This essay isn’t based on anything that
happened at any WorldCon…it came from life events, something I read, or even
just a thought I had. This time, it’s something that happened and that might be
either irritating or relate to speculative fiction, writing, or Christianity…
I ran across the
article linked below this morning. In it, world-famous, well-recognized,
iconic, and legendary cosmologist Stephen
Hawking seems to have realized the real problem with not only the climate doom
movement but with scientists in general: is that they are (and he apparently includes
himself) obnoxious snots.
He refers to himself and others like himself, as “the elite”.
According to
Thesaurus.com, that equates to: exclusive, choicest, cool, crack, elect, noble,
pick, super, top, aristocratic, gilt-edged, greatest, elected, upper-class,
world-class.
The NOT-elite
then, are characterized by these words: bad, inferior, poor, second-rate,
common, low-class, lower, lower-class, ordinary.
Thank you, Stephen
Hawking for clarifying how you – and by implication – and the rest of the
scientific community view the ordinary people around you.
What he does NOT
do is reference an American scientist who went out of his way to not only help
people understand science, and enjoy science, but to be entertained by science.
Isaac Asimov was “an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston
University…known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov
was a prolific writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated
90,000 letters and postcards…books have been published in 9 of the 10 major
categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.”
He wrote a bit
more than Hawking did, but the physical difficulty experienced by Hawking might
account for that. Despite appearing as a character in THE SIMPSONS, BIG BANG
THEORY, FUTURAMA, and appearing in an episode of STAR TREK: The Next Generation,
Hawking has joined such celebrities as Conan O’Brien, The Discovery Channel,
John Oliver, and a host of other places, including “starring” in a movie about
his own life, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. (The movie garnered “a positive
reception worldwide” and was nominated for an “Academy Award for Best Actor…won
the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor…and Best Original Score for Jóhannsson…Screen
Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance…British Academy Film Award for
Outstanding British Film, Best Leading Actor…and Best Adapted Screenplay…”)
People LIKE
Hawking despite his disdain for the ordinary people on Earth. The thing is that
Asimov liked PEOPLE – the ordinary people on Earth. He not only wrote books for
adults, but books for kids with his wife (!) and letters and postcards, but he
worked hard to make science understandable and to lift people up – though I can’t
find any reference to Asimov’s involvement in something called “Isaac Asimov’s
Super Quiz”, he must have given tacit approval otherwise they wouldn’t have
been able to use his name. The fact that one of Hawking’s “elite” lent his name
to a daily newspaper quiz that not only challenged people, but rewarded them by
granting a PhD status if they answered the series of questions correctly.
While no one
really believed that they were “that smart”, the fact that someone who WAS that
smart might be granting them temporary equality with himself was
psychologically positive.
Even Hawking
admits, “Should we…reject these votes [for Britain exiting the EU and for electing
Trump as president] as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account
of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they
represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.”
Maybe someone
should ask Stephen Hawking to attach his name to Hearst/King Features Syndicate’s
Super Quiz daily shot of “brainpower” rather than joining the strident calls by people who clearly categorize themselves as "today’s elite" and demanding vote recounts? Anyone
with any Stephen Hawking connections? As insignificant as it sounds, it may go
a long way to making us ordinary people feel a bit more elite; thereby making
us a bit more receptive to “do something”
about the issues Stephen Hawking finds so pressing.
Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/01/stephen-hawking-dangerous-time-planet-inequality,
and this fascinating read - http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/06/hawking200406
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