THOUGHTFULLY DRIVING THE PORCELAIN BUS

A Column by John S Schroeder

January 5, 2002

As I develop the habit of writing for this space on a regular basis, I find ideas for what to write about coming to me more and more frequently and in many different circumstances. Thus the shower background may not always apply. Besides, a little visual variety may be helpful.

There has been no shortage of ideas this week. Two things I have encountered beg for columns. One is the amazing amount of misinformation and downright stupidity that exists in the best-educated and informed society in history. The other is that despite the fact most consider cities as the peak of a civilization's achievements, I cannot help but note that the larger the city the more uncivilized the behavior. Alas, that second topic must wait, but I can lay some groundwork for the first.

At the risk of sounding egotistical, I consider myself one of the better-educated and smarter people I know. And yet, many who engage in social commentary, and many that occupy positions of "learning" consider me to be somehow dim-witted or simplistic. My wife works in a very toney college-prep type private high school and I encounter this attitude with some regularity from the faculty of that institution. In the interest of setting up my discussion, not in the interest of bragging, let me lay out some facts about myself. I have a Masters Degree in Chemistry. I was Dean's List every semester in college. I remain a member of several academic honorary fraternities. I have published articles in a variety of industry magazines. I have a book in print. I make my living as a "Consultant," a title that requires a certain recognized expertise. My expertise is sufficiently recognized that I have worked in three foreign countries, and was invited to participate in a technology exchange delegation to the Soviet Union.

Now, here is where it all starts to go awry. As a person trained in the sciences, and also by my personal inclinations, I am a person who seeks "the answer." I operate in a world where there is good and bad, better and best. You see, I believe that the probabilistic theory of atomic structure is better and more accurate that the Bohr theory. I have the unmitigated temerity to design experiments to test the two theories and demonstrate which one works better, then elect to use that better one. It's called the scientific method. Brilliance, at least where I come from, is measured by one's ability to sort through information and arrive at the "truth," or at least the description of things that most accurately predicts behavior of the system.

However, when one focuses their attention on the so-called social "sciences" one finds a very different perspective. Now we begin to hear about "diversity." In this realm, brilliance is measured not in finding the best view, but in finding how many views one can understand. In this realm, we hear things like "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." In the realm of the social "sciences" we find that holding the very concept of better or best, or good or bad, is a sign of being uneducated, simplistic, uninformed, or even dim-witted.

When I was a child, it was common to call a halt to an argument with the old "well you are entitled to your opinion, and I am entitled to mine," or the far more insidious, "What’s right for you, may not be right for me." But then when I was a child I argued about childish things. As an adult such phrases remain useful for concluding discussions about trivial matters like movies or interior decorating. But I am utterly amazed that such phrases have become the serious basis for academic inquiry and study. More egregious still those concepts have moved from the realm of the merely academic, to being a basis upon which people make policy and ethical decisions.

It is a relatively new discovery for me that this kind of rhetoric has moved from the cocktail party to the academic journal, and in this I have indeed been uninformed, and perhaps even dim-witted. I should have been paying closer attention. So the question now becomes, "How do we bring ourselves back from the brink?" The idea that there is a better or a best has always been so self-evident to me that I do not know how to argue for it.

Now I find I must find a way to argue for the self-evident.

With Love,