Of human bondage
Callahan, Sidney
SIDNEY CALLAHAN OF HUMAN BONDAGE Science fr s,q erstitiun ave you ever wondered why superstition and scientific knowledge increase and flourish together? Here we live in the most...
...At this very moment aliens may move among us in disguise...
...A fundamentally honest guy-no one would confuse him with Boss TweedAl Gore responds to the political imperatives of the moment and to legal advice that says he is responding within the bounds of the muddy campaignfinance statutes...
...How people react to Gore's problem depends on where they stand on Gore...
...The marketing invasion of the household by technological marvels, courtesy of modern science, can also contribute to superstitious proclivities...
...Expensive, expert consultants-the modern equivalents of shamans and medicine menmust be called in to deal with difficulty after difficulty...
...405, New York, N.Y...
...Previous experience with a magazine, small business, or nonprofit organization is a plus...
...Clinton has been very successful in containing the Republicans and in establishing the Democrats as a good defensive party-they will defend what's left of the achievements of the New Deal and the parts of the Great Society (that is, Medicare and MR...
...Clinton asked Gore to help...
...Further evidence of the spread of credulity can be gathered by glancing through the tabloids in your local supermarket...
...In the kitchen, grinding, chopping, mixing, shredding, and whistling noises may rend the air...
...Think of how those well-educated members of the Heaven's Gate cult staked their lives on the unfounded belief that space denizens were arriving to take them away...
...Benefits...
...The Democrats are in a muddle over who they are...
...The house is alive with the sound of music and other beckoning noise: bells ring, beepers beep, faxes ping, icemakers plunk, a multitude of hums, thumps, whirrings,and flushings produce hot and cold air, water and steam...
...Oh," I reply, "do we really...
...But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Gore is battered politically but not legally...
...Surely few aboriginal tribesmen (or tribespersons) could experience as many invisible powers and mysterious forces as I do...
...D stakingly built...
...Unfortunately, the tentative openness of an educated approach to knowledge can easily turn into popular gullibility...
...For instance, what is the current take on the age and origin of Home sapicns, the nature of quarks, or neutrinos...
...Many more magical effects can be encountered outside in cars, planes, airports, office buildings, streets, stores, factories, and hospitals...
...The vice-president was also loyal, and his loyalty has now shattered the image of painful earnestness, so pain duce a frustration level that leads to nagging annoyance and anxious dependence...
...Commonweal 7 September 26, 1997 one seven-room apartment...
...Whenever President Bill Clinton's rating on the scandal meter shot up, there was Gore, reminding voters that he was too clunky to be slick, too straight to be corrupt...
...If we are not going to fall into mindless gullibility or retreat to a desert hermitage, we will have to develop new forms of reasoned critiques of scientific technology complete with appreciative detachment...
...Consider the mindset it takes to keep abreast of all the new information and theories generated by proliferating new scientific research projects...
...Now wait a minute, say certain critics in my family circle unattuned to the magical properties of life...
...Gore was there, raising money at that Buddhist temple...
...We could, no doubt, fill the pages of Commonweal by holding a contest for the most outrageous irrational idea recently encountered in the popular media_ And to ensure an equal-opportunity search, we would have to have special categories for nonsensical academic ideas, the most inane New Age spirituality, or some excess of alternative medicine...
...Constant adjustments and mental revisioning are necessary to assimilate everchanging models of reality...
...if modern cameras steal your soul, they do it instantly...
...Here we live in the most science-oriented, technologically saturated society in the history of the world, yet false beliefs, pseudofacts,and nonsensical stories proliferate...
...10115...
...Other medium-sized, boxlike devices can be aimed at people and proceed to focus light, ping, flash, and produce pictures that roll out into your hand...
...The two obvious facts are the tawdriness of the 1996 fund raising and the weirdness of campaign-finance laws that seem to allow certain kinds of big money fund raising while prohibiting others...
...DIONNE* Jr...
...If so the Commonweal needs you...
...If Al Gore were Newt Gingrich, this argument goes, the world would already be caving in on him...
...Hours and hours are spent mastering new programs, decoding complex instructions, and diagnosing new problems...
...And in these conditions, superstition breeds...
...CLEAN GETS SOILED Gore & campaign finances P Commonweal 8 September 26,1997...
...So who knows, ask true believers, maybeweust haven't haven't yethe right way to prove UFO abductions...
...For much of the administration's tenure, his rat ings were higher than the president's...
...As far as I can see, our high-tech lives pro E.J...
...He was there, making those calls to rich donors from his office...
...Haven't we seen or heard about it on TV...
...Please include references and salary requirements...
...Readers are invited to join in our search by passing on this announcement or by letting us know of potential candidates...
...The man who had hoped to be associated with the slogan "reinventing government" is now forever chained to the phrase "no controlling legal authority," his mantra for the fact that no court ever ruled on the legality of what he did in the process of raising political money...
...On the fund-raising matter, Gore's proud clunkiness did not serve him well...
...In every discipline stable certitudes are challenged by new findingsand paradigms shift at a prodigious rate...
...We are looking for a business manager/wizard...
...Did he do anything so different from what Republicans did before him...
...oor Al Gore...
...The surprise: It could do the Democrats a world of good-and not just because they will be forced to clean up their fund raising...
...Many who eagerly accept the content of new scientific research have not assimilated the need for rational doubt and critical testing that characterize scientific method s of reasoning...
...Applications or suggestions should be sent to: Editor, Commonweal, 475 Riverside Drive, Rm...
...Now, he seems even more threatened by the fund-raising mess than Clinton...
...Gore's critics say his sanctimoniousness disguises a political ambition that does what political ambition demands...
...All those jokes Gore would tell about his stiffness reflected his political shrewd ness...
...Many sounds pervade the atmosphere bringing other messages...
...Everyone I know is regularly reduced to helplessness by the breakdown, malfunctioning, or bugs that damage the operations of the complex technology that surrounds us...
...And these technological genies, djinns, and guardian spirits are all present in H Business Manager Can you turn straw into gold...
...Clean, too boring to be scandalous...
...Even when indispensable and useful, these new tools of scientific control lead to new forms of bondage and helplessness...
...And with this pious hope I will now save, revise, format, print, and fax this column off to the editors who wait for it in an office thirty miles away...
...When I walk around my house, especially at night, I meet a thousand points of light...
...Many of these sounds and lights start, stop, and change at the touch of little black oblong boxes or amulets lying around the house...
...Grown men and women are reduced to tears and placating invocations or curses...
...After all, in contrast to primitive people, we rationally understand how all these things work...
...Even bigger boxes and screens bring into the house moving, talking, colored pictures---summoned from out of the air...
...My explanation for the paradoxical growth of science and superstition is based on human psychology...
...Four-day work week...
...A terrific job for a Renaissance person: someone with promotion and business skills committed to working with a small staff and a limited budget to ensure the financial future of the magazine...
...Interested applicants should send a resume and a letter describing his or her suitability for the position and acquaintance, if any, with the magazine...
...No one knows which way this story will go...
...Maybe once we could confidently comprehend levers, bicycles, or even in my case the pedal sewing machine upon which I learned to sew, but how many people understand their own fax and computer systems, much less the viruses that can infect them...
...Other slightly larger rectangular boxes are split in two and open up to produce illuminated blue screens upon which messages can be created or come from afar...
...The business manager will work with the staff on a wide variety of tasks_ These include budgeting and finance, marketing and promotion, circulation, fund-raising, development, and general business matters, as well as supervising the business staff...
...You shouldn't call these examples of modern scientific technology "magical" or say they encourage "superstition...
...All devices must regularly be taken back to the store to be repaired or exchanged, and inevitably they must be updated and replaced...
...If the Democratic National Committee funneled some of the money Gore raised to the wrong accounts, he may face an independent counsel's investigation...
...When I hear of how modern man (or persons) live in a demystified, dead, technological world emptied of the mag ical presence of spirits, I demur...
...Other unsettling revisions of our understanding of the brain and body's functioning produce contradictory advice on maintaining health...
...God help you when you are subject to the ominous rites, lights, screens, and intravenous tubes found in hospitals...
...What does this do to the campaign for the next Democratic nomination...
...We did mean Renaissance...
...If Democrats played loose with the law in 1996, and if Gore went along, he deserves what he's getting-especially since there have been subtle changes in his story as more facts became public...
...Such investigations seem to take forever, forever in this case meaning up to and perhaps including the presidential year 2000...
...This is one of many reasons why the campaign laws need to be reformed, tightened, and clarified...
...To bring the hunt even closer to home, we should attend to some of the unnoticed magical elements we accept in our own middle-class professional lives...
...Many of theseare givingoff signals with green or red flashes-the microwave, the oven, the answering machine, the digital clocks, the curling iron, the radios, the computers (his and hers), the two printers, the two Xerox machines, the video players, the cellular phones-etc., etc...
...A scientifically literate person is forced to exercise a judicious open-mindedness to assess theclaimsand research evidence for the acceptance of new theories...
...For Gore fans, this case is a tragedy...
...He had spent his political life as the good and solid Mr...
...Let's face it...
...His anthem for the last six years: It's hip to be square...
Vol. 124 • September 1997 • No. 16
