In a season of resolutions, a site like [European Scientist] has one hope: that the 2020s will be the decade of renewal for European scientific culture. To achieve this, there is only one model to follow: a love of knowledge and learning. In this respect, China seems to be showing us the way… but will we be able to follow it when misconceptions and fears have won over public opinion …. Nothing is less certain. All the more so as ideology continues to wreak terrible havoc on the old continent.
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[I]t seems difficult to start a European great leap forward without making both younger and older generations aware of not only the importance of learning at school, but also that of general culture. Yet what seems to dominate our Western civilization at present is less an appetite for knowledge than a widespread fear of the future …. [W]e have become experts in exporting fear of progress. Under the influence of Saint Greta of Thunberg, young people are wasting their talents on school strikes ….…
Added to this are the propaganda campaigns of green marketing as well as the misleading information that scientists, politicians, NGOs, the media and industrialists spread to all levels of society.
