Soundings

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32613, 22 May 1971, Page 6

Soundings

fry

DENIS McCAULEY

Every now and then I. read of an expert in some field or other making a statement which is so obviously utter rubbish that sometimes I wonder whether there is a conspiracy of experts to systematically take the mickey out of you and me. The latest to catch my eye was on this page earlier in the week. A noted United States psychiatrist was arguing that America was involved in Vietnam because the parents of military age children had used violence to try to teach their children not to be violent. But Dr Frederick Hacker, president of the Sigmund Freud Society of Vienna, director of psychiatric clinics for the State of California, etc, etc, seems to have overlooked a few facts.

Such as the fact that most of the military-age youth in America are fighting like hell to avoid going to Vietnam, and that if anyone in America has a war mentality it is not the youth but the parents. About a month ago an Australian magazine carried an interview with an American business administration expert whose theme was that as societies became more technological, so new jobs would be created and therefore there would be no unemployment as a result of technological innovation. Actually this argument has been current for about 20 years, yet ■events during that time have proved exactly the opposite. Technology displaces workers on the lower levels arid replaces their jobs with others which are much more skilled and which need training which is usually far beyond the reach of those displaced by the machines.

But while the experts go on making blunders like these, we seem to be encouraging them. Admittedly it is often difficult for us to judge fairly any work in the sciences, for instance,

when We don’t have the necessary scientific background to understand just what is going on. But it is one thing to allow absolute authority in the mechanics of the thing and, quite another to allow the same authority in making value judgments and moral pronouncements concerning the experts’ various fields. While I allow the nuclear scientist that I have only the faintest idea of the theory of nuclear fission, I’m certainly not going to stand by and allow him the right to decide on his own what uses of his science are valuable to society or are morally right.

The. present argument over abortion law reform is a case in point. The medical profession seems to think that because it has the knowledge of the mechanics of abortion it has the right to decide the moral issue of it. And it is encouraged in this mistaken and arrogant belief by a large number of people who have been brainwashed into, looking to doctors for such moral pronouncement. Although I would naturally ask a doctor about the medical pros and cons of abortion, I would just as soon ask a sailor about the moral issues.

To a very large extent our society is now being shaped by the experts, rather than society determining what the experts should do, and it is high time we started calling these experts to account.

For a start, we can challenge them when they say something which goes against the verdict of our common sense. Perhaps, they are right and we are wrong, but until they prove it we have every right to challenge them. After all, putting two experts together is a quicker way of starting an argument than mentioning religion. Second, we can throw the expert out of the moial arena. There is no such thing as a moral expert outside of Heaven.