Many years ago, in 1986, a musician friend said in a radio interview that the reason he chose to return from Europe and make his career in Australia was because he’d been to a fortune-teller, who told him to. I was mortified, and, as a friend, I advised him against making such statements in public again.

At the same time, a rumour was circulating that another musician was refusing medical treatment for a life-threatening illness due to his “religious” beliefs. The rumour may or may not have been true, but it did alert to several dangerous ideologies that were gaining traction at the time.

My friend’s appreciation of music from non-western cultures and exploration of philosophies that challenged western musical orthodoxy was commendable. However, from the fortune-telling business and other comments he made, it was apparent that, for his musical ability, intellectual scholarship was not his forte. He was a musician, not an intellectual, and I considered a fine musician’s career shouldn’t be thwarted by unwise utterances unrelated to his talent and good heart, all the more so as his fame grew.

I was also concerned at the aggressive promulgation of superstitious beliefs taking place at the time via pseudo-intellectual occultism on the one hand and right-wing religious fundamentlaism on the other, both driving a psyche of doom that was pervading the public consciousness at the time due to the Cold War and manifest in a belief in the inevitable destruction of the planet, whether due to Nostradamus’ prophecies or “end-of-days” scenarios as interpreted with superifical, literal transposition of the Biblical Acts and Revelation onto modern times. I believed we needed to educate people above such superstitions, which act against critical thinking skills and render people helpless against seeming inevitabilities instead of taking action against them. I was also concerned for the environment and at how anti-science movements of the time were acting against the warnings by scientists of impending environmental catastrophe and means by which to avert it, believing we needed to be turning our efforts away from weapons and war to saving the planet from a much more inevitable destruction if we didn’t act against that instead of each other.

Unlike the musician, I thought he had nothing to fear from it being known that he was homosexual, although that was for him to decide, but I sincerely hoped, for his sake as much as everyone else’s, that the fortune-telling comment would not be repeated in public. considering he should stick to music in such circumstances.

Privately, on 18 February, 1988, in a context known to him, due to our shared interest in Eastern philosophies, to clarify a potential previous misunderstanding, I said I knew it had become trendy to delve into a variety of cults with conflcting doctrines but that my knowledge of Buddhism was not acquired in that way, explaining that my appreciation of its core tenets of compassion and humanity had different sources. To also forestall a former potential misimpression of disillusionment with the sciences, I said that that was certainly not the case and that “I believe that all the more knowledge needs to be generated in order to enlighten the vacuum of ignorance which is becoming quickly filled with superstition”. (I was being poetic, thus the split infinitve. 🙂 ) Also in a context known to him, I invoked embracement of Socratic self-knowledge as a source of inner peace, while also invoking Spinoza and maintaining that objectivity should form the basis of truth and subjectivity merely a matter of personal taste, with recognition of the fascist dangers inherent in that situation ever becoming the reverse in a system supposedly set up to unite all to one purpose, but which could all too easily be used to implememt the purpose of one. That was particularly relevant in a time during which racism and “us and them” war-mongering politics were on the rise, and I advocated embracement of peaceful, co-operative, egalitarian diversity over division. I reminded of the need to preserve arts for art’s sake, in a very politically charged time, stating that all creative endeavours should be simply, for their own sakes. I was concerned at adversarial factionalism between the sciences and the arts that was causing a narrowing of perspectives and I advised on broader knowledge for a more complete education.

Fortunately, he took my advice and when he died several years later, I’m sure it would not have been with the great reverence he had gained within his musical career, had he not. As it happened, choosing to remain in Australia, at least to restart his career, had been a fortuitous decision and with other incentives to stay and good support as a local figure, unlike many of our talented own, he enjoyed an excellent, if unfortunately, brief career, ended only by an AIDS-related illness in 1991.

Unfortunately, we are in a time when we are again facing the same dangers and resolve is still needed against those exploiting ignorance with superstition and false information as means by which to take advantage of others and enact malevolent interference in people’s lives. When such practices are more a quest for power and money than a genuine quest for knowledge or personal well-being, all such applications are as much prey to unscrupulousness as any other business. That they are merely devices of misinformation renders them of no value at best, dangerous at worst.
People with ulterior motives are still exploiting those too innocently-minded to realise the real intentions behind the curtain of propaganda imposed on them.

Again, it’s not a matter of one “side” or the other. Now, more than ever, we are again in danger of cutting off our futures at the brain stems as false Christians again peddling “end-times” madness enact every ideology but Christian as, in a state of delusional arrogance, they play out adolescent white supremacist fantasies onto a world they believe is theirs to dominate and destroy.

Equally, ironically, or rather, hypocritically, for those supposedly rejecting all things scientific, as technology has evolved, so too, have the means by which unscrupulous parties enact their craft. These manipulators excel at exploiting curiousity and the normal human need for mystery, at elevation of the unknown and belief in the powers of “Lady Luck”, but are no more insightful than any gambling agency that operates on the same principles. That exploitation is a very exact science. Remember that, before you get as fleeced as if you were throwing away your money on any cyber scam.

The danger of these apparently disparate ideologies is their common denominator of depriving people of independent thinking skills, again, evident in our time, when we are, again, in danger of a regression to the Dark Ages in every field, from environmental science to medicine, and it’s all the more important to address dangerous misinformation drawn from ideology or ulterior motives rather than fact. In our supposed democracies, egalitarian diversity is being subsumed by the motives of a few, as vested financial and ideological interests, dependent on exploitation of public ignorance and impotence, are being played out as government policy.

Unfortunately, the danger now is as as much from the enemy within, wolves in white lab coats, as it was from determined, sometimes well-meaning, crusaders leading a charge against “cold-hearted philistines”. People with good hearts but little knowledge are educable. However, while, previously, there were true leaders of reason and scientific thinking leading public awareness of ethical and environmental issues, such as Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, there are now people calling themselves scientists and scholars peddling anti-climate science ideologies, racist pseudoscience and medical quackery, made all the more dangerous by the perceived credibility that a couple of letters after their name assigns them.

Navigating the ocean of misinformation to find any kind of scientific truth is even harder now than it was in the 1980s, but doable, with a few pointers in mind. With land and money-grabbing, mass-murderers presenting themselves as the face of science, these days, I don’t blame anyone for mistrusting science or rejecting it completely in direct refrain of the past association of science with the horrors of war. It’s getting harder to teach the pure beauty of science, when people calling themselves scientists are preaching the very embodiment of all that’s bad about it, confirmimg everyone’s worst fears of misapplication. However, while not everything about science and technology is great, and you don’t have to believe those telling you that it is, recall it was science that warned of the major issues we now face. While modern medicine may not have all the answers and even fails occasionally, it’s because of scientific medical advances that people are enjoying longer and healthier lives than at any other time in history. Just as it’s not a matter of throwing all things “non-western” or “non-modern” under one roof without discernment as though “they all look alike”, so too, science itself is only as commercial as consumer markets allow it to be. By all means, do Tai Chi and meditate, go on retreats, love nature, enjoy the wonders of the cosmos at a deep and spiritually-meaning level, but don’t entrust life-affecting decisions to what is really only ever charlatanism, whatever new tools are employed to enact it with. Do take vaccines, do get treatment for serious and life-threatening illnesses beyond prayers and faith healing. Importantly, take care with medicines that are more magic belief than genuine cure. “First Do No Harm” is indeed a code that must be observed. That includes not doing harm by way of promulgating dangerously ignorant misinformation that could deter people from accessing life-saving treatments. Yes, drug companies are unscrupulous *******s, but so are those manipulating people into buying snake-oil, of whatever ideological origin, instead of medicines that provably save lives and improve the quality of daily life for millions of people around the world. Paracetamol, for example, is a totally safe drug when used responsibly and those pushing hype to the contrary are those posing the real danger to your health. Doing no harm also includes that done to animals. Aspirin may have been refined from willow bark and there are many similar plant sources of potential, all the more reason not to destroy the natural environment and to pay attention to native peoples, but rhino horn, tiger tooth and bear bile do nothing but torture animals. There’s nothing environmentally friendly or nature-loving about “medicines” that inflict cruelty on animals or destroy entire species, which only increases the danger of deadly virus creation. And, on the other hand, vivisection in modern medicine is unnecessary cruelty, especially today, when science has provided its own alternatives and there’s no need for live experimentation, which has no more scientific value than any practices whose “value” is invisible, while its damage is not.

In our time of new technologies and enormous amounts of information outpacing scrutiny and regulation, finding truth can take a bit of work, but knowing the difference between a valid study and pseudoscience still only takes the same basic skills, no matter how over-dressed may be the language of purveyors of nonsense.

Importantly, don’t believe that all is “written”. Don’t succumb to the culture of helplessness against corrupt and unscrupulous governments constantly spending your money on their forever wars, conducted for their gain, or taking away your right to protest and contribute to decision-making in our supposed democracies. Don’t give in to either unscrupulous charlatans trying to convince you they know you better than you do OR corporations convincing you that being boiled alive under climate change is good for your health, like doctors in the 1950s paid by tobacco companies to tell you that smoking was!

The future is open to whatever you make it and really want it to be. It’s not written in the stars, it’s not written in tales told centuries ago by people who were writing for their time, not ours, and it’s not written in adverts carefully crafted by manipulation experts. You’re not obligated to follow the dictates of anyone’s personal interpretations of anything, whether a fortune-teller, a health Minister with no medical qualifications, a race scientist with no knowledge of science or a madman thinking he’s Jesus.

In our time of pending environmental disintegration, we cannot afford the luxury of self-centredness. Bound by our material physiology and that of the planet, we need to recognise the life and death threat we collectively face, put all differences aside and co-operate to save the only environment in which we’re capable of living, for if it dies, we all do, and all our petty differences won’t mean a thing.