The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [136]
Take a vast area of the earth’s surface, inhabited by people who remember a great history. Enrich them enough that they can afford satellite television and Internet connections, so that they can see what life is like across the Mediterranean or across the Atlantic. Then sentence them to live in choking, miserable, polluted cities ruled by corrupt, incompetent officials. Entangle them in regulations and controls so that nobody can ever make much of a living except by paying off some crooked official. Subordinate them to elites who have suddenly become incalculably wealthy from shady dealings involving petroleum resources that supposedly belong to all. Tax them for the benefit of governments that provide nothing in return except military establishments that lose every war they fight: not roads, not clinics, not clean water, not street lighting. Reduce their living standards year after year for two decades. Deny them any forum or institution—not a parliament, not even a city council—where they may freely discuss their grievances. Kill, jail, corrupt, or drive into exile every political figure, artist, or intellectual who could articulate a modern alternative to bureaucratic tyranny. Neglect, close, or simply fail to create an effective school system—so that the minds of the next generation are formed entirely by clerics whose own minds contain nothing but medieval theology and a smattering of third world nationalist self-pity. Combine all this, and what else would one expect to create but an enraged populace.31
Slipping back into my Idealpolitik mode, the scientific solution to the political problem of oppressive governments is the tried-and-true method of spreading liberal democracy and market capitalism through the free and open exchange of information, products, and services across porous economic borders. Liberal democracy is not just the least bad political system compared to all others (pace Winston Churchill); it is the best system yet devised for giving people a chance to be heard, an opportunity to participate, and a voice to speak truth to power. Market capitalism is the greatest generator of wealth in the history of the world and it has worked everywhere that it has been tried. Combine the two and Idealpolitik may become Realpolitik.
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A final note on belief and truth: To many of my liberal and atheist friends and colleagues, an explanation for religious beliefs such as what I have presented in this book is tantamount to discounting both its internal validity and its external reality. Many of my conservative and theist friends and colleagues take it this way as well and therefore bristle at the thought that explaining a belief explains it away. This is not necessarily so. Explaining why someone believes in democracy does not explain away democracy; explaining why someone who holds liberal or conservative values within a democracy does not explain away those values. In principle, the formation and reinforcement of political, economic, or social beliefs is no different from religious beliefs.
Explaining that people are conservative because their parents voted Republican, that they were raised in or now live in a red state, that their religion leans conservative instead of liberal, or that by temperament they prefer ordered social hierarchies and strict rules, does not automatically discount the validity of the conservative principles and values, any more than explaining that people are liberal because their parents voted Democratic, that they were raised in or now live in a blue state, that their religion leans liberal instead of conservative, or that by temperament they prefer the leveling of social hierarchies and more flexible rules, automatically discounts the validity of the liberal