Generation Utopia

Original date of publication: 8. November 2016

Hello there, Americans and the rest of the world. This is the day that the majority of us have completely abandoned reason and facts and it is now clear that people prefer populism and making decisions based on emotions and instinct rather than facts.

Think about how fascinating it is that the human brain has one hundred billion neurons, and on the one side of the spectrum you get people like Einstein. On the other end of the spectrum you get people who think climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese, that humans came from Adam who came from dirt and Eve, who came from his rib. That’s the reality, these billions of neurons connect in ways that make people believe that 2+2=5.

As George Orwell once put it: “In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.” It’s true, and it’s incredible. In politics, millions of grown men and women can take part without actually knowing anything.

And I think Trump is truly the perfect (and most extreme) example of ‘doublethink’ and ‘newspeak’ ever demonstrated, especially considering that the US is a free society and that people have access to the Internet. Anything he said would be true if he just said or repeated it often enough – he’s clearly demonstrated that. In neuroscientific terms, again, that means that neurons connect to form these beliefs and attitudes – and nothing, no amount of evidence can penetrate these beliefs. These followers of modern populists are so proud to ‘defeat the establishment and authoritarian elite class’, but they don’t realise that the real non-authoritarianism is scientific consensus based on millions of data points. It’s actually the followers of these right-wing populists who are falling for authoritarianism. Isn’t that ironic?

Most of us do not have the ability to sit down and look at the facts, engage in abstract thinking or argue logically. Scientific thinking, and the scientific method, is however the most important invention of us Homo sapiens, ever. And it is not even taught in schools. But the scientific method lies at the heart of how we have come such a long way from being hunter-gatherers to having iPhones: Find out how things work, come up with theories, prove or disprove them, use that knowledge to create technology. However, in school we are not educated to become thinkers, rather it seems we are brought up to behave and think very much like animals and follow our basic emotions.

This mess is not down to different opinions (like whether you prefer this football team or that), but sheer ignorance. In a world with an exponentially growing amount of information and data online, people choose to ignore it. Opinions should change if data contradict them – something so obvious has now become a pipe dream, not a realistic proposition at least until the next generation. Congratulations!

The world wants a populist, and so maybe we should provide them with one, or a few. People can only be moved by fear and other basic emotions at this point, and fear I think we should give to people. Climate change is very scary. If you just spend a few days looking at the data you won’t be able to sleep well. So far, politics has been terrible at ‘marketing’ the threat of climate change. A few celebrities here and there, yes, but nothing even close to as effective as Trump’s orange face on the screen like Big Brother, crying about Mexicans and terrorists.

Trump was successful, because he scared people, and fear is very effective. He won, because he was a populist and made things real simple. Emotions over facts. So let’s make things simple: Science (merely a Latin word for knowledge and the relentless application of human common sense, to make the term less abstract for the populists out there) is the most important tool people have to actually “make America ‘great’ again” or the world in general.

But people don’t even get this. They don’t even know what rational, scientific thinking is. It’s not simple enough. But one simple message at a time, neurons will form connections and emotions will trigger actions. And actions we are lacking big time. While most of us on the reasonable side agree on the issues, we are hardly taking action. It’s so easy for us to go to work from nine to five, yet this is too difficult for us. We enjoy our beefsteaks, CO2 is invisible.

Now that Trump is actually elected, we can all see that a lack of action and education can have serious consequences. Speak out and act up. Stop just standing around. This is the key to all of this mess.

On this note, I am going to finish with a quote by Hitchens who says what I want to say better than I ever could: “Beware the irrational, however seductive. […] Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will provide plenty of time for silence.”