This is number one of a three part series: Frenzy.
The ferocious attack on Charlie Hebdo was symptomatic of much more than it
is commonly recognized. The ongoing depredations of Boko Haram in Nigeria are
even more indicative of a raging global derangement. These brutal and
dreadful actions are conspicuous examples of a ferocious reactionary war waged
against the true foundations of the modern world order. While too many do not
know it, all citizens of top tier nations live in a global culture that is
rooted in the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason in Europe.
Before the
Enlightenment made its profound impact superstition and sophistry ran rampant.
There was little thought to governing, but a veritable fixation on ruling. The
cunning exploited the credulous to open their path to dominion. Monarchs and
Theocrats variously colluded and competed for supremacy and most people were
subjects rather than citizens. Gradually and imperfectly the champions of
reason and naturalism pushed the clouds of ignorance away and drove the minions
of might from power.
In the interval known as the Enlightenment,
rationality became the predominant practice and liberty, equality, and unity
became primary aspirational ideals. People became citizens and progress became
the normal expectation. Constitutional governance spread first in the United
States, then in France and finally in England and much of the world-spanning
British Empire. This did not create a world free of problems, injustices, or
threats by any means, but it allowed for a significantly different approach in
response to many of longstanding flaws and failures.
While the political and economic systems in
much of the world diverged farther from their traditional predecessors, the
institutions, ideologies, and roles which flourished in the traditional
settings did not vanish. They had been deprived of hegemony, not eradicated.
The Enlightenment began in the middle of the 17th century and extended through the 18th.
The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
progressively undermined the ancient geocentric conception of the cosmos, and,
along with it, the entire set of traditional perspectives that had constrained
and guided philosophical thinking, social mores and personal conduct. The
dramatic successes of the scientific approach in explaining the natural world
and devising and deploying “a relatively small number of elegant mathematical
formulae” promoted philosophy, including the natural sciences, from the
handmaiden of theology, to an independent and rival power able to challenge the
old and conceive and commend the new. In both theory and practice, on the basis
of its own principles and processes, philosophy often called natural philosophy in regard to what we now
usually call science, illuminated a world hitherto cloaked in shadows and
drowning incredulity. “D'Alembert, a leading figure of the French
Enlightenment, characterizes his eighteenth century, in the midst of it, as
“the century of philosophy par excellence”, because of the tremendous
intellectual progress of the age, the advance of the sciences, and the
enthusiasm for that progress.” Furthermore, the characteristic
expectation of the Enlightenment is that philosophy (in this broad sense) would
dramatically improve human life and substantially resolve almost any problem.
Rationalism, empiricism, and skepticism were the prevailing perspectives and
processes of the Enlightenment for studying and understanding reality.
The principal
accomplishments of the Enlightenment, however, were in the political realm. The
period featured three revolutions: the English, the American, and the French
from 1688 to 1799. “We owe to this period the
basic model of government founded upon the consent of the governed; the
articulation of the political ideals of freedom and equality and the theory of
their institutional realization; the articulation of a list of basic
individual human rights to be respected and realized by any legitimate
political system; the
articulation and promotion of toleration of religious diversity as a virtue to
be respected in a well ordered society; the conception of the basic
political powers as organized in a system of checks and balances; and other
now-familiar features of western democracies.” Despite the success of
Enlightenment political philosophy, however, it did not utterly vanquish the
traditional institutions, creeds, and interests it so tellingly critiqued and so
largely deposed. Therein lays the source of the threat rising in the 21st century.
Enlightenment political
writings, built on rationalist naturalism, opposed superstition, argued for
toleration and advocated the subordination of religion to the state, and
favored qualified democracy. What
we today call liberalism is perhaps the most characteristic political
philosophy of the Enlightenment, and philosophers beginning with Spinoza
are its originators. To the extent that the Enlightenment ideals succeeded civil
society and civil authorities became the more powerful than ecclesiastical
authorities – politics became more influential than religion.
Philosophers of the
Enlightenment confronted the problem of ethics “on a secular, broadly
naturalistic basis for the first time since the rise of Christianity eclipsed
the great classical ethical systems.” Whatever good and evil were,
Enlightenment theorists sought to discern and describe them in regard to this
life and this world, not an afterlife and a supernatural realm. This effort
also took root among the general populace to greater and lesser extents in
different places. The prevailing attitude was that human reason could figure
out what ethical behavior required and establish workable guidelines for all
people. The combination of political and ethical theories developed during the
Enlightenment pushed religious creeds and religiously based conflict off the
center stage of human society.
During the time
since the Enlightenment ended, its legacy has slowly but unevenly advanced the
ideals throughout the developed world. For much of the globe, however, there is
at best a veneer of Enlightenment idealism. What we are seeing now is
regression in the strongholds of the Enlightenment that concurrently opens the
gates for attacks from the more benighted areas of the world. Thus, our
civilization is imperiled from both without and within.
The shortfalls and
failings of the original Enlightenment movement provided both means and
opportunities for the proponents of sophistry and superstition to launch
counterattacks. In the parts of the globe conquered by the West, local
populations were left to their own devices and virtual theocracies pulsated
just under the surface waiting for the waning of Western dominance. Inside
nations such as France, England, and America, other purveyors of sophistry and
superstition waged a struggle for power against the champions of skepticism,
empiricism and rationalism. In both situations, the quest of the
counterattacking forces was neither knowledge, nor truth, nor understanding,
but power. As political theorist, Corey Robin observes, conservatism from the
17th century to today is based on the principle, "that some are fit, and
thus ought, to rule others." Robin argues that rather than being about
liberty, limited government, resistance to change, or public virtue, conservatism is a "mode of
counterrevolutionary practice" to preserve hierarchy and power.” While
those who wage this “counterrevolutionary practice” style themselves as
conservative, they are actually reactionary.
From their perspective,
evidence, learning, knowledge, logic, and truth are all incidental and
unnecessary. They believe some people should be saddled and bridled while
others are booted and spurred. Their only concerns are gaining, wielding,
expanding, and retaining power. They do not see all people as free and equal
human beings. They see some as elect, in variously defined ways, and all others
as nothing other than serfs and cannon fodder.
The struggle that never ends, but merely ebbs and flows is between those who
lust to rule and those who strive to govern. While both often use the term
government, they mean diametrically opposed things and wish to put the state to
dramatically different ends. The reactionaries seek to use government as a
weapon to protect the privileges, status, and dominance of those they believe
deserve to rule. The revolutionaries seek to use government as a means to
redress the injustices and inequalities in society and afford to every citizen
civil rights, civil liberties, and equal protection through due process of law.
The reactionaries believe might makes right and the revolutionaries believe in
government through the consent of the governed.
In the second decade of
the 21st century
neither the revolutionaries nor the reactionaries are in unchallenged control.
All human beings now live in a world shaped by the ideals of the
revolutionaries although these ideals have been only imperfectly realized. A
substantial proportion of humankind, however, either believes in or is
compelled by those who believe in a starkly different set of ideals. The
reactionary proportion of humanity now wages overt and covert battle against
our contemporary civilization.
The violent attacks
unsurprisingly attract the overwhelming bulk of media attention. But these
attacks have forced their way back into humanity’s experience because of steady
erosion in the rationalism and civility that formed the foundation of our
technological and scientific society. As Timothy Ferris states in The Science of Liberty,
“Democratic governance and individual rights did not emerge from some amorphous
“brew of humanistic and scientific thinking,” he argues, but were “sparked” by
science itself — the crucial “innovative ingredient” that “continues to foster
political freedom today.” It was this mindset so characteristic of the
Enlightenment that enabled people to improve their material situations and
their political institutions.
Now, however, in the nations where the
Enlightenment arose and flourished, sophistry, superstition, and reaction are
virulent. Anything near a complete victory has not been achieved and the
purveyors of irrationality, credulity, fanaticism and authoritarianism
are openly hawking their wares and plying their trade. These harbingers of a
New Dark Age are the political officials and candidates who treat their
feelings as the best guide to public policy and who pit citizens against one
another based on ethnic, religious, or other distinctions.
As cases in point, consider three
contentious topics in American politics today. Climate change, trickle-down
economics, and health reform are all major policy disputes where facts actually
do not seem to matter for one side of the controversy; for the self-styled
conservative pundits, preachers, and politicians unshakable dogma reigns,
across the board. In Kansas, supply-side economics was heavily implemented and
it failed spectacularly. Nonetheless, the magical belief in the efficacy of tax
cuts as a form of economic stimulus persists. Good news on health reform keeps
coming in. It remains even more favorable than its supporters expected. The
number of Americans without insurance is dropping fast, even as the growth in
health care costs moderates and reactionaries continue to be as relentlessly
opposed to it as they ever were. The particular issues are not as significant
as the fundamentally flawed approach this sizable faction of
politically Americans uses to assess them.
Joseph Heath, in Enlightenment 2.0, says
“conservatives have become enamored of the idea that politics is ultimately not
about plans and policies, it’s about gut feelings and values.
Elections are decided by appealing to people’s hearts, not their heads.” This
approach is often described as “common sense conservatism.” It elevated
intuition over rational thinking, gut feeling over deliberation, and belief
over knowledge. The profound problem, however, when reason and evidence are
abandoned in favor cleverness and sentiment is that there is no way to
actually discern which side of a controversy is correct, which claim is true,
what program is sound. This means issues are resolved through trickery or skullduggery rather
than agreement based on good faith discussion and authentic understanding.
The proponents, protectors, and friends
of Enlightenment ideals became complacent. They stopped striving to achieve
their ideals more and more fully. Consequently, they inadvertently put millions
of people at risk of disaffection, and left these same millions vulnerable to
inducements from the champions of a new Dark Age. The people who attacked
Charlie Hebdo and the miscreants of Boko Haram along with the fanatics of ISIS
exemplify the blatantly violent Dark Agers! Neoconfederates in America and
crypto-fascist parties and politicians elsewhere exemplify the genteel
specimens of this horde. This creates a genuine danger to us all. If we
continue to ignore these corrosive practices, civilization may deteriorate
beyond our power to sustain it. For as Joseph Heath observes, “Just as it
is easier to get the toothpaste out of the tube than it is to get it back in
again, it is much easier to undermine the rationality of public discourse than
it is to restore it.”
Despite the dramatic difference in their
behaviors both the brutal and the beguiling variants of the Dark Agers are
treacherous. For either variety, the defenders of Enlightenment ideals are seen
as infidels, subversives, and adversaries. What must be understood is the
beguiling Dark Agers pave the way for the rise and rampage of the brutal Dark
Agers by muting the alarms and reducing the sentinels all along the watch
tower. We must sound the alarm and mount the barricades far more than our own
well-being and futures are at stake.
The
ferocious attack on Charlie Hebdo was symptomatic of much more than
it is commonly recognized. The ongoing depredations of Boko Haram in Nigeria are
even more indicative of a raging global derangement. These brutal and dreadful actions are conspicuous
examples of a ferocious reactionary war waged against the true foundations of
the modern world order. While too many do not know it, all citizens of top tier
nations live in a global culture that is rooted in the Enlightenment and the
Age of Reason in Europe.
Before
the Enlightenment made its profound impact superstition and sophistry ran
rampant. There was little thought to governing, but a veritable fixation on
ruling. The cunning exploited the credulous to open their path to dominion. Monarchs
and Theocrats variously colluded and competed for supremacy and most people
were subjects rather than citizens. Gradually and imperfectly the champions of
reason and naturalism pushed the clouds of ignorance away and drove the minions
of might from power.
In
the interval known as the Enlightenment, rationality became the predominant
practice and liberty, equality, and unity became primary aspirational ideals. People
became citizens and progress became the normal expectation. Constitutional
governance spread first in the United States, then in France and finally in
England and much of the world-spanning British Empire. This did not create a
world free of problems, injustices, or threats by any means, but it allowed for
a significantly different approach in response to many of longstanding flaws
and failures.
While
the political and economic systems in much of the world diverged farther from
their traditional predecessors, the institutions, ideologies, and roles which
flourished in the traditional settings did not vanish. They had been deprived
of hegemony, not eradicated. The Enlightenment began in the middle of the 17th
century and extended through the 18th. The scientific revolution of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries progressively undermined the ancient
geocentric conception of the cosmos, and, along with it, the entire set of traditional
perspectives that had constrained and guided philosophical thinking, social
mores and personal conduct. The dramatic successes of the scientific approach
in explaining the natural world and devising and deploying “a relatively small
number of elegant mathematical formulae” promoted philosophy, including the
natural sciences, from the handmaiden of theology, to an independent and rival power
able to challenge the old and conceive and commend the new. In both theory and
practice, on the basis of its own principles and processes, philosophy often
called natural philosophy in regard
to what we now usually call science, illuminated a world hitherto cloaked in
shadows and drowning incredulity. “D'Alembert, a leading figure of the French
Enlightenment, characterizes his eighteenth century, in the midst of it, as
“the century of philosophy par excellence”, because of the tremendous
intellectual progress of the age, the advance of the sciences, and the
enthusiasm for that progress.” Furthermore,
the characteristic expectation of the Enlightenment is that philosophy (in this
broad sense) would dramatically improve human life and substantially resolve
almost any problem. Rationalism, empiricism, and skepticism were the prevailing
perspectives and processes of the Enlightenment for studying and understanding
reality.
The principal accomplishments of the
Enlightenment, however, were in the political realm. The period featured three
revolutions: the English, the American, and the French from 1688 to 1799. “We
owe to this period the basic model of
government founded upon the consent of the governed; the articulation of the
political ideals of freedom and equality and the theory of their institutional
realization; the articulation of a list of basic individual human rights to
be respected and realized by any legitimate political system; the articulation and promotion of
toleration of religious diversity as a virtue to be respected in a well ordered
society; the conception of the basic political powers as organized in a
system of checks and balances; and other now-familiar features of western
democracies.” Despite the success of Enlightenment political philosophy,
however, it did not utterly vanquish the traditional institutions, creeds, and
interests it so tellingly critiqued and so largely deposed. Therein lays the
source of the threat rising in the 21st century.
Enlightenment
political writings, built on rationalist naturalism, opposed superstition,
argued for toleration and advocated the subordination of religion to the state,
and favored qualified democracy. What we
today call liberalism is perhaps the most characteristic political philosophy
of the Enlightenment, and philosophers beginning with Spinoza are its
originators. To the extent that the Enlightenment ideals succeeded civil
society and civil authorities became the more powerful than ecclesiastical
authorities – politics became more influential than religion.
Philosophers
of the Enlightenment confronted the problem of ethics “on a secular, broadly
naturalistic basis for the first time since the rise of Christianity eclipsed
the great classical ethical systems.” Whatever good and evil were,
Enlightenment theorists sought to discern and describe them in regard to this
life and this world, not an afterlife and a supernatural realm. This effort
also took root among the general populace to greater and lesser extents in
different places. The prevailing attitude was that human reason could figure
out what ethical behavior required and establish workable guidelines for all
people. The combination of political and ethical theories developed during the
Enlightenment pushed religious creeds and religiously based conflict off the
center stage of human society.
During the time since the Enlightenment ended,
its legacy has slowly but unevenly advanced the ideals throughout the developed
world. For much of the globe, however, there is at best a veneer of
Enlightenment idealism. What we are seeing now is regression in the strongholds
of the Enlightenment that concurrently opens the gates for attacks from the
more benighted areas of the world. Thus, our civilization is imperiled from
both without and within.
The
shortfalls and failings of the original Enlightenment movement provided both
means and opportunities for the proponents of sophistry and superstition to
launch counterattacks. In the parts of the globe conquered by the West, local
populations were left to their own devices and virtual theocracies pulsated
just under the surface waiting for the waning of Western dominance. Inside
nations such as France, England, and America, other purveyors of sophistry and
superstition waged a struggle for power against the champions of skepticism,
empiricism and rationalism. In both situations, the quest of the
counterattacking forces was neither knowledge, nor truth, nor understanding,
but power. As political theorist, Corey Robin observes, conservatism from the
17th century to today is based on the principle, "that some are fit, and
thus ought, to rule others." Robin argues that rather than being about
liberty, limited government, resistance to change, or public virtue, conservatism is a "mode of
counterrevolutionary practice" to preserve hierarchy and power.” While
those who wage this “counterrevolutionary practice” style themselves as
conservative, they are actually reactionary.
From
their perspective, evidence, learning, knowledge, logic, truth are all
incidental and unnecessary. They believe some people should be saddled and
bridled while others are booted and spurred. Their only concerns are gaining,
wielding, expanding, and retaining power. They do not see all people as free
and equal human beings. They see some as elect, in variously defined ways, and all
others as nothing other than serfs and cannon fodder.
The
struggle that never ends, but merely ebbs and flows is between those who lust
to rule and those who strive to govern. While both often use the term
government, they mean diametrically opposed things and wish to put the state to
dramatically different ends. The reactionaries seek to use government as a
weapon to protect the privileges, status, and dominance of those they believe
deserve to rule. The revolutionaries seek to use government as a means to
redress the injustices and inequalities in society and afford to every citizen
civil rights, civil liberties, and equal protection through due process of law.
The reactionaries believe might makes right and the revolutionaries believe in
government through the consent of the governed.
In the second decade of the 21st century neither the
revolutionaries nor the reactionaries are in unchallenged control. All human
beings now live in a world shaped by the ideals of the revolutionaries although
these ideals have been only imperfectly realized. A substantial proportion of
humankind, however, either believes in or is compelled by those who believe in
a starkly different set of ideals. The reactionary proportion of humanity now
wages overt and covert battle against our contemporary civilization.
The
violent attacks unsurprisingly attract the overwhelming bulk of media
attention. But these attacks have forced their way back into humanity’s
experience because of steady erosion in the rationalism and civility that
formed the foundation of our technological and scientific society. As Timothy
Ferris states in The Science of Liberty,
“Democratic governance and individual rights did not emerge from some amorphous
“brew of humanistic and scientific thinking,” he argues, but were “sparked” by
science itself — the crucial “innovative ingredient” that “continues to foster
political freedom today.” It was this mindset so characteristic of the
Enlightenment that enabled people to improve their material situations and
their political institutions.
Now,
however, in the nations where the Enlightenment arose and flourished,
sophistry, superstition, and reaction are virulent. Anything near a complete
victory has not been achieved and the purveyors of irrationality, credulity, fanaticism and authoritarianism are openly hawking their wares and plying their
trade. These harbingers of a New Dark Age are the political officials and candidates
who treat their feelings as the best guide to public policy and who pit
citizens against one another based on ethnic, religious, or other distinctions.
As
cases in point, consider three contentious topics in American politics today. Climate
change, trickle-down economics, and health reform are all major policy disputes
where facts actually do not seem to matter for one side of the controversy; for
the self-styled conservative pundits, preachers, and politicians unshakable
dogma reigns, across the board. In Kansas, supply-side economics was heavily
implemented and it failed spectacularly. Nonetheless, the magical belief in the
efficacy of tax cuts as a form of economic stimulus persists. Good news on
health reform keeps coming in. It remains even more favorable than its supporters
expected. The number of Americans without insurance is dropping fast, even as
the growth in health care costs moderates and reactionaries continue to be as relentlessly
opposed to it as they ever were. The particular issues are not as significant
as the fundamentally flawed approach this sizable faction of politically
Americans uses to assess them.
Joseph
Heath, in Enlightenment 2.0, says “conservatives have become enamored of the
idea that politics is ultimately not about plans and policies, it’s about gut feelings
and values. Elections are decided by
appealing to people’s hearts, not their heads.” This approach is often
described as “common sense conservatism.”
It elevated intuition over rational thinking, gut feeling over
deliberation, and belief over knowledge. The profound problem, however, when
reason and evidence are abandoned in favor cleverness and sentiment is that there is no way to actually discern
which side of a controversy is correct, which claim is true, what program is
sound. This means issues are resolved through trickery or skulduggery rather
than agreement based on good faith discussion and authentic understanding.
The
proponents, protectors, and friends of Enlightenment ideals became complacent.
They stopped striving to achieve their ideals more and more fully.
Consequently, they inadvertently put millions of people at risk of
disaffection, and left these same millions vulnerable to inducements from the
champions of a new Dark Age. The people who attacked Charlie Hebdo and the miscreants
of Boko Haram along with the fanatics of ISIS exemplify the blatantly violent
Dark Agers! Neoconfederates in America and crypto-fascist parties and
politicians elsewhere exemplify the genteel specimens of this horde. This
creates a genuine danger to us all. If we continue to ignore these corrosive
practices, civilization may deteriorate beyond our power to sustain it. For as
Joseph Heath observes, “Just as it is
easier to get the toothpaste out of the tube than it is to get it back in
again, it is much easier to undermine the rationality of public discourse than
it is to restore it.”
Despite
the dramatic difference in their behaviors both the brutal and the beguiling
variants of the Dark Agers are treacherous. For either variety, the defenders
of Enlightenment ideals are seen as infidels, subversives, and adversaries.
What must be understood is the beguiling Dark Agers pave the way for the rise
and rampage of the brutal Dark Agers by muting the alarms and reducing the sentinels
all along the watch tower. We must sound the alarm and mount the barricades far
more than our own well-being and futures are at stake.
