|
History texts call the period where people
realized that they could use human reason to counter superstition and
ignorance, "The Enlightenment". It was a time when
humanity surged forward using human reason to challenge the ingrained aristocracy of the
times and the control religion had over people's lives.
The aristocracy in power by
virtue of their birth, royalty and inherited wealth dominated society. The Enlightenment confronted the
domination of the many by the few. The Enlightenment was a period of intellectual explosion
coming about from the cumulative logic and knowledge acquired by all the
previous philosophers and current thinkers ranging
from Michel de Montaigne, Galileo Galilei, Copernicus and Rene
Descartes to Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Paine, and many others. The United States revolution against the tyranny of
England's King George was a defining moment in the birth of a nation built
by those who continued the Enlightenment through the 18th
century. The United States "founding fathers" rejected
the dominant
paradigms of their time. They were not content with the influence the
Church had on society and the emerging new and independent nation.
Incorporating Jean-Jaques Rousseau's deist god and the French
concept of equality, they wrote the Declaration of Independence. The
revolution in the North American colonies was a break from the royalty
and the Church of the past, and the old ways. Just as the Enlightenment in Europe
had broken nations away from the old order, the United States had broken
away from the Old World. Creativity, ingenuity, critical thinking and
knowledge flourished. Jean-Jaques Rousseau,
the 18th century
philosopher advocated self-rule over the dictates of
religion. Rousseau wrote in The
Social Contract that "Man was born free, and he is everywhere
in chains". Rousseau said that by capitulating to
society's will under the guise of doing what is best for it subscribes
its members to a societal totalitarianism that puts society's needs ahead
of individual needs. Society's will is with few exceptions determined by those who have the power and means to define and implement
it. History is thus written
by those possessing the means to write, disseminate and inculcate
it. We are taught what society wants us to teach. We think
what society wants us to think. We behave the way society wants us
to behave. We are what society wants us to be, until that is, we choose to be
otherwise. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin picked up on Rousseau's
notion that people are inherently good, but that they
are corrupted by the evils of society. They believed that people
act against their nature because they are uneducated. Jefferson
and Franklin showed us that we can break away and be free. We can
choose otherwise.
Anti-Enlightenment Totalitarianism
History texts place the age of The Enlightenment
as being 1600 - 1800. The 19th and 20th century saw big advances in philosophy and
science. From Karl Marx through Albert Einstein, to Edwin Powell Hubble, human
understanding advanced. During the last 20 years of the 20th
century and the opening decade of the 21st, especially in
the United States, however, fetish regressionism has taken hold.
There now exists a fetish commodification of simplistic religious belief
being sold by
the anti-Enlightenment establishment. The neo-conservatives have
much to gain from an ignorant and pliant public. Their merchants of
ignorance peddle a deliberate and eager
reversal and distortion of the accumulated wisdom
and knowledge acquired by the world's greatest
thinkers and philosophers. More importantly, there is an
institutionalized engineering leading people into extremist
apotheosis. Televangelical proselytizing peddles the opiates which
the
masses crave. Television, the plug-in drug for
tens-of-millions, has the "faithful" boldly going anywhere
those in control want to take them.
The televangelist Pat Robertson, on his August 2, 2005 "700 Club"
program, prayed to God for creating further vacancies on the Supreme Court so that the Court could be further stacked with
like-minded anti-visionaries. Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of
Church and State stated that,
Robertson seems to view God as a divine hit man,
taking out justices or anyone else who gets in the way of the
Religious Right agenda....I think most Americans don't like to see God
dragged into this kind of divisive and demagogic politics.
While Lynn is correct, the average US
citizen would be hard pressed to define demagogic politics. The anti-enlightenment totalitarianism of
the 21st century is no
accident. It is orchestrated by those smart enough to
understand that manipulating society's will manipulates what
society further wills. First, establish an addiction
to God and religion within the masses. Karl Marx called religion
the "opium of the masses" referring to religion as being a
painkiller that salves our psychological pain, a narcotic that makes us
sleep and numb to the suffering around us. Marx saw religion as
the illegitimate response to disbelief in God ("Opiate
of the Masses Religion as Socio/Political Control", Todd F. Eklof
(2004). Second, establish an abundant and well-financed cadre of
television evangelists and church preachers claiming credibility in communicating with
God and who privy to the "holy solution" save us from the pain and
suffering that science has "failed" to eliminate. Finally, tell the conditioned masses what God wants and
the masses will want it too. Society's will is thus re-established
in the image and likeness of its creator, that is, the pusher's
religious phantasm becomes our "salvation".
What me read?
In the opening days of the 21st century, the world
is witness to another King George. George W. Bush and his legions
of vassals, crusaders and preachers, foist a religious adherence to their
notions of virtue and proper behavior onto the nation and the world.
Literature, science and critical thinking must be attacked as they
directly threaten their self-serving and power-drenched regime. The
Bible replaces the biology book. Christo-babble replaces the
dialectic. Belief replaces knowledge. Faith replaces
fact.
By sporting an air of ordinariness, George
W. Bush cleverly associates himself with the common man. He
skillfully disguises the fact that his class is
far removed from the common man's daily existence. Bush
co-opts the
working class never experiencing what it means to be part of the
it. He is incapable of
understanding the working class and does not seem to particularly care about them.
The masses, well-indoctrinated into professing
their "pre-ordained" will of society blindly nod and go along.
They are "with him", and may fear not being with
him will brand them as being "against him". As with their
God, they see a life without Bush as being adrift, going nowhere.
Ignorance creates post-modern regression: the
counter-Enlightenment.
As a consequence the people become, as Jason Miller (http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com)
calls it in his piece of
the same name, "Forgotten Victim's of America's
Plutocracy". However, It does not matter if they are "forgotten" as along as there is some mythology
and/or someone to hang on to that fulfills
the promise of their illusion with more illusion. Jason
Miller states that, "Like
wolves among sheep, America's Plutocracy preys on the weaker and less
fortunate members of society." This plutocracy is
the anti-enlightenment totalitarianism regime that is presently in control of the United States of America.
It is the regime that is in charge of the world's only superpower.
It is a regime steeped in the counter-Enlightenment, and it is bringing the nation to new
lows. That which was unacceptable is now routine as torture and
extreme rendition become commonplace. That which was
venerated as the crowning jewel of Unites States republicanism is discarded as the Bill of Rights
is shredded by the misnamed and
acronymaniacal "USA PATRIOT Act". That which was once a prized
accomplishment of society, literacy, is now no longer so
considered as the president of the United States, the husband of a
librarian, sees little value in
reading books.
The New Enlightenment
Isaiah Berlin, a liberal philosopher who lived
through most of the 20th century first used the phrase
"counter-Enlightenment". Berlin correctly labeled the opposition to rationalist thinking
and the ideals of The Enlightenment. Berlin said,
...the counter-Enlightenment embodies a pluralist
vision, accepting the fundamental irreconcilability of cultural values
and their ineradicable conflicts with rationalism,
as well as the conflicts within Romanticism, irrationalism, mysticism,
and neo-Medieval forms of religious thought.
Berlin's goes beyond portending what the anti-Enlightenment
totalitarianism
and the New Dark Age have in store for critical thinkers and those with
a naturalist world view. Berlin compels us to determine what must be done to create a
New Age of Reason (not the "new
age") leading into the New Enlightenment. The opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, written partly as
a result of the Enlightenment's 18th century manifestation offers us a good
clue:
When in the Course of human Events, it
becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which
have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the
Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
Separation.
Norman D. Livergood, in his essay Completing
the American Revolution, writes that there are two
"American" revolutions. The first was "the revolt
against British oppression by Americans", and the second is, "the
revolt against wealthy American merchants and financiers by the common
people of America." The second revolt, however, will come
when the New Enlightenment emerges. The ferocity and viciousness of
the anti-Enlightenment
totalitarianists
suggests that they know the New Enlightenment is imminent.
Perhaps, a thousand years from now, if humans still exist, they will look back upon the 21st century and wonder how the Dark Ages ever
returned?
Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew
them a millennia ago. They were...more trouble than they were
worth.
--Worf, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,
“Homefront”
|
