ID v. ID

. . . and let's not forget the abbreviation thereof: ID. Follow the metonyms and . . . identity, right? Easy enough, but is that sort of semantic connection as contentless as the "science" it leads away from (or straight towards, depending on your reasoning)?

Maybe.

Intelligent Design is a kind of identity politic in that it attempts to gird the whispy strands of our acids with concrete purpose. We were "designed" with purpose, after a certain image, therefore towards an end, or at an end even at the moment of that end's beginning. It counters the counterintuitive, sort-of-anarchic-but-not-really-when-you-think-about-it, trial by fire survivalism of Darwin, but not without, of course, introducing its own kind of anarchy.

As philosopher Daniel Dennett points out, ID is not really a science so much as a rhetorical tactic; this much is clear even to people like me, who don't know much about science - like pornography, I'd like to think, "I know it when I see it." The Wedge Strategy supports the rhetorical nature of the whole schema in its own weird, brilliant, scary way. Dennett also notes the way that ID wedged its way into public discourse was by somehow conjuring a "controversy" out of thin air: misunderstand a theory, provoke real scientists into arguing with you about it, then claim that, since there was an argument, there must be a controversy. The moment when rhetoric displaces evidence (and it's been a long fucking moment) is the same moment ideas cease to matter in and of themselves, or in the work they do as ideas. Ideas, evidence, rigor of any kind become the middle balls in a Newton's Cradle sitting on the desk of a Washington puppet grovelling after Special Interest campaign contributions. Political force uses them simply as carriers to cover up the source of momentum. Maybe this is why powerful men play pool in the movies.

ID's pathways are hardly circuitous, barely covered up: we want our identity, we want our God-given sense of purpose, we want to feel like we were made by Michaelangelo, not John Cage. And so many are willing to pay the price not by lowering the standards, but by changing the standards of standards (to steal a move from Louis Menand). We no longer want to look at ugly, messy, complicated evidence - we don't want to induce. We want to deduce - to find the truth we "feel" is right and hammer a pivot there in order that we might stay anchored, stable, able to claim our identity, rebuilding the streets around us to bring it all within our minute radius, leaving it all, everything, in excess of our grasp.

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EPILOGUE

I had a roommate once. We got into a dispute because he didn't "feel it was right" that I let my girlfriend stay with me for a couple of months. She had nowhere else to go and she didn't have the money for a place of her own. Or a job. I told him that I covered her rent, and I paid her share of the bills, and she gave us a couch, a stereo, etc. Why, I asked, did he feel it was wrong? I asked him to express to me his reasoning. "Don't you ever feel anything?" he asked. I told him I did, but that I wouldn't necessarily expect other people to understand that, and if I wanted them to understand, I would inevitably have to explain to them some sort of line of thinking for why I felt the way I did, or it would make no sense. Explain it to me, I said again. He told me to close my eyes. I did and, while my eyes were closed, he pinched my arm. "What just happened?" he asked. "You pinched me," I said. Then he gave me a look of smug satisfaction, like we had solved the problem. Because he "felt" something and I also "felt" things (though not necessarily the same things he felt). He has a feeling, therefore it should be treated with the matter-of-factness of, well, a fact, treated as evidence that there was something wrong. I walked out of the room.