I am fond of quoting Ursula Le Guin. In her last book, “No Time to Spare,” she clarifies the difference between belief and acceptance.
Asked if she believed in evolution, she would answer “no.” Most readers would register a moment of “what?!” before reading on.
“I don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. I accept it,” she writes. “It isn’t a matter of faith, but of science.” Le Guin says that belief “has its proper and powerful existence in the domains of magic, religions, fear and hope.”
She then states that the whole undertaking of science is to deal, as well as it can, “with reality. The reality of actual things and events in time is subject to doubt, to hypothesis, to proof and disproof, to acceptance and rejection — not to belief or disbelief.”
Le Guin insists that there are areas where “we need belief” because it’s all we have to act upon. “In the whole area we call religion or the realm of the spirit, we can only act on belief.
“Its value,” she writes, “increases as it is useful, diminishes as it is replaced by knowledge, and goes negative when it is noxious. In ordinary life,” she says, “the need for it diminishes as the quantity and quality of knowledge increase.”
In today’s polarized society, the clash between belief and science is endangering our future. If you are interested, you can find out where you fall on the belief vs. acceptance scale by answering a few of the hot button topics below that are dividing our country today.
■You believe that climate change is a naturally occurring fluctuation in weather patterns. Or you accept the evidence that the manner in which 7.9 billion people live on earth is the cause.
■You believe that what 6 in 10 Republicans believe is that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump by wide-spread voter fraud. Or you accept the findings of 61 court cases that found no fraudulent elections.
■You believe there is no systemic racism in America. Or you accept the evidence that it is embedded via voter suppression legislation and in other ways in many states.
■You believe that Democratic “Socialism” will destroy America. Or you accept the history of “socialist” government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, the FAA and the national highway system as benefiting most Americans.
■You believe that unregulated capitalism is good for America. Or you accept the fact that our unregulated capitalistic economic system bails out our big banks and major corporations that are “too big to fail” (that would otherwise be allowed to fail and go out of business in a true capitalist economy).
■You believe that green energy is a “perfect scam” designed to benefit “many influential individuals and institutions” as one recent letter writer wrote. Or you accept the reality that saving the planet is the biggest challenge that has ever faced humanity and that fossil fuel subsidies, which are estimated to run into hundreds of billions of dollars annually, must end.
■You believe that the Jan. 6 siege of the capital was organized by antifa and other left-wing activists to try to make Trump look bad. Or you accept videos showing that Trump encouraged QAnon, the Traditionalist Worker Party, the Three Percenters, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Groyper Army, as well as neo-Confederates and Holocaust deniers among others, to attack the capital.
These are but a few of the flash points in today’s poisonous political environment.
Following Jan. 6, I have wondered how many people were rooting for the insane insurgency to succeed. By succeeding, I mean taking down the current government. Has anyone thought about how the country might have kept functioning?
Like planning and implementing the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that not one Republican voted for? The plan that sent direct payments of up to $1,400, extended a $300 per week unemployment insurance supplement, expanded the child tax credit for millions of Americans. And boosted COVID vaccinations up to 2 million per day and rising.
Millions of the 73 million Trump voters received these benefits.
Would they have received this kind of support if Trump had somehow “won” the election by “finding” 11,780 votes in Georgia?
Belief vs. acceptance: “neither can support or contradict the other.”
John Bos lives in Greenfield, is a contributing writer for Green Energy Times and Citizen Truth and a frequent My Turn contributor. Comments and questions are invited at john01370@gmail.com