Mini-Riff: What if Everything We Know is Wrong?

We take for granted that the cornerstone beliefs from ages ago were eventually proved wrong and then abandoned. That’s progress. But do we imagine that when a physician in the Middle Ages applied leaches to sick people to extract “bad humours” he did so confidently and was respected, believed, and obeyed by his fellow citizens? Or skip ahead to the Nineteenth Century when science had made astounding progress. Phrenologists were quite sure they could predict criminal behavior by measuring a person’s skull and they were praised in their day for their cutting edge studies. In every age, the prevailing empire of belief was widely accepted, followed, and honored without hesitation, doubt, or equivocation no matter how flawed it was eventually found to be.

How far back in history do we have to go to find evidence of such wrong-headed hubris? In the 1950’s our knowledge of how the world works was so advanced, that we even harnessed the atom, the building block of matter. Confidently and with authority, uranium miners, downwinders, atomic GIs, and weapon workers were told that the low doses of radiation they received were harmless, maybe even beneficial. In the meanwhile, forest fires were suppressed, keystone predators were hunted and eliminated from the land, and DDT was applied without protest to the crops we ate and the front lawns where children played. Lead was added to gasoline. We built so many nuclear weapons that we could destroy life on earth many times over. Ships loaded with old rusty chemical weapons were scuttled and sent to the ocean floor. Engineers were busy draining the Everglades and re-routing its flow through canals. Emotionally distressed patients were lobotomized.

That was just fifty years ago, a mere blink of history’s eye. But we’ve learned so much since then. After all, we have even unlocked the mystery of DNA and can create new life forms in our labs. We have acquired God-like powers to alter the web of life. Yes, I’m sure all that other ignorant nonsense is behind us and we’re on the right track now…