have to make sense because there’s no one to point out the fallacies or to understand the importance of recognizing lies and liars. For example, in the future world of IDIOCRACY, agriculture is a failure although the crops are irrigated with a sports drink Brawndo—fraught with salt. Everyone believes Brawndo has to be good because, according to the ads, Brawndo has electrolytes and electrolytes are good. The clueless leader forces obedience. There’s no science to discover that the crops and soils are being poisoned.

What good is science? For one thing, it often keeps us from being harmed. The History Channel program titled HAZARDOUS HISTORY reminds us that we once allowed our children to play with lumps of uranium because we didn’t know any better. Many A-list movie stars died of cancer because they shot movies in Monument Valley where radioactive fallout was common. How do we learn when toxins are killing us and the planet without scientists to investigate? If there’s profit to be made, who will reveal the hazards?

Likewise, what’s left when history contains only one viewpoint, and that viewpoint is tainted by personal preferences? An abbreviated WHAT eclipses the WHY so the society can’t move forward. It can only repeat the same old errors over and over again. History becomes someone’s fantasy. For example, when indigenous children were torn from their homes and sent to religious schools to learn how to act white, many died horribly. Many were regularly sexually assaulted. The prejudice that indigenous peoples were inferior set progress back and left advanced cities to decay. Fear of immigrants closes the door to discoveries that might have been made with fresh perspectives that might have enriched the culture.

Religion morphs into a male political doctrine when everyone must follow the same affirmations, especially when those affirmations no longer match the guidelines set by the original source. When all cultures must mold themselves into the same religion, is the resultant behavioral mutation goodness or lack of choice? Can behavior be labeled goodness if there is no choice? What about hypocrisy? For example, the early Puritans who were known for their strict adherence to rules were later revealed to be hiding rampant promiscuity. When books that help us to consider advantages and pitfalls in the world around us are banned, where are we to find alternative ideas that might serve better?

The diverse views of our population are supposed to act as a check against empty control meant to use people unable to dissent. We need variety to engender creativity, and we need creativity to imagine an improved, kinder way of living. We were beginning to discover that war is a game of the powerful in which the powerless are sacrificed. We’re often told no one religion has all the answers, and pretending one does perverts religion itself. A monochromatic landscape where the profits of the rich are the only desirables fails to learn from real history that such a course is unsustainable. Those cultures lie beneath shifting sands or waters enabled by volcanoes.