11-5-18

What Bruno Latour Has To Tell Us

No one will read this. I am too far under the radar to count in the blizzard of voices and words. I am too old to be adding my foolish ideas to a web of entanglements. The wizards of politics are hoping to capture the 18 to 29 year old demographic because they are such lazy voters. Yet, here I am, adding my voice and words to the blizzard, as if I had not heard that seniors were supposed to be hitting the couches and watching TV. As I look back on the few blog posts I have on this site from two years ago, it was just at election time that I took up the keyboard to write. It seems even more important today that I do the same thing, on the cusp of another "crucial" election in our long history of them. I am not certain I agree with the pundits that this is an election that will change everything. It seems to me that history writes that sort of story and we only know where we have been by looking back. I think it is safe to say that something will change as a result of the voting tomorrow. This brings me to reflect a bit on what little I know of the work of the philosopher of science, Bruno Latour, whose work was briefly outlined in a recent article.

What I think I understand Bruno to be saying is that causes and conditions are always at work in the lives of human beings. What results from them at any given moment or period in history depends on the context in which they occurred. It depends on the relationships among all the parts in play. We get accustomed to thinking that what has happened was destined to happen and was always so. Latour is focused on science and the scientific establishment and so he has some plaudits and some criticisms to hand out, as one might expect from a philosopher who is called to look at all causes and conditions. He believes that once science uncovers one of nature's secrets, it becomes a fixed entity in our minds and attached to the scientist involved. It is as if the scientist had invented the unlocked secret. In fact, says Latour, what the scientist has unlocked is the next piece of a puzzle that seems to have no end. There is nothing fixed about the data point reported in a scientific journal. The scientific evidence is the momentary piece in a complex web of what he calls an "actor-network" process of discovery. In a rather unfortunate choice of a term, he refers to this as the result of a "social" matrix. Of course, in these times of hard-edged and  politicized language, connecting something scientific with something social plays to the far conservative agenda that denies climate change, opposes vaccinations, and claims scientific facts as malleable and adjustable and perhaps false efforts to fool the public. Latour defends his position by saying that the "robust architecture" of his investigations will withstand any effort to dismantle the science itself.

I am not smart enough to wade into the intricacies of political thinking and manipulations, but there is something about Latour's approach that is appealing to me. As I have gotten older, I have become more aware of how complex the world is and how daunting that can be. But if one takes Latour's approach to understanding how the world works, then emphasizing process over product makes sense and makes the work of understanding anything very hard. We aren't used to thinking deeply about the world and asking all the questions that would help us in our understanding. It is my contention that how we think about the world might change what we think. If we are willing to entertain the idea that the issues and objects of our thoughts are the results of a very long and intricately woven narrative, then we might give up some of our prejudices and biases, our fixed ideas about what the world should be. We might then appreciate how contingent all of our thoughts and actions are. For instance, instead of being convinced that a straggling and starving band of immigrants headed for the Mexican-US border are terrorists, we might look more closely at the circumstances they are escaping in their native country and that might lead us to wonder about their poverty, their own fears for their children, their desire for freedom, and what they are willing to sacrifice to find safety and the fulfillment of basic needs. Are they wearing shoes that fit? Where do they find food and water? How are they able to carry small children on their backs for so many hundreds of miles? Where do they go to the bathroom along the way? Do they sleep? Do they have dreams of a better future and is this what drives them onward?

The basic instincts that I think most of us have about freedom, equal chances, hopes for the future, the dignity of every individual, have been politicized almost beyond recognition and picked apart to suit one side of the partisan divide or the other. It is takes hard work and more of an open heart and mind to understand how refugees and all who suffer resemble us more than they differ. I think Bruno Latour's process of discernment asks us to give up ownership of the easy answers and the group-think that pervade our society today. We are challenged to turn away from the demagogue and his rhetoric, bombast, and outrages in order to reclaim our own souls and to integrate what we think we know with what we can understand more deeply by exercising love and compassion for others. In this way we are able to offer ourselves the love and compassion that unite us.