Deny, deny!

Every day, I read about climate change. The part I find the most interesting is The Denial Industry (cue dramatic music), a well-oiled network capitalising on people's tendencies to believe what we like and to generally not be bothered. It reminds me of a magic show: if we really wanted to find out how to saw a woman in half without hurting her, we'd know how it was done. If we tried to find out whether a statement made by Tim Ball was grounded in fact or not, we'd learn the truth. Happily for the magician and Dr Ball, we people like a bit of illusion and don't necessarily follow up on footnotes.

Anyway, this Denial Industry really makes me think of when I worked at a certain science centre. As all non-profits, it was ailing in the funds department, so decided to sell its soul, er, name, to a certain telecommunications corporation. I'm opposed to selling out, etc., but the bit that really got me was that the whole organisation now had to completely erase all indicators of its previous identity. That meant that not only were we forbidden to ever wear a vest with the sweet, kind-of-goofy and therefore charming-because-it-wasn't-at-all-slick logo on it again, but all such paraphernalia had to be destroyed, never to be seen or spoken of again. So we all got to work dismantling Old Identity and began building up New Identity as though the new one was the only way it had ever been. This was The Denial Machine in action before my very eyes!

Perhaps you work in an industry where this kind of thing goes on all the time, but to me, this was absolutely astounding (as Dad would say).

Erasing history?

Eradicating collective memory?

Making like something had never existed?

Had I walked into 1984?

Well, no, because guess what? Thanks to the trusty interweb, The Denial Industry failed, at least in this instance, and I didn't even have to try very hard.