310 Ecological Restoration and Design
Human kind
Cannot bear very much reality. (T. S. Eliot, 1971, p119)In other words, we are inescapably ignorant and the reasons are many. We are
ignorant because reality is infinite relative to our intellectual and perceptual capac-
ities. We are ignorant because we individually and collectively forget things that we
once knew. We are ignorant because every human action changes the very system
we aim to understand. We are ignorant because of our own limited intelligence
and because we cannot know in advance the unintended effects of our actions on
complex systems. We are ignorant even about the proper ends to which knowledge
might be put. Not the least, we are ignorant, as Eliot noted, because, sometimes,
we choose to be.
Alas many seem to prefer it that way. From the publication of the Global 2000
Report in 1980 to the present there is a veritable mountain of scientific evidence
about human impacts on ecosystems and the biosphere and ways to minimize or
eliminate them. But our collective sleepwalk toward the edge of avoidable tragedy
continues suggesting that we are not so much rational creatures as we are adept and
creative rationalizers.
Similarly, designers must reckon with the uncomfortable probability that the
amount of credulity in human societies remains constant. This is readily apparent
by looking backward through the rearview mirror of history to see the foibles,
fantasies and follies of people in previous ages (Tuchman, 1984). For all our pre-
tensions to rationality, others at some later time will see us similarly. The fact is
that humans, in all ages and times, are inclined to be as unsceptical and sometimes
as gullible as those living in any other – only the sources of our befuddlement
change. People of previous ages read chicken entrails, relied on shaman, consulted
oracles. We, far more sophisticated but similarly limited, use computer models,
believe experts and exhibit a touching faith in technology to fix virtually every-
thing. But who among us really understands how computers or computer models
work, or are aware of the many limits of expertise, or the ironic ways in which
technology ‘bites back’? Has gullibility declined as science has grown more power-
ful? No, if anything it is growing because science and technology are increasingly
esoteric and specialized and hence removed from daily experience. Understanding
less and less of either, we will believe almost anything. Gullibility feeds on mental
laziness and is enforced by social factors of ostracism, social pressures for conform-
ity, and the pathologies of groupthink that penalize deviance.
This line of thought raises the related and equally unflattering possibility that
stupidity may be randomly distributed up and down the socioeconomic-educational
ladder. As anecdotal evidence for the latter, I offer the observation that I have likely
known as many brilliant people without much formal learning as those certified by
a PhD. And there are likely as many thorough-going, fully degreed fools as there
are un-degreed fools. I am a professional ‘educator’ and an admission of such grav-
ity leads me to think that the gift of intelligence and intellectual clarity can be
focused and sharpened a bit, but can neither be taught nor conjured. The numerous