From 3ec3ea2a8abdd73084816402203dd262425c7a11 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Joe Carstairs Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:22:16 +0100 Subject: chp3: minority cognition --- chapter3.md | 74 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 73 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/chapter3.md b/chapter3.md index 262c084..d1d0473 100644 --- a/chapter3.md +++ b/chapter3.md @@ -90,4 +90,76 @@ New Deal stand far off, and remain largely outside your control. The call must then be to make a sacrifice for what is good, even if, paradoxically, it costs you. -This is, in John Collin's terms, an 'ethic for martyrdom.' +This is, in John Collin's terms, an 'ethic for martyrdom.' So, could John's +apocalyptic rhetorical strategies be of use in motivating UK citizens to take +political actions to advance the cause of a Green New Deal? + +First, I'll consider minority cognition. This was the first aspect of John's +strategy which I considered in the previous chapter. While the particular kind +of minority cognition favoured by John -- that is, direct testimony imparted by +a divine authority -- may be unpersuasive to many UK citizens, the preference +for a minority cognition is still necessary. + +Recall that, as Thompson [@thompson-revelation] argued, St. John needed to use +minority cognition in order to resist the overwhelming weight of the majority +epistemology of Greek society, which would have pressed his audience into +submission to the imperial cult. Likewise, in our society, there is are +empire-like forces constantly reinforcing dominant epistemologies, and among +these is the fossil fuel industry. + +The fossil fuel industry has repeatedly bought out the science \[EVIDENCE\]. It +continues to do so \[EVIDENCE\]. It has also reinforced conceptual frameworks +such as 'carbon footprinting' which serve its interests by shifting blame for +social harms from themselves onto individuals [^See chapter 1]. Therefore, as +long as the fossil fuel industry has significant power, the majority +epistemology of our society cannot help but be partially shaped by fossil fuel +interests. To escape fossil knowledge requires minority cognition. + +This has precedents even within the green movement. In the view of Linda Lear, +the effect of _Silent Spring_, Rachel Carson's damning exposé on the chemical +industry, was to not only bring about regulation, but end an era of +unquestioning trust in government agencies and chemical companies. She exposed +that they hadn't done their homework or had lied. In a Cold War context, +questioning the techno-scientific-industrial authorities could be perceived as +traitorous. Chemical companies fought hard against her, sued the publishers to +try and prevent it being published, then spent a quarter of a million dollars +on an aggressive publicity campaign against her. She was attacked for being +'emotional' and an 'hysterical woman.' The fact she had published novels was +cited as evidence that she couldn't be a real scientist, and her literary +writing style as evidence that what she was writing couldn't be real science. +Real science, the chemical industry hastened to remind the impressionable +public, is necessarily presented in the format of laboratory reports, +maximising their utilisation of technical jargon in order to avoid +under-qualified persons from understanding their contents. Carson had no PhD, +no academic institution, and no network of scientific colleagues to back her +up. [@silent-spring, Afterword] + +To fight the chemical lobby, Carson had to adopt minority epistemology. So, +alongside her considerable arsenal of traditional scientific facts, she +included in her book historical facts based on lived experience, with no +attempt to fit them into clearly-defined quantifiable metrics, in the +scientific style favoured by the chemical industry. One memorable example was +her report that parathion poisoning had been known to induce serious illness +not only in those exposed directly, but also to the physicians who treated +them, and even the hospital staff who washed their clothes. \[PAGE NUMBERS\] + +Like St. John, she was also forced to undermine the chemical industry's +majority epistemology. In _Silent Spring_, she showed how the chemical +industry funded the same science which enabled its profits \[CITE\]. She +undermined their conceptual frameworks, arguing that the use of words like +'pesticide' and 'insecticide' function to mask the truth that the chemicals +involved are in fact poisons (and in some cases were originally developed by +military scientists for the purpose of deliberately injuring and killing human +beings) \[CITE\]. And she showed how the chemical lobby used science to dismiss +valid first-hand experiences and impose their solutions on people against their +interests and expressed desires. For instance, she told the story of Joseph +Sweeny Todd, a \[WHO\] in Ohio, who, in opting for a targeted approach to +containing dutch elm disease rather than blanket poisoning, had to go against +the advice of the chemical companies, the universities, and the US Department +of Agriculture. \[CITE\] + +If rhetors today want to persuade their audiences to support a Green New Deal, +they're going to have to fight the majority epistemology, held firmly in place +by fossil interests. To do that, they'll need to exploit minority cognition, +undermining the epistemologies that best serve fossil interests and finding +alternatives that oppose them. -- cgit v1.2.3