The Reality-Based Lifestyle
It has taken awhile, but I finally tripped over a reference to the text of an article I'd been wanting to read: Without A Doubt, by Ron Suskind (which appeared originally in The New York Times on Saturday 17 October 2004 and is available here through truthout.org). Why was it on my to-read list? Because of this paragraph:
The [White House] aide said that guys like me [Suskind] were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
I am surprised and yet delighted to find myself suddenly placed in "the reality-based community". Perhaps it's just a stodginess that comes from being a physicist and believing in some sort of objective reality that can be subjected to judicious study, from which we learn wisdom. This anonymous aide is correct to a point when it comes to changing certain social institutions and affecting the course of human history. However, as he and the current administration will likely discover to their suprise, that point is not so far away as they would like to believe.
I am fully content to be old fashioned and reality-based. I also hope that a few more of my compatriots will return to the reality-based community soon. I don't know what it will take for them to see the many benefits of living a reality-based lifestyle, I just hope it won't be overwhelmingly catastrophic.
If you have the time, I recommend reading the entire article, lengthy as it is. But just in case you don't get to it right away, here are a few more eye-opening excerpts that I made note of:
"Just in the past few months," Bartlett [domestic-policy advisor to Reagan] said, "I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do." […]
"This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts," Bartlett went on to say. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." Bartlett paused, then said, "But you can't run the world on faith." […]
The president would say that he relied on his "gut" or his "instinct" to guide the ship of state, and then he "prayed over it." The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group – the core of the energetic "base" that may well usher Bush to victory – believes that their leader is a messenger from God. […]
As [Christine Todd] Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: "In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!" […]
The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. […]
This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. […]
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on Thursday, 18 August 2005 at 15.00
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