Have you ever wondered what is going on in the world around you? Have you wondered why social media has become a battleground instead of a way to enjoy life? Does it bother you when people cannot allow other to disagree without trying to impugn them? If you answered yes, you might be noticing an important shift in the way our culture works.
Those of you who know me know I have a love for philosophy and philosophical ideals. Now, many of you may think that those ideals are divorced from the concerns of actual life. Philosophy, so it goes, is the stuff of academics and dusty books. It belongs in ivory towers. It is the province of the bespectacled bloviators, the socially awkward, and the impractical dreamers. Yet our thinking, our philosophy, has created our current society.
If you think about it, we are children a philosophical movement called Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is a philosophical era that scholars trace to the beginning of the 1700’s. Francis Bacon and others in the 1600’s were important precursors, however. What Enlightenment thinkers were trying to do was liberate humanity from itself. One of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers, Immanuel Kant put it this way,
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but rather of resolve and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere Aude (Dare to Know)! Have the courage to use your own mind. Thus is the motto of Enlightenment.[1]
The Enlightenment was anti-authoritarian to the core. In science, the Enlightenment brought to an end the endless appeals to authorities whether they were Aristotle or a corrupted Church. No, reason and the scientific method—itself birthed by Enlightenment thinkers—were now the arbiters of what was true in science. In religion, the Enlightenment birthed believers who would go to the sources of the faith rather than relying on years of dogma. In politics, the Enlightenment gave birth to radical notions such as individual rights and religious toleration. In fact, the US Revolution and French Revolution both draw their genesis from Enlightenment ideals.
Enlightenment thinkers had an important goal: to produce a way to understand the world, morality, politics, and religion that is solely based on reason and universally available. The project is impossible, chiefly because of the limits of human reason and impossibility of universality.
What the Enlightenment did produce, however, is rather striking. While even Enlightenment thinkers did not want to extend rights to everyone, the fact is the rhetoric of the Enlightenment has led to an amazing increase in the number of people who have basic human rights. Further, the scientific revolution has led to discoveries that have improved the quality and length of life for most of humanity. If these two were the only accomplishments of the Enlightenment, it would have to be counted as a success. The Enlightenment is not limited to just these areas. It has affected almost every area of life.
What we are living through is the loss of the Enlightenment or its ideals. In the Enlightenment, every human is endowed with reason. Each person should and must think for themselves. Now, divergent opinions are no longer acceptable. If you doubt me, state a differing position on something accepted by our elites as fact. If you deviate on scientific consensus, political correctness, or political preference you face consequences. Now, truth is no longer established by reason, it is established by organizations and thought leaders who tell us what reason must conclude. In our time universality is replaced by tribalism, truth by relativism, objectivity by perspectivism.
Of course, the necessary outgrowth of this is that we cling to people who agree with us and ignore those who do not. What happens on social media is that people who think a certain way “unfollow” those with whom they disagree. In other words, they no longer even see that another rational person might come to a different conclusion. At the beginning of the the Enlightenment it was assumed that every person had the capacity for reason. Now it is assumed that those who think differently are without reason. At the beginning of the Enlightenment, tolerance was a virtue to expanded. Now, our tolerance is waning.
Some have called our waning tolerance “cancel culture.” Cancel culture, is the shutting down of people who have minority or controversial opinions. People are often banned from social media, fired from their jobs, or hounded into recanting because they have said something a particular group finds offensive. The cancel culture is vicious.
The mirror image of cancel culture is that we protect our favorites. What makes someone outside of our thought group worthy of being cancelled is tolerated—even celebrated—if someone within our thought group does it. Needless to say, this is not a healthy development for a civil society.
I have mentioned Edwin Friedman’s[2]work in other posts, and I find his work very helpful here. In one of his most compelling arguments, Freidman states we are living in a crisis of courage. He believes that the forces of herd mentality keep a society stuck. If no one can think for themselves, then the group will remain stuck. The most anxious in the group, however, will not tolerate any person standing outside of the group, will not put up with any individuality. The forces of the herd, the forces of enforced uniformity, will ultimately destroy the group because the group will lose the power to adapt if the forces of uniformity remain unchecked. The force the herd can wield is powerful. It requires courage to stand against the herd and the forces of uniformity. We used to celebrate when people did that. We used to think that closing people out of the public square for thinking differently was a bad thing. I’m not sure we do anymore.
What the Enlightenment thinkers were fighting against were the forces of control, the forces opposed to toleration, and the forces of uncritical thinking. This would be a very bad time to give up that fight.
To put it another way, The Brave New World, was not supposed to be a guide. It is a warning.
[1]Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?, 1784.
[2]See Generation to Generation and Failure of Nerve.
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