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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Svar: Re: Ormus- ORMES
  • Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 11:27:53 -0700

On Mar 2, 2011, at 8:45 AM, Thomas Paul Jahn wrote:

> Toby, I don't think it is about saying Darwin was wrong. It is more the
> fact that science generally has a problem when dominated by a strong
> view, a paradigm.
> Neither symbiosis nor epigenetics is incompatible with Darwin's theory.
> But Darwin as a dogma clearly looses momentum.

Thank you, Thomas, That's a very valuable statement. When anything, even
Darwin, becomes dogma, we're going in the wrong direction.

What raised my ire here (and since I've got a bad cold, I am perhaps a little
less tolerant than usual) is, first, seeing the oceanplasma folks make
unsupportable, erroneous statements to support the use of a product, and,
second and more strongly, seeing someone (whoever wrote the line that Chris
quoted) hide a political or religious agenda behind a plea for tolerance,
using the old canard "How can students be taught to challenge popular ideas
when they are only presented a one-sided view?"

This sort of plea to "tolerance" (the liberal Achille's heel) has long been
used to sneak in agendas that I consider evil or at least dishonest. Since
Chris asked if I would ever teach using the same name-calling that I used in
describing the above kind of ignorance or deception, here's what I do. If one
of my students asked "But doesn't GMO corn have higher yields than non GMO?"
I would answer with the same calm logic that I used to explain what a
scientific theory is. But if one of my students used the tactic of saying "If
you are against GMO corn, then you must want people to starve to death," (the
Monsanto party line) then I would be much less kind in my answer. That's the
same kind of argument as "How can students be taught to challenge ideas . .
." and its real agenda is to deceive. We need to be on our guard whenever we
see statements like that, and recognize that all statements in that class are
designed to manipulate and set up a smokescreen. Those sorts of statements
are vicious, and if someone uses them, or even quotes them without seeing the
dishonesty behind them, they are going to get a strong reaction from me.
There is no room in honest discourse for that sort of lie, and it's
frustrating to see people deceived by it.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com






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