The Reality Isn't

When people say, "The Reality Is" they are really saying, "I'm interrupting this conversation to bring you THE TRUTH." Don't let people get away with that. That is just a mild form of shaping reality, the kind of thing George Orwell warned about in his classic 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" in which he discussed, among other things, how politicians shaped public opinion through the use of metaphors. George Lakoff's work on framing is a modern day version of that.


The Union of Concerned Scientists' recent study "Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics
to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science" gives another glimpse of how people's reality can be shaped:

In an effort to deceive the public about the reality of global warming, ExxonMobil has underwritten the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign since the tobacco industry misled the public about the scientific evidence
linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease. ... Like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil has:
• Manufactured uncertainty by raising doubts about even the most indisputable scientific evidence.
• Adopted a strategy of information laundering by using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further its desired message and thereby confuse the public.
• Promoted scientific spokespeople who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-pick facts in their attempts to persuade the media and the public that there is still serious debate among scientists that burning fossil fuels has contributed to global warming and that human-caused warming will have serious consequences.
• Attempted to shift the focus away from meaningful action on global warming with misleading charges about the need for “sound science.”
• Used its extraordinary access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming.



How people know what they know is clearly something school children should be learning from Kindergarten on. After all, if they are in school to learn, they should be learning about how people learn. But they should also be learning to understand how others attempt to influence what they know and believe. If democracy is to really work, and not inevitably be taken over by large corporations who can pay scientists - as the tobacco companies and Exxon do - to pervert data that is not in their interests, or to raise doubts about things like evolution, then we have to be savvy consumers of data. We need to know how to spot the bullshit and raise appropriate questions. This goes for any sort of dogma whether it be on the left, right, east or west. This starts with recognizing phrases like "The reality is..." and interrupting them immediately.


Of course, as the pictures (top from today's Anchorage Daily News, bottom one I just took of our indoor/outdoor thermometer) in this post prove, the reality is that global warming isn't happening.