(3089/898) Delusions and refusals

1943) It is a very sorry commentary on the state of our society that, as we have become more and more dependent on scientific advances in computers, medicine, communications and other areas, a large segment of the population has correspondingly embraced what has been termed the "flight from reason" and believes in the garbage of pseudo science. [...] [A]lmost half the population believes in ESP and more than half believes that it has had a psychic experience.

At first glance, parapsychology might seem to offer more attractive explanations than traditional science for some phenomena that are otherwise difficult to explain. However, detailed scientific analyses will invariably show that the real world and real explanations for complex phenomena are much more interesting than anything parapsychology has to offer.

Arthur J. L. Cooper
Research Professor, Cornell University Medical College
letter to the editor
New York Times Magazine (9/8/1996)
[commenting on the article
"They Laughed At Galileo, Too"
by Chip Brown (8/11/1996)]

1944) Consider [...] the enormous number of Americans who rage against taxes. The complaint is as old as the country, but the rage is not, and it ought to be unsettling. It is not that taxes are too high, or that people wish at least their property or their whiskey could be spared. Rather, it seems to many a transparent offense that there should be taxes at all.

Politicians, who cannot escape knowing better, only in rare instances have refrained from wheedling with this delusive style of resentment. They go along with the grievances because they want to be good siblings. In the years of the cold war, when money saved out of taxes might have helped buy a bomb shelter and a shotgun to keep out the neighbors, nobody grudged the payments to support decently functioning police and fire departments, public schools and public parks. It would have been thought a low boast, the sign of a shady character, to be heard congratulating yourself about how cleverly you cheated the government. That kind of talk was for mob lawyers. Today the fact that a rule or a request or a protocol emanates from established authority is enough to warrant any brutality of abuse in the fight against it.

David Bromwich
"The Young Republic" in
The New Republic (9/16/1996)
[review of The Sibling Society
by Robert Bly]

1945) [P]eople in authority today, especially people in their 30s and 40s, have an extraordinarily hard time saying no. They have a hard and endless time with cases that prove a genuine test - turning down an honest plea or disappointing a party with a quasi-official entitlement for pleading. Negotiation postpones the final no and changes its meaning, and when the authorities do say it at last, they often show a visible reluctance with a bending of the head, knees or voice. The refusal is of the serial kind that lays the ground for a future request.

David Bromwich
"The Young Republic" in
The New Republic (9/16/1996)
[review of The Sibling Society
by Robert Bly]