At a time when darkness and ignorance seem to have become default positions for far too many people, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has made a four-minute video posted to his Facebook page that urges a renewal of critical thinking skills, the kind of skills that have enabled science to make such progress in the past several centuries.
The video begins with a reminder that the United States rose up from a "backwoods country," as Tyson calls it, to "one of the greatest nations the world has ever known," thanks to science. It was the United States that put humans on the moon and whose big thinkers created the personal computer and the internet.
"We pioneered industries," Tyson said. "Science is a fundamental part of the country that we are."
But in the 21st century, a disturbing trend took hold: "People have lost the ability to judge what is true and what is not," he said.
Tyson suggests that those who understand science the least are the people who are rising to power and denying it the loudest.
"That is a recipe for the complete dismantling of our informed democracy," he said.
You can watch the video here.
