I grew up in post ww2 time. It was a strange mix of optimism & impending doom. We practiced bomb drills, where a nuclear blast was expected. Some schools issued dogtags, so they could identify the charred remains after the holocaust. But there was optimism, too. People were buying every time & labor saving device they could. Automobiles got better every year... well, mostly. Technology was growing in leaps & bounds, & computers were changing everything. People were more religious, then, & many went to church, believed in god, AND revered science. There was no conflict in their minds. Faith was faith, & science was science. One did not try to be the other. My older step brother got a set of encyclopedias for a birthday gift.. he was like 9 or 10. I had friends who got chemistry sets, or telescopes. Inquiry was ENCOURAGED in grade school. By high school, if you were good at school, it was assumed you'd go to college & pursue engineering or a technical field. The dumb jocks got jobs at the factories, or went into construction, or other trades.
But then, there was the cultural revolution in america. The 60s. Vietnam. Civil rights. Disillusionment with the 'establishment'. Question authority. Tune in & drop out. The back to the land movement. Simplicity. Ecology. Anti war. Anti technology. Anti religion. Kids didn't get science sets for christmas anymore. Self actualization & the 'ME' generation was born. They would engineer a new society.. one without the failures of the previous generation. One of peace, harmony, & social justice. One with sex, drugs, & rock & roll. A generation that reinvented the wheel. Society could be molded, & the elite could usher in an era of Enlightenment. That was the dream, but like all dreams like this throughout human history, it can become a nightmare.
It was in this setting that the anti science trend began, imo. Feelings trumped reason. Psychobabble replaced common sense. Hysteria became evidence. Academia moved to teaching dogma, instead of fanning the flames of inquiry. God was ridiculed & reduced to a caricature, & pseudoscience took the place of religious beliefs, in the new enlightened society. All of these things combined for a perfect storm of national decline. Crime rose. The nuclear family disintegrated. Domestic policies changed & social engineering became the new 'science'. But instead of bringing peace & harmony, they have brought decline & destruction.
Instead of a generation of thoughtful analysts, we have bred feeling based, propaganda driven ideologues, who reject critical thinking, skepticism, & the scientific method for emotion based methods. Fantasy & utopian dreams of how things 'ought' to be displace reality. Hard solutions to problems are rejected outright, since they don't 'feel' good. Simple cause & effect principles are dismissed for more happy explanations, or a simpler scapegoat that requires no responsibility or work from the individual.
