enlightenment
The circumstances in the human condition that brought us to this understanding of human decency evolved out of the two most extraordinary events in human history, after the discovery of agriculture and the rise of cities.
The first occurred in ancient Hellas. For a couple of centuries a tiny fringe of the known civilized world began to ask questions about the nature of the world that were beyond the ken of every other cultural group.
Why this was beyond the ken of others resulted from a human intuition. Human beings are highly “intentional”. They do things for a reason and they intuit that same intentionality applies to things that are done to them. In order to account for the natural events that impacted their lives, they had to make the assumption that there were supernatural beings that controlled those natural events. Therefore, a natural event was, in fact, an intentional message from a supernatural entity to the human community. As a consequence, the primitive universal conventional wisdom was that all the processes of nature were focused on the human condition as intentional messages. Therefore, supernaturalism and the authority that emanated from that supernaturalism prevailed in all the “primitive” civilizations and cultures that were extant at that time.
Then the occurrence of unique random historical events in conjunction with a particular environment produced a change in mentality, which enabled some among the ancient Greeks alone to begin to explore the possibility of gaining an understanding of the world without reliance on the concepts of supernaturalism and authority. They discovered human rationality. That is, they had trust in the power of human rational thought as the sole instrument to be used in the pursuit of an understanding of the world. This rejection of the otherwise universal assumptions of supernaturalism and authority was the source of the first great flowering of the human spirit.
A small random sampling of the consequences of this stupendous event is as follows:
- They attempted to understand the problem of illness through the systematic study of natural processes, disregarding the possibility that it occurred as a consequence of supernatural retribution.
- Through their rational study of the heavens, they deduced the earth was a globe and calculated a rough approximation of its circumference.
- They began the exploration of the human condition through invention of the dramatic arts. That is, Greek drama raised “questions” about the nature of being human, rather than propagandizing the “answers” provided by the conventional wisdom. .
- They speculated on the relativity of cultural values – think of Xenophon - if horses had gods they would look like horses.
- They invented the idea that mathematics as an object of study in its own right. Mathematics is one of the two most powerful mental tools available to humans. Other cultures valued mathematics only as a tool for solving practical problems. The Greeks realized that mathematics provided a method for the study of the life of the mind – the inception of cognitive research.
- The earliest example of which I am aware of the recognition that your wartime enemy shares a common humanity with you occurred among them – think of the description of Hector and Andromache at the Scaean Gate in the Iliad.
These examples are merely the tip of the iceberg with regard to the cascade of new insights made possible by the Hellenic mentality. No other civilization or culture of that era exhibited such an achievement. The cultures of Egypt, Babylon, Phoenicia, Israel, Persia, India, China, etc. were all wallowing under the constraints of supernaturalism and authority, and they all manifested the same dead-end in human intellectual and moral progress.
However, even the Hellenic mentality was not sufficient to get to the truth. It lacked a critical element. It was a magnificent beginning and may have developed into a method for full truth-production had it been allowed to continue to evolve. But that was not to be. The window of opportunity, which had been opened by that mentality, was resolutely shut by the triumphs of Christendom and Islam. Both of these dominating religious ideologies were firmly committed to supernaturalism and authority. In consequence, the world experienced another thousand years of intellectual and moral stagnation.
Then, remarkably, those unique circumstances that created the Hellenic mentality occurred in a roughly similar configuration a second time and produced another change in mentality. This second revision in mentality began in Western Europe in the 15th century and eventually produced the “scientific method”. This event happened on that critical element that had eluded the Greeks – the requirement that the results of rational thought have to be confirmed by environmental feedback. That is, what we think should happen, actually does happen.
The Enlightenment mentality that emerged as a result of these two extraordinary events eventually produced those values enumerated under the section on Human Decency.
Most emphatically these Enlightenment values are not the values of “Western Civilization”. Western Civilization was the culture of Christendom, which resulted in the stagnation as noted above. It was triumph of Enlightenment values, to some degree, over the conflicting values in the culture of Christendom that produced the remarkable advances in Western Europe over the rest of the world. Similarly, in order for the rest of the world to reach the level of improvement in the human condition attained in those parts of the world where the Enlightenment mentality holds sway, those Enlightenment values must triumph over any conflicting values in those other cultures.
Unfortunately, many of those other cultures view the adoption of Enlightenment values as capitulation to a claim of “Western” superiority in race or culture, and quite properly resist such claims. But this in not the case since neither of the extraordinary events that created the changed mentality, which produced those values, was a function of a superiority of race or culture. They evolved solely from the occurrence of random historical events in conjunction with a particular environment – which, in theory, could have happened in any race or culture. The fact that they occurred where and when they did is simply an “accident” of history.
The values which were produced by the Enlightenment mentality were not simply another expression of the values of some culture, rather they are the result of our deepest objectified understanding of the human condition. That is, the Enlightenment mentality allows us to transcend the limitations in the multitude of cultural expressions in order to determine the actual dynamics that apply across the whole spectrum of humanity, regardless of the particular culture. Once those dynamics are understood, they can be used to engineer the human condition in such a way as to enhance the prospects for the attainment of the ultimate human goal – the survival and success of the human species.
- Home
- Introduction
- Part 1
- Truth
- Insights
- The Human Condition
- Education
- Human Decency
- Enlightenment
- Part 2
- Culture Demystified
- The Elite
- Mediocrities
- Self-regard
- Self and Society
- Part 3
- Morals, Ethics, and Virtue
- The Concept of Evil is a Bad Idea
- Religion
- Patriotism
- Freedom
- Market Capitalism
- Wealth Distribution