Politesse:
- formal politeness; courtesy. [Dictionary.com]
Noted in the Leader for NewScientist (23 December 2017) under “A world divided“:
Science and scientists need to get better at reminding the world that they are a force for good – including that all-important prosperity.
After the initial vigour of the March for Science last April, attempts to defend science have fizzled out or returned to angry tweeting or academic letter-writing. Such politesse is not enough in the face of determined and unscrupulous opposition.
Science has its weaknesses. Not everyone will be or should be a cheerleader for it. But as we go into the new year, we could all begin by emphasising what science has done and can do for us. If we forget, and allow it to seem irrelevant or threatening, the next half-century really may be no better than the last.
The irony of its usage, above, also reminds me of the straits of the common voter. The occupation of the electorate, by and large, is not politics. For scientists, it’s science. It’s what they do, what drags at their minds, it’s what they wake up thinking about and what they fall asleep thinking about. Politics takes away time away from their lifetime task.
Most of the electorate also does not want to be bothered with the details of politics; thus, we have default political parties that we often inherit from our parents. It occurs to me that our current contretemps may be an inevitably periodic result of how, at least in the United States, we’ve structured our society. The exceptional freedom that lets us succeed on a somewhat titanic scale also leaves us with a political class composed of mostly second- and third- raters, who sometimes hold extremist positions.
I can’t help but wonder about societies with, to be up front, less individual freedom, but more expectations: the expectation that, as you age, you will take up leadership positions within that society, you will be trained in them, and you will be responsible for the results. Would the loss of freedom cripple such a society? Would the failures form too much of an opposition? Would a harmful stasis result?
Hard to say.
