Why People Believe In Really Dumb Crap
Mark Henderson explores the idiocy of people who should know better:
Take, for instance, the followers of Dr Deepak Chopra. Chopra is a real doctor whose credentials, like his powers of reason if not his bank balance, have lapsed. He makes millions of dollars by advising the gullible. His bestsellers, among their many banalities, take literally the maxim that age is a state of mind. ìPeople grow old and die because they have seen other people grow old and die,î he argues. ìAgeing is simply learned behaviour.îIt hardly takes a genius to spot the flaws. Yet Chopraís speaking fee is $25,000 (£13,600), his annual income tops $20 million and his list of client-disciples includes Madonna, Hillary Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Demi Moore hopes to live to a great age through his teachings. ìEven 130 years isnít impossible,î she says.
Modern peddlers of snake oil such as Chopra are the worthy targets of a coruscating new book: Francis Wheenís How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. From Ronald Reaganís astrological charts to Cherie Blairís ìBioElectric Shieldî and the Queen and her heirís homeopathic hokum, it lays bare the extent to which delusion, paranoia, ignorance and nonsense have takenover public life.
Far too many otherwise sensible people, Wheen argues, have abandoned rational inquiry for superstition, instinct and anecdote. As he puts it: ìIt was as if the Enlightenment had never happened.î This flight from facts has appeared in many guises. Creationism and postmodernism, alternative medical quackery and management speak are all cut from the same cloth: they share a pig-headed refusal to face up to sober evidence that the emperor is wearing no clothes.
Henderson sees some hope in the fact that some poll seemed to indicate that the average person would want data to be peer-reviewed -- "the independent refereeing process for scientific research" -- if they knew what peer review was. (Professional journals require articles and studies submitted for publication to be judged by a group of the author's professional peers, and published, revised and resubmitted, or rejected by the publication, based on the decision of that jury.)
Henderson is very optimistic. I am not.
UPDATE: Thanks to Jim Bennett, here's the link to the American version of Wheen's book, Idiot Proof: The 25-Year History of How We Stopped Thinking.
Well it all seems to come together in my twisted little mind.
Yesterday I was pontificating about, what was it again, oh yes, how our garbage pop culture hurts us. Now this comes along as another example.
We have a society comprised mostly of blathering idiots, stupid and gutless, not having the COURAGE to believe and embrace reality.
People, being weak and brainless, naturally have little if any self-esteem. This is why we have this proliferation of celebrity worship in this country to the extent that we do.
So up steps Madonna or Demi Moore and they talk about living to be 130 or whatever other nonsense they fill their silly minds with. The public, being what they are, laps it up, follows these brainiacs in their fashions, their beliefs, in their views. Look at the queen idiot Oprah. People get on her show and the sales of their books go through the roof.
Despite what some people apparently think, TV is a very powerful, influencing force, but that's another lecture.
Okay, so these celebrity imbeciles embrace Oprah or Deepak or whatever it is, and the public is directly influenced. Ergo, my piece on our garbage culture. It directly influences the public.
Again, who cares about janet's tits, the harm of TV and all this celebrity worship is that it influences millions of people to follow and emulate their favorite stars into whatever nonsense they happen to believe. It serves to dumb-down, delude and furhter weaken and deempower people getting them to believe in all mannner of fairy tales. Tits aren't the problem, stupidity is.
P.S. My lectures will soon be available on audio tape, so you can listen to me in your car. Because I like you, I'll give you a rate.
chris at February 27, 2004 8:39 AM
You just know that when Demi gets to be 130, she won't look a day over 122.
Jim Treacher at February 27, 2004 3:04 PM
Title for the US will be Idiot Proof: The 25-Year History of How We Stopped Thinking.
Jim Bennett at February 27, 2004 4:17 PM
As a Bruin, I am sad to say that Chopra spoke at the UCLA business school a couple of years ago. I consider that educational malpractice.
Lena at February 29, 2004 11:05 AM
When you look at superstition from an evolutionary point it makes a lot of sense. There we were, animals with almost no defenses except our imaginations, and we not only survived, but went on to become the roaches of the mammal world. Our love of the supernatural, including religions, is really "natural" in the true sense of the word. We are fraidy-cat animals, scared of our own shadows, endowed by mother nature to attribute all manner of normal phenomena to supernatural causes. This "talent" enabled us to survive and prosper in the animal world. We even took a paganized Jewish sect and created Christianity out of it; something the founder (Jesus H. Christ) would have never have done on his own. The reason it worked was because it was a perfect fit for our fraidy-cat evolutionary heritage. But a lot of so-called enlightened scientists have a hard time appreciating this, that is, that we are, by nature, superstitious animals and cling to the characteristics that enabled us to survive. Instead they rave on that we "should" not do that. What they could be explaining is our superstitious heritage as a natural outgrowth of evolution. Let's face it, it was not so long ago that our top scientists were bleeding us to treat diseases and advocated that the world was flat. The scientists have a long way to go to really, really understand and appreciate our species.
Grandpa Ken at May 24, 2004 2:06 PM
Deepak Chopra lies on a less frequent basis than
Bush or Blair or Rumsfeld. So who really cares one way or the other about Deepak? Probably only those of think science will save us all. More than these topics at www.celebrityworship.com
Tom McSweeney at May 31, 2004 6:23 PM
Well, Tom, Bush, Blair, and Rumsfeld have a little more impact on my life than Deepak Chopra. He's just silly, and evidence that PT Barnum was right. And I'm more likely to be saved by science than by religious irrationals, n'est-ce pas?
Amy Alkon at May 31, 2004 6:38 PM