“By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”
– Richard Dawkins
As I sat facing Mitch Melnick at what seemed to be a makeshift terrasse on the corner of de Courcelle and Notre-Dame in The Hank, both of us with Old-Fashioned’s in hand, I eagerly anticipated what pearl of wisdom would come out of his mouth leaving me inspired with the courage and enterprise to begin writing for his website.
It came swiftly.
“Kesh will have your web page ready by next week, are you gonna get started on this fucking thing or what?”
It was all I needed, Mitch has a way of motivating one with his gentle form of irritation.
“What are you going to call it?” he inquired, pretending to care.
“The Third Culture” I returned, without hesitation.
“What’s that?” he asked.
I wasn’t exactly sure, I had made it up on the spot under a self-imposed pressure to avoid more gentle irritation. What I did know was that Richard Dawkins, the eminent evolutionary biologist and purveyor of truth, made reference to the term in his book, “Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science.” When I read it recently, the words struck a chord with me, even though its mention in the book was in passing and not thoroughly explained.
I guessed it had something to do with a form of critical thinking that allows one to manifest ideas and opinions based on fact-based reason and scientific theory, and not through confirmation bias brought about by political affiliation and blind tribalism. I was sorta kinda right.
The term “Third Culture” actually derives from a book written in 1995 by literary agent John Brockman that describes a group of scientists who had begun communicating their personal and sometimes provocative ideas based on findings in their specific domain of study. Something that was relatively new in the mid 90’s, and that had begun with the late astronomer Carl Sagan, and his book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”.
Up until that time, scientists had always been held in check when it came to opining about what their experiments and acquired knowledge had guided them to believe on a personal level. There was a taboo surrounding any judgments based on scientific principles that touched on ethics and morality. And the likes of Einstein and Oppenheimer were essentially told to know their place whenever they dared speak up on the potential evils of nuclear proliferation for example. That all changed in the wake of 9/11, when the destructive power of religious fundamentalism and magical thinking became a horrifying reality.
It gave birth to the appropriately named “New Atheism”. An emerging generation of astronomers, evolutionary biologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, philosophers and psychologists who had become totally pissed off with the events of that sunny Tuesday. They were at their wits end with the amount of people that were being murdered as a result of what they considered to be superstitious beliefs based on religious absolution and wishful thinking. At the forefront of the new movement were the “Four Horsemen”, consisting of orator Christopher Hitchens, philosopher Daniel Dennett, Neuroscientist Sam Harris and the aforementioned Richard Dawkins.
Seventeen years later, this war of attrition on misguided credulity and pseudoscience continues, with the addition of the hard hitting skepticism and debunking skills of those like Michael Shermer, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker and Matt Dillahunty. It turns out that it is needed now more than ever, as we live in an age where social perspectives and political positions are based more and more on false reports, baseless claims and nonsensical factoids that are easily copied and pasted to one’s social media page with zero regard for evidence or actuality.
Breaking news. I’m not a scientist. At all. I barely graduated from high school to tell you the truth. But I’ve taught myself to question everything, regardless of how physically ill it may make me feel to discover that what I wanted to believe so badly was completely wrong. I’ve almost made it my mission in life to combat fake news and erroneous claims, and my battle field is social media, where the spread of these falsehoods is most prevalent. It’s becoming ever more clear that people are allowing their emotional loyalties and politics to get in the way of what is true and what isn’t, and this is what divides the masses, who feel the uncontrollable urge to defend at any cost whichever tribe they may belong to, Liberal or Conservative, Democrat or Republican, Blue or Red or Black or White.
Don’t get me wrong, values are important, but they don’t necessarily have to be strictly reflective of an ascribed faction based on a political allegiance or a Facebook group. The distortion of facts to fit one’s narrative because they don’t have the humility to even consider that they may be mistaken, has proven so detrimental to the public discourse, that the lines of hate have been distinctly drawn in the sand, and for some, become too deeply ingrained for any chance of it to be washed away by the tides of reason.
Like me, most of you are not scientists either, and even though we all come from a background of far ranging values, I sincerely believe that we could all benefit from adapting some of the qualities of The Third Culture, if not by its strictest definition but even in its vaguest form. The Third Culture is not a political association, it does not adhere to leftist or right wing ideals and has no doctrinal agenda, but is a refreshing method of epistemology that can serve as a simple tool for civil discourse and rational debate.
So the next time you’re browsing through your Facebook or Twitter feed, and you come across someone posting a meme about a military veteran that killed 2 Syrian refugees who raped his daughter, or an article by a fringe “science” website that says a mysterious algae allows humans to feed off each other’s positive energy, or a picture of caged immigrant children that supposedly was taken during the Trump presidency but is actually 4 years old, or a claim that Muslims are already implementing Sharia Law in some small towns in the U.S. and Canada, or even a report that a baby dragon was born in Wales, take a second.
Take a second to ponder inaction, and avoid filling the person’s comment section with either the blind egging on of these ideals because it fits your narrative, or the utter outrage followed by insults and labeling because it doesn’t. Take a second to push down on the left button of that little mouse of yours and type out the post’s respective headline on Google followed by the words “fact check”, and if you feel the need, call the original poster out on it. And If you do, be aware that you’ll most likely be met with defiant responses like, “I don’t care if it’s not true, it’ll probably happen anyway” or “Well it’s MY truth, so I don’t care what you say” or “Don’t be one of the sheeple and keep an open mind.” (A reaction that can only be described as rich). But regardless of how they respond, I can guarantee that your challenge was not in vain. Your purpose is not to change their minds and somehow convince them that their claims are not true, that would be futile. The purpose is to plant a seed of doubt that may have them hesitate and maybe, just maybe, check up on a fishy article the next time around and thereby postponing for even just a moment, their rigid confirmation bias.
That’s what I try to do as often as I can, and that’s what I will do in this, my new blog. To offer a different perspective that doesn’t fall prey to conventional subjectivity but has its roots in the Third Culture. Oh, and also to avoid the gentle irritation of Mitch Melnick.
