As we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the thin line between creativity and manipulation in politics, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking.
Stephen Jay Gould's quote warns about the dangers of blindly following individuals who may appear to be visionary or genius-like but can actually lead to harmful demagoguery. He suggests that without the tools of judgment and critical analysis, people are susceptible to manipulation, as they tend to follow their hopes rather than engage in thoughtful consideration of ideas and leaders.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of critical thinking in politics, this quote can emphasize the need for discernment.
The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.
Some evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and a variety of reasons for nonadaptive evolution?
Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places where genes aggregate for a time.
Occasionally the conflict between 'what we stand for' and 'what we do' has been forthrightly addressed.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
The villains are all parts of me. For years I've been wondering what it would be like if all those negative elements were forced onto the main character's side. I can understand a character with that kind of anger.
Envy creates the beginning of strife.
Time makes more converts than reason.
Much faith will yield unto us here our heaven, but any faith, if true, will yield us heaven hereafter.
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