The Fall of Facts: Why are opinions becoming the standard for evidence?
Around 1715, rationality and logic exploding on the scene, and people decided to leave superstition behind, this would come to be known as The Age of Enlightenment. Before this period, some did think rationally, but it was constantly frowned upon, i.e., Socrates being told he was corrupting the youth, and in place of it was usually superstition and religion. When humankind decided to leave superstition and religion at the door, science and medicine exploded, and in the following centuries humanity would take a radically new path in their quest for intelligence and progression. Fast forward to 2019, and we have advance far beyond what anyone could’ve comprehended, even just a century ago, with machines, like the ECMO machine, that can act as an external lung, to save H1N1 patients, or the Mars rover, that has been collecting data and photos. However, something has changed, and at first, it was laughable, but now it has largely caught on, and it is starting to hinder society, and this ugly beast is called anti-intellectualism.
Anti-intellectualism is, to put bluntly and simply, the glorification of idiocy. It substitutes facts with feelings, and denies science as legitimate. It’s a movement, that at first, seemed laughable, and no one thought it would catch on, but it has, and its bring on an era of humanity that many did not see coming. It’s as if a part of humanity has grown tired of facts, as if facts are some anachronistic societal idea, that doesnt fit modern thought. I dont know if anyone has told them, but facts are the basis for everything around us.
To prove a fact, you need evidence, and to not have evidence to back up your claim, your “fact” is just an opinion, no matter how much you believe it to be so. It’s this new idea that your opinion is somehow better than facts, because you believe it to be true, and no one can stop you from having that view, and it is utterly absurd if someone questions your opinion or doesnt agree with you.
This new way of thinking has led to flat earth, anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements, which are not based on any evidence what so ever. Anti-vaxxers believe that since they’re a parent they suddenly know more about vaccines than a doctor because of their google degree they got from an hour of research, compared to the years of schooling of a doctor. There are hundreds of studies that have proven vaccines are safe and dont cause autism. Yes, there are very rare cases inwhich there are adverse reactions, but that’s with all medicine, and isnt a new concept as medicine has been readily available for a long time now, and it’s a required warning label that is given with all conventional medication. Even with all the evidence, people deny vaccines and now the measles has become an epidemic, and recently 140,000 people have died from the measels, and 9,769,400 cases were reported numbers that havent been seen in decades. The World Health Organization has now labeled anti-vaxxers as a global threat to Humanity.
Facts, logic, science and reason are essential in human progress and without them, as we have seen through out history, it puts us in the dark ages, full of superstition that leads to things like the Salem witch trials or the Spanish Inquisition. If we keep going down this path the film Idiocracy will become a documentary. The death of facts is intellectual darkness, and will set the human species back thousands of years. Just because you have a view, doesnt make it so, and the fact that in contemporary society, with how much intellectual progress we’ve had, we are starting to deny the very thing that got us where we are. Your opinions are not facts, and if you think they are, maybe it’s time for a crash course in critical thinking, or is humanity beyond being able to take the time to understand how to critically think? Has the school system failed? Is it the rise of Individualism in America? Whatever it may be, we need to address it now before we cross the point of no return.
