February 1, 2003 is a day I will never forget. That was the day that the space shuttle Columbia exploded, killing all seven astronauts on board. But it wasn’t that disaster-that waste-that tattooed that date into my memory. Instead it was the disturbing lesson I learned later that I wiIl carry to my grave.
I got the news at work and dealt with my shock the only way I knew how; by discussing it with total strangers (I worked customer service at a big box retailer at the time). The overwhelming response I got from Joe and Jane Q public saddened me even more than the disaster itself.
While everyone agreed it was a tragedy, everyone shared (with little to no regret) that it was the astronauts own fault. They knew what they signed up for. It was the risks that came with the job and if you weren’t willing to accept that, you had no business being there. The complete lack of genuine empathy was beyond disappointing. The world had just lost seven brilliant scientists-all with loving families and friends-and their deaths were being dismissed with a callous disregard..
Sixteen months previous, the United States invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11. Less than seven weeks after Columbia became a cloud of fire in the sky, the United States invaded Iraq. Yet none of the soldiers or peacekeepers who lost their lives in those wars were treated with the same casual disregard. Nor were the first responders who sacrificed their lives during and after September 11th, the atrocity used to justify both conflicts.
In fact, if you had said that anyone who lost their lives in any of the aforementioned professions “knew the risks,” you probably would have been picking your teeth up with broken fingers. But the fact remains that while the deaths of soldiers and emergency responders are regarded by the vast public as noble sacrifices (which they often are), the loss of scientists who push the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding are often dismissed.
Because in our culture, intelligence is mocked as something strictly for weaklings.
So maybe as a late New Year’s Resolution, we try to get to a place where we pay intelligence and the pursuit of knowledge more respect than we do the kitty litter?
Need a more recent example of our cultural failure? How about Maryam Mirzakhani. She was arguably one of the most important mathematicians of the 21st century. If I had ten pages I couldn’t do justice to her resume. By the age of fifteen she wasn’t just competing in international math competitions, she was winning them. Shortly after she was earning fellowships, winning awards and being invited to lecture at the world’s greatest mathematical think tanks. In 2014 she won the Fields Medal, the world’s greatest achievement in Mathematics. She was both the first woman and the first Iranian to ever to do so. She was only 37.
Never heard of her? Unfortunately that’s no real shock. When Mirzakhani died from breast cancer in the summer of 2017, her passing barely received a ripple of coverage outside Iran. Except for a small write up in the New Yorker and a few Youtube channel call outs, the world barely batted an eye at her loss. She wasn’t a celebrity or a musician, she wasn’t a professional athlete or an Instagram influencer. She was merely brilliant and furthered the scope of human understanding, something we not only ignore but openly despise.
(With the Ayatollah’s blessing, Iranian newspapers were allowed to publish pictures of her with her hair exposed. It’s the only time that has happened. Ever. It may sound trivial to the West, but in Iran it was a huge deal and a reflection of how dramatic an impact Mirzakhani made on the world of knowledge.)
Now fast forward a few months after Mirzakhani’s death. A guy by the name of “Mad” Mike Hughes was getting ready to launch his homemade, steam powered rocket to prove once and for all that the world is flat.
Yes, you read every word of that correctly.
Hughes got less than 1900 feet into the air before his science project came crashing back down to Earth, possibly breaking his back in the process. But his adventures attracted press from every corner of the globe, his exploits got significant air time from major broadcasters and he was all over the Internet. News media who ignored Mirzakhani or gave her a cursory nod at best, breathlessly ran to cover the failed attempt of a flat-earther trying to disprove humanity’s oldest piece of scientific knowledge.
Now if this is the part where you blame the media, everyone’s favourite scapegoat for just about everything, keep in mind the media is a business. It survives by catering to popular appetites. Media outlets and news broadcasters succeed by knowing what appeals to current social tastes. The reason the media lavished attention on Hughes while ignoring Mirzakhani is because they know that’s how we, the consuming audience, want it.
Hughes even got his own documentary.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States. And there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” That was a quote from scientist and bestselling author Isaac Asimov, truer today then when he first said it years ago.
Intelligence has always been looked down on. The smart kids were the bully’s favourite targets in school. Professional athletes have always made a thousand times what the people who cure diseases and chart the stars have. And the hero of the movie is usually the womanizing man of action while the scientists are cowards who need to be rescued or are cannon fodder for the bad guys. But now it seems like the bullies that stalked the school halls in search of victims are the ones calling the shots. Equally ignorant bullies are being elected to important political offices across the world. Once there, they intimidate their political opponents with violence and death.
Higher education is put further and further out of the reach of all but the rich while public education is under constant assault. Populism is on the rise in every corner of the globe while the world’s richest and most powerful countries slash resources for science. And the effects are becoming chillingly apparent.
A recent poll found that roughly half of American adults had no idea that six million Jews died in the Holocaust. The number of people who genuinely believe the Earth is flat inches up every year. The anti-vaccine conversation has gone from being almost cute to bringing back diseases that had been eradicated. And huge portions of the population stubbornly refuse to believe in climate change despite the science and the obvious consequences (the entire continent of Australia was on fire just a few weeks ago).
In a recent interview, Neil DeGrasse Tyson laid the blame for persistent ignorance at the foot of the public education system. And while public schools have plenty of problems and flaws (exaggerated by annual budget cuts), he was being far too generous. Everyone with an internet connection or a smartphone has access to every piece of knowledge the human race has accumulated over its entirety. Finding out why the Earth is indeed round or how vaccines work or that the planet isn’t six thousand years old is only a single Google search away.
Ignorance is a deliberate and conscious choice during the Information Age. People choose to remain in the dark. And it isn’t just about science or math. The willful blindness and ignorant obedience of people on all sides of the political spectrum has become as disgusting as it is astonishing.
The world is hurdling towards a handful of tipping points at mach speed. The end of the world is no longer a far off spectre anymore. People simply cannot afford to choose living the dark much longer. Because while there may be a whole bunch of different bullets with Humanity’s name on them (climate change, nuclear holocaust, plague, economic collapse), ignorance is the root cause of all of them.
So for 2020, can we resolve to stop revelling in stupidity? Can we get to a point where intelligence is celebrated and seen as a strength rather than a weakness? Because it isn’t hyperbole to suggest that time is running out for all of us, no matter how smart any of us may be.
And if we aren’t careful, our collective tombstone may just read that we were done in by our own ignorance.
Image via Simonsfoundation.org
