“We run the risk of losing a lot if we turn our backs on the importance of reason,” warns Allan Gregg ahead of his lecture, “Nineteen Eighty-Four in 2012: The Assault on Reason.”
Gregg has spent his career observing and participating in Canadian public life. He was a pollster for the Progressive Conservative party, a co-founder of YTV, and chairman of the Toronto Film Festival.
Currently, he hosts Allan Gregg in Conversation on TVO. In June, it was announced that he will join Carleton University’s Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs as an adjunct professor, according to the university’s website.
Gregg’s Sept. 5 lecture and following panel discussion were meant to address Gregg’s concern that Western society is sacrificing reason for the pursuit of other goals, specifically academics.
A major priority in society is intelligence, which should be “ honoured and sought rather than belittled,” Gregg said.
However the trend he observes is the opposite. Gregg notes numerous examples in recent Canada of what he calls “assaults” on reason and intelligent decision-making.
One specific instance he cites is a recent cutback of Parks Canada staff, most of whom, he said, are scientists.
“When you say, ‘Well let’s get rid of these scientists,’ there’s a reason for that. You’re saying that’s not what parks are for. Parks aren’t for bears, trees, they’re for tourism… That’s going backwards,” Gregg said.
Perhaps what is even more disconcerting than the decisions themselves, suggested Gregg, is the fact that not many Canadian institutions seem to be addressing them, except for universities.
“We’re not finding much reason these days in the media, in the political process, arguably even in our kind of culture right now. Maybe the last bastion is a university,” Gregg said.
He said he believes that universities are conducive to innovation and sees the potential for a shift towards more reasonable decision-making.
University students “are in a quest for knowledge, and believing that that’s the highest calling: to work, to advance, to better, to make better decisions based on best evidence,” Gregg said.
He suggests the way for students, and Canadian society as a whole, to initiate these ideas into action in order to shift towards reasonable decision-making is simple.
“Speak the truth,” he said.
