Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific to US

[Peace Patriot]

51. I think Zinn has a point but he didn't make it very well.

"Why should we cherish 'objectivity?,'" he asks. This point is perhaps more applicable to history and other social studies, and to the arts, than to science and engineering. But these fields sometimes overlap. For instance, it was once the "objective" view of male doctors and of many men that women easily became "hysterical" due to their biology, and "hysterectomies" were in fact prescribed (surgical removal of the uterus) as the solution. It never occurred to these men that they might have been driving their women crazy, or that "hysteria" might be a form of protest by people who feel powerless. Nope, it was paraded as "science," as "objective," that uteruses make women "hysterical" (i.e., weak, unreliable, overly emotional, etc.).

What do we think of those "experts" now? Well, I'm glad that their view no longer prevails in our society. Their view was clearly heavily prejudiced by their sex--by their illusions of being superior in mind, in "objectivity," in psychological stability and in other ways, compared to women. I'm also glad doctors, men and society in general AMENDED this view, and headed towards a more objective view (of male/female differences), as new facts, new analysis and new understandings emerged. This, of course, did not occur without struggle--particularly by women. So here we have a plain intersection of a social movement and science. A social movement AMENDED science and steered it toward cleaner objectivity.

Zinn seems to be saying that the social movement is the part of this dynamic that is important. Without the women's social movement, this non-objective view of women, invented by male "experts," quite likely would have continued to be considered "objective" and the medical science would never have been corrected, despite the fact that the men of science "cherished objectivity." What good was their "objectivity"? They couldn't see reality. Also, this "Victorian" view of women--as weak, as "hysterical," as needing men to control them--constantly threatens to return and there are CURRENT male fascist forces at work, right now, to restore this view in our society--and, if that happens, THEY will surely re-invent the medical science to endorse it with.

Zinn seems to me to be trying to elicit this more complete and more profound view that our pursuit of "objectivity" is underpinned with more important pursuits: improvement of humankind, social justice, spread of knowledge, increased happiness. Those male doctors with their sexist medical ideology might have thought--likely thought--that they were improving the lot of women by appealing to reason and science (as opposed to beatings and other brute oppression) to mitigate male behavior toward women. The underpinning motive--to improve humankind--was the key motive in the correction of this very flawed "objectivity" of the "experts." The pressure and struggle and sheer justice of the women's equality movement won the day--changed male minds, because those minds were moved and movable by something deeper than "objectivity." We thus should cherish that other something--the struggle for social justice--not the fleeting "objectivity" of "experts" who claim certitude but don't really possess it.

I think Zinn makes the mistake of ignoring the general trend of the human brain and of humans as individuals and in communities, to seek ever more objective information about the world. If women, for instance, demonstrate their skill in sports, in science, in literature and so forth--first, of course, struggle for those opportunities, and then utilize them to PROVE their equality--or if any other prejudice like this is overturned by the facts, most human beings will eventually respect it, because we value facts and the objective view. This is an inherent quality of the human brain. It is not something we "cherish." It is something we ARE--or, rather, something we SEEK, universally.

I also think that what Zinn really meant to say was, "Don't OVER-cherish it" (objectivity). Don't be fooled by it. Don't be like those male doctors, parading as "experts" and preaching sexism as "objective." Zinn himself has done a great deal to correct the prejudices of history writing. Surely he has a model of objectivity in his mind, against which he is judging the history written by--and full of the prejudices of--the rich and the powerful. His histories have been a corrective, much like the actual equality of women has been a corrective to medical science. Is either view of history the whole truth? No. Are women the same as men in every way? No. Objectivity is somewhere in between or beyond. It is something we seek. It is never achieved.

Physicists are currently struggling with so much strangeness in the composition of matter, and also in the macro-cosmos, that they are really not sure of ANYTHING. The more data they obtain, the more puzzled do they become. If nothing else, this great flux of ideas in physics and cosmology teaches us never to conclude that we have possession of the objective truth. We don't. Not in any science. Not in any field of human thought. The only thing we have are temporary, workable theories that might be entirely exploded tomorrow.

We have to swim in this uncertainty. That is our fate. And that is another thing that I think Zinn was trying to say, and expressed badly--that to rely on "experts" to mollify you with certitudes about the world will not only lead you and society astray, as to what is real, it is a very perilous mistake. Nuclear power "experts" are PAID TO mislead you--to make you feel certain about the safety of a highly profitable and government-looting industry that could, in fact, easily end up destroying all life on earth. We are frequently told the exact opposite of the truth by paid "experts"--including paid "experts" hired to analyze and dismiss the importance of our social movements and protests, and "expert" pollsters to tell us what we think, and "experts" on electronic voting to assure us that the 'TRADE SECRET' code in our voting machines is okay. Indeed, I know of one such official who actually dismissed the concerns of a knowledgeable citizen about these electronic voting machines because "you are not an expert." The ultimate put-down. The ultimate ploy to shut people up. They have eliminated the ordinary citizens who used to count our votes in public view and now "the experts" do it, and tell us to butt out.

Ha!

I totally sympathize with Zinn's contempt for "experts." Show me a real expert who knows what he or she is doing--fixing my plumbing or removing a brain tumor--and I will respect, if not worship, that expertise and the objective knowledge--knowledge of our current workable theories about the world--that they have acquired. But we need to beware of the charlatan "experts" in every field, something house owners know, who have ever been cheated by a contractor, and something that victims of the medical profession know, and something that all of us are getting on to, on many fronts, from economics to war, these days. Many "experts" LIE. And the part of our brains that inherently pursues objective information is the WAY that they embed their lies within us and within our society.