What Effect Will 'Zero Dark Thirty' Have on America?

I expected to be upset by Zero Dark Thirty, after reading Glenn Greenwald's complaints about how the movie promoted the false idea that torture was instrumental in finding Osama bin Laden.  However, the film did not strike me as something that glorified, or ever justified, torture.  My impression was that the world depicted in the film was dark, sad, and hopeless.  This actually makes me hopeful that others will get this impression and decide to move this country in a different direction.

The movie's main character, a CIA analyst named Mya, looks like a deer caught in the headlights for most of the film.  In fact, many of the characters give that impression.  They find themselves in a violent world where everyone hates them and they can't stop the slaughter of terrorism no matter how many detainees they torture or how many billions they spend.  They are the security troops of the most powerful empire on earth, yet they feel helpless.

The climax that the movie builds to, the raid on bin Laden's compound, was really quite anti-climactic.  It's not a glamorous gun battle.  It's just a bunch of armed thugs methodically breaking into a house with explosives and shooting everyone who moves.  Well, they spare the children, condemning them only to a life of fear and hatred by shooting their parents and then trying to assure them "it's all right".  Yes, I just shot your mother, but it's all right, we're the good guys.  It wasn't pretty or glorious.  We didn't even "bring him to justice", putting him on trial to showcase how our civilization is superior with our rule of law.  We just killed him.  Osama bin Laden directed the killing of 3000 citizens, but we got him back.  We had to spend a trillion dollars and kill 100,000 innocents along the way, but we got our revenge.

That's the America Zero Dark Thirty depicts: a sad, vengeful group of rich bullies that everyone hates.  We used to send astronauts to the moon, and invent things like integrated circuits.  Now the greatest feat this America can accomplish is killing an old man in his home.  I'm glad the movie came out now, nearly two years after bin Laden's death.  This way, people can see the hollowness of Mya's claim that getting bin Laden matters.  Perhaps he was, as she claimed, continuing to direct attacks against America.  But since the War on Terror shows no signs of abating or even slowing down as a result of his death, perhaps people will realize that we need a plan for interacting with the world that goes beyond getting everyone to like us by killing every last person who hates us.  It should go without saying that you can't slaughter your way into people's hearts, but that's literally our strategy.  Perhaps the unglamorous despair of Zero Dark Thirty will help wake up America's citizens to the sad, ongoing trauma that they've allowed their government to inflict upon the world.

Book Review: 'Science Set Free' Challenges Assumptions You Didn't Know You Had

I recently listened to the audiobook version of Science Set Free, by Rupert Sheldrake, and I expect the book will have a lasting effect on my worldview.  If you are the kind of person who gets uncomfortable when your worldview is analyzed, or someone who feels dread when your hidden assumptions are pointed out to you, then Science Set Free is not the book for you.  If, on the other hand, you are, like me, exhilarated when you stumble upon a persistently convincing person like Sheldrake telling you everything you know may be wrong, then you would probably enjoy the book.

The gist of the book is that many foundational principles of the scientific worldview that we take for granted are not proven facts.  They are assumptions, and assumptions may always be questioned.  However, Sheldrake contends, the real life sociological phenomena we call science has its flaws like any other human institution.  Sometimes dogmas harden for the wrong reasons, and paradigm shifts need to occur when evidence piles up showing that the prevailing dogma requires revision, or replacement.  Sheldrake presents much evidence (in Science Set Free and his other books) to show that many of the scientific worldview's most dear foundational ideas are on shaky ground.  Sheldrake turns the assumptions into questions, and questions into chapters, including:

• Is Nature Mechanical?
• Is the Universe Purposeless?
• Are the Laws of Nature Fixed?
• Are Minds Confined to Brains?
• Is Mechanistic Medicine the Only Kind That Really Works?

Sheldrake's attack on unquestioned scientific dogma is so effective because of his deep respect of and adherence to the scientific method of free inquiry.  You must either side with Sheldrake in defense of science itself, or sacrifice the principles of "follow the evidence wherever it leads" in the service of today's prevailing beliefs.

Sheldrake definitely has a motive, and it comes out slowly in the text.  At first I thought he was trying to leave room for theism in a rational person's worldview, but that's not really it.  While he's apparently a practicing Christian, I would guess he's officially agnostic.  Anyway, his real agenda is his theory of Morphic Resonance, which is a controversial idea which I'm not going to go into because I don't know that much about it.  This is not a flaw of the book or Sheldrake, just something that helps you understand where the book is headed.

What impressed me most about the book was the many experiments he suggested which could prove or disprove his theories, including morphic resonance.  My judgement of the quality of these proposed experiments is in conflict with the harsh skepticism which greets Sheldrake's ideas in mainstream arenas, such as his Wikipedia article.

If at times Sheldrake sounds a little paranoid, you might forgive him, since everyone does in fact seem out to get him.  I think that's because he makes them uncomfortable by challenging their worldview.  I personally think the scientific worldview is great, but leaves a lot of very fundamental questions unanswered.  I agree with Sheldrake that taking our paradigms too religiously can constrict science and limit what we can learn.  I think I was already softened to this idea by Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics, which debunks the folly of string theory's domination of physics.  So I guess I'm just a softy for scientific rebels.  If you like the expanded possibilities that are enabled by free thinking, you might want to judge for yourself what Sheldrake has to say.