Garry Wills: The Day the Enlightenment Went Out

[Sandpiper]

<snip>

America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.

The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/opinion/04wills.html

[Sapphocrat]

1. Modern Europeans...

...are not the only ones who "do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate."

sigh

[Sandpiper]

2. Definitely

West Coast Americans definitely don't understand the thought process of Jesusland.

[Sapphocrat]

6. Doesn't that just blow your mind?

The biggest influx of immigrants to the U.S. was around the turn of the 20th century, landing on both coasts -- and our third-class-passenger ancestors weren't exactly flaming lberals.

And yet, where there is a concentration of late-19th-/early-20th-century Americans (i.e., San Francisco, NYC), there exists stunning diversity, and stunning acceptance and compassion for one's neighbors.

What is it about regions claiming the greatest concentrations of Revolutionary-era descendants (for whom the concept of true should run red through their veins!) that makes them... well, see things the way they do?

I try, SO hard, to understand, but I fear I never will.

[LiberteToujours]

3. It isn't the first time it's happened

Let's not all pretend the USA was perfect until last Tuesday. Salem witch trials, anyone? Umm... slavery? You've seen dark times before, and you shouldn't forget them as part of your history because they're a reminder that you will overcome them. And history ALWAYS favours the liberals.

[Sandpiper]

4. Yes, but the difference is

It seems like in modern times, the majority of the country wants to move backward.

This election was a rejection of enlightment principles by 51% of the electorate.

[Sapphocrat]

8. I suppose there are cycles...

...and there is the admonition no generation ever seems willing to heed (apologies to George S. for the paraphrase): "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it."

But -- and perhaps this is just the starry-eyed liberal optimist in me speaking -- I always believed that society was just like Woody Allen's analogy of a romantic relationship: It's like a shark -- it has to keep moving forward, or it will die.

Well, maybe we're dying.

Maybe, as Woody told Diane Keaton, "what we have here is a dead shark."

[ladjf]

5. You are exactly right about America moving away from the

principles of the Age of Enlightenment. But, Why? That's what stumps
me. There is really no such thing as "unnatural" in Nature. What is happening that is causing so many people to shut down their normal
cognitive process, at least in certain areas, choosing to follow philosophical values that are baseless in any objective sense?

[Sapphocrat]

7. THAT...

...is a question for the ages.

Well put, ladjf.

[ladjf]

9. Sapphocrat, I like the way you think and espress yourself.

Society is a cluster of events relating to the interaction of individuals and individuals are clusters of events focused on the maintenance of the individual's life. Both, in my opinion, are responding directly to the results of previous related events just as litmus paper turns red on contact with an acid or blue for alkaline.
Society has no thinking capacity of it's own but rather is the reflection of the individual's interactions. And, at the risk of becoming tedious, the individuals themselves may actually be guided by the dictates of their ten trillion+ cells dutifully caring out the instructions each received from their DNA.

So, as you can see, I'm setting up a deterministic scenario and in so doing, will suggest that perhaps most, if not all, events are occurring in accordance to certain physical potentials and that the role of human free may not be involved at all, or, if so, to a lessor degree than is generally believed.

What does this have to do with my original question about why humans seem to be making choices that aren't based on realistic, objective observations? The obvious partial answer is that their perceptions are somehow being "tricked" causing them to behave illogically. There are many common example of this such as the responses of cocaine users, over-eaters, and smokers. In each of these practices, the users have a good feeling as the partake but ultimately it is shown that they are unhealthy things to do.

The natural desires of religious people are no different than those of the most liberal and enlightened people. In particular they want to explore their spiritual side in order to achieve a sense of Harmony or oneness with the Universe. I believe that their first wrong turn was to believe that the quest for one's spirituality must be in conjunction with organized religion. Once that false step is taken, they run the risk of being influenced by others who have hidden agenda. The first task of the "others" is to train the novitiate to disregard the natural, objective cognitive processes. Once that task has been completed, the novitiate is a "mental stem cell", ready to be programmed for the "other's" benefit.

To continue this line of reasoning to some satisfactory conclusion would require more space than is appropriate for this venue. I hope that I was clear enough to make the point that the best chances for improving human behavior may be to identify the "others", the ones who are training our brothers and sisters to be "robots" to the "other's" causes and having identified them, attack them with
furious fusillades of beautiful, unifying and powerful logic, overwhelming their disingenuous ,unwholesome and greedy, destructive plots.