Does it make any sense to tell people to place their trust in science?
During the pandemic, it has been held by some to be important that people trust in science and, in that sense, make the kind of emotional investment we associate with belief in science and scientists. What else could it mean to follow the science for those who are not scientists? After all, for those who are not scientists, isn’t science just one more belief system? I emphasize the phrase “for those who are not scientists” because, for a scientist, science is not a belief system, it is a way we come to know something when we stop believing and require that the truth about it be demonstrated rather than assumed. To do science is to think without presupposing where our thinking will lead us. Clinical trials such as those done on the coronavirus vaccine are specifically designed to make sure the outcome is not predetermined, and the result not affected by the desire on the part of the scientist to have a successful trial or the desire on the part of health care institutions to have an effective vaccine. Because of this, if we are asked to believe the scientist, that can be a problem for us and for the scientist as well.
The more powerful our doubts the more intense the emotional investment in what we believe.
To believe in something is to have an emotional investment in it. We believe that things are a certain way because we wish that they were, and we wish they were because, if they were that way, our hopes would be realized and our desires would be fulfilled. While belief is a wish about the way things are or could be, it only comes into play to the extent that things are not the way we wish they were. Indeed, belief only comes into play when, at some level, we doubt that reality is the way we need it to be. The more powerful our doubts the more intense the emotional investment in what we believe.
When we are not loved our earliest belief system begins to take shape: the belief that we were loved when we were not, or not sufficiently.
Belief is the mobilization of knowing against reality. It is therefore also the mobilization of aggression against reality or the truth about reality. Early in life there is only one truth that matters: that we are loved and that someone cares about us and can be relied on to care for us. When we are not loved our earliest belief system begins to take shape: the belief that we were loved when we were not, or not sufficiently. This realization brings with it the mobilization of aggression to hold in place a belief that runs counter to reality, a belief that will fuel all later beliefs. The more intense the need to believe the more intense the attack on reality and the less access we have to the thought processes that connect us to reality.
If there are aspects of reality that we do not really care much about, we may be able to connect with them while at the same time rejecting any connection to those aspects of reality we do care about.
The resulting disconnection from reality can be selective. If there are aspects of reality that we do not really care much about, we may be able to connect with them while at the same time rejecting any connection to those aspects of reality we do care about. The aspects of reality where belief is most likely to take over are those involving human relations and the emotional bonds that connect individuals and groups. These are the realities we care most about. Still, the more intense the emotion driving belief the less space there can be for any other way of connecting with reality and the more the flight from reality affects all facets of life.
The importance of the original belief out of which all others arise is highlighted in a comment about faith I have quoted before from the conservative columnist Michael Gerson (see my new book, 2021, Depending on Strangers: Freedom, Memory, and the Unknown Self). According to Gerson “faith is the overflow of gratitude, the attempt to live as if we were loved, the fragile hope for something better on the other side of pain and death” (emphasis added). In saying this Gerson makes explicit the link between a way of knowing (belief) and a way we feel toward others (love and gratitude).
According to Melanie Klein, love provokes feelings of gratitude and with them an urge to share those feelings with others, to love them, and to have them feel gratitude toward us. But, as Gerson implies, we cannot count on this when we consider society as a whole: where being loved or being loved enough may not be the rule. If that is the case, what do we do to create the necessary emotional sealant to hold society together? Gerson offers a solution: If you have not been loved enough act as if you have. But, to act as if you have been sufficiently loved when you have not means to engage the part of the mind devoted to belief: we must believe we were loved when we were not.
If we were loved enough, then a kind of trust develops based on the reality of our experience of love as that experience is instantiated in memory. If we were not loved enough and if trust is to develop it must be on a different basis: belief in a wished-for reality. We cannot use reason or science to connect us to our wished-for reality: if we used reason, we would discover we had insufficient basis for our belief and therefore little basis for trust. There are then two kinds of trust: the trust that develops out of the reality of love and the trust that develops out of the need to believe that love was real when it was not.
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Many of those who refused to be vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic did so because they did not trust the science that developed the vaccine or the government that made it available (Wyland):
“I won’t be taking it in its first few years,” said Rich Coats, 46, of Santa Fe. “This abbreviated trial period is the shortest ever for a vaccine, much less one that modifies our DNA.”
“Look at all the garbage ... that the government has put in commodity foods and fed our Native peoples,” said Jolene Eustace, 62, of Albuquerque. “Where is the info of what’s in the COVID vaccine?” Eustace recalls what her father said: “I do not need immunizations because my Native, Indigenous physical self is enough to defend against many diseases.”
David Blum of Santa Fe said he refuses to live in fear and allow authority figures to think for him when it comes to his health.
Jenna Harrington, 39, of Santa Fe thinks that the “government should encourage people to be healthier so their bodies are less prone to illness, rather than telling them to take a vaccine or a pill as a quick fix.” She goes on to say that “the government has never really been in favor of wanting people to be healthy. It’s all about money and big pharma.”
“I will let others be the test subjects,” said Jerry Vasilik, 64, of Santa Fe. “The nonpolitical and nonpolitically driven medical information available is not as confident and concise as the political propaganda makes it out to be.”
For these non-scientists, trust is the basis for decision making. But if trust is rooted in belief in the as-if world, it will serve as a poor basis for attachment: it is too closely associated with distrust and aggression. If distrust is powerful enough, little can be done to alter conduct in a direction that requires trust.
In the struggle over science that has featured so prominently during the pandemic, science is cast in the role of the enemy of belief, which then makes it the enemy of the myth of the as-if world, the world in which we were loved, and in which our love built trust, and in which love and trust provoked gratitude. For those who find themselves engaged in this struggle, to appeal to science means to give up the hope for love. It will not be surprising, then, to discover that the aggression needed to hold onto belief is turned against science and those who represent the triumph of science, and therefore reason, over belief. For them, much more is at stake than we assume there is when we assume that our task is to offer them good reasons to get vaccinated because for them, whether they are aware of it or not, reason is the problem not the solution.
Distrust, even hatred, of reality makes living in reality difficult and assures that what is real will not be well known or well understood.
A society built on the false premise of the as-if world is a society at risk. It is at risk because fantasy solutions to real problems will tend to predominate and therefore problems in reality cannot be effectively addressed. Distrust, even hatred, of reality makes living in reality difficult and assures that what is real will not be well known or well understood. The most likely result: action taken will have effects other than, and often opposed to, those needed since the actual responses are shaped by fantasy.
References
Gerson, M. (2018). The last temptation. The Atlantic, https://theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-last-temptation/554066/ retrieved March 11, 2018.
Klein M. (1957) Envy and Gratitude. Reprinted in Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963. London: Karnac, 1998
Wyland, S. (2020) Some New Mexicans skeptical about coronavirus vaccine. Santa Fe New Mexican. December 25, 2020, https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/coronavirus/some-new-mexicans-skeptical-about-coronavirus-vaccine/article_6375516c-3fd3-11eb-ab9b-434480dc831e.html#utm_source=santafenewmexican.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fyour-morning-headlines%2F%3F123%26-dc%3D1608984010&utm_medium=email&utm_content=read%20more. retrieved 12/27/2020.