Why is the world like this? Why do I try to write about it? What am I here for?
Todayâs feeling of alienation from mainstream culture is courtesy of reading Slateâs leading article today, a piece by a âscience journalistâ who wishes You Can See Everything included âmore facts.â Fair... she wants facts about the very obvious big fraud that Theranos did, right? Or facts about how clearly Elizabeth Holmes was implicated in that fraud? Direct quotes of her testimony? Dramatic readings of her text messages that were admitted as evidence at trial?
No, she wants these:
Like the fact that the beach shack that Holmes and Evans stay in leading up to her prison sentence apparently costs around $28,000 a month to rent. Or the fact that Holmes and Evans didnât drive from California to Texas to begin her prison sentence, as is implied in the filmâthey took a private jet.
Including these details would not give the audience evidence to believe Holmes or Evans are more or less trustworthy. The request is for details that will signal that these two are rich people and we should dislike them.
I have noticed that contemporary culture is not lacking for people telling us how to feel about rich people. They are OK to hate; they donât deserve our empathy. This message is everywhere. One beautiful aspect of You Can See Everything is that it takes a widely hated rich person and humanizes her.
Stephen Colbert told us that reality has a liberal bias, and that may be true. In the shadow of contemporary culture, the inverse has taken hold, a belief that appealing to facts lets us avoid needing to argue for our values. The question to ask ourselves is something like, âDo I want âfactsâ? Or do I want this piece of media to more explicitly represent my own values?â Either one can be okay. The trouble is when we confuse one for the other.
If the science and objectivity you advocate for is actually about representing your values, youâre doing a disservice to truth. What you end up with is a world where people donât trust science because they see it often deployed for ideological ends.
(As an aside: the film does not imply that Holmes and Evans drove from California to Texas for Holmes to start her prison sentence. It shows that they moved to Texas before her sentence started and then drove to prison from the familyâs new home.)