2008/01/04
Remember that line, delivered by the granite-faced Sgt. Joe Friday on Dragnet? Probably not if you're under 50 years old, but it comes to mind whenever I listen to debates on energy or the environment or the economy or globalization or (you name it) these days. The first challenge is not in assessing the information, but assessing the individual who is conveying it.
In the civic arena there is a spectrum of participants in the public discourse on critical issues. True Believers, a term popularized if not coined by the late longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer, embrace an issue as an absolute, unquestionable truth. Theirs is often an emotional attachment, often bordering on the irrational. Advocates may embrace the same issue, but based on fact and logic and with sufficient detachment that they will modify or even end their commitment if presented with compelling countervailing fact or logic. Their opposite number is the Skeptic, who does not accept the prevailing conclusion, but is open to persuasion to change based on compelling fact or logic . And finally, there is the Cynic; often confused with the Skeptic, but distinguished by being impervious to reason or logic and therefore the polar opposite of the True Believer.
