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23 May 2024
Enlightenment:
1) give (someone) greater knowledge and understanding about a subject or situation
2) shed light on (an object)
Asshole:
1) a person’s anus
2) a stupid, irritating, or contemptible person
The Enlightenment period was a time in the 18th century where those involved in this Age of Reason believed that humans and the human condition could be improved through rational change. What came after, was the 19th century’s period of Romanticism and what came before, was science.
The inhabitants of the 18th century were inundated with new theories and philosophies brought to life by the famous thinkers of the previous century, the likes of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. The Scientific Revolution took over the traditionally dominating ideologies of monarchy and religion. Science emerged strong, separating itself from technology and philosophy. It stood up and roared its value.
Individuals started realising that they didn’t know everything. They saw that there was so much ignorance in the world and they had been simply accepting stories passed down to them by clergyman and rulers. Slowly, the answers they were getting were not measuring up to their burgeoning questions. There had to be more out there and they needed to find a way to get to it.
The scientific method was born.
The movement towards learning from observation rather than blind faith, the acceptance of previous ignorance, the belief that progress could be far greater than the status quo, were all things that contributed to science gaining power and drastically changing the way humans thought and lived. The exodus from acceptance towards experimentation, meant that organised religion lost power, kings could not hold almighty status, and most of all, that individuals could be considered equals. Testing hypotheses through math and science told us things that the Bible, Quran, and Talmud deemed unnecessary to explain, for example, the laws of physics, the predictions of astronomy, and the warning signs of geology.
Suddenly, we were on a different playing field.
Eureka.
Enlightenment.
Science shed light on the fact that humans were living because they were told to. They breathed to appease an angry god and toiled to pacify a spoiled leader. But science showed that God did not grant people powers. And science mixed with philosophy taught us that the people gave the King his throne and therefore they could take those royal powers away.
Eureka.
Democracy.
Jean Jacques Rousseau’s great gift to the world, was his philosophical writings about the Social Contract. This text begins with the words, “man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains”. Ultimately, this philosophy showed that society had to act towards the greater good of everyone in order to succeed. There still had to be someone or a group of people in power to make sure that order was kept but the people were allowed to express their views, their wants, and their dislikes. They thought of this as democracy, a way of governing based on the will of the people.
But what do the people really want?
Are the people justified in making decisions?
With all that freedom and new knowledge, the people went on a rampage. Suddenly, everyone had rights and their rights were more important than the next person’s. We pillaged and plundered and suffered and then kept plundering and pillaging some more to make sure that someone else was suffering more than us.
The sad truth is, our marauding ways haven’t stopped.
The continued battle for power, wealth, fame, and the pursuit of hedonism has ripped our planet to pieces. The scary thing is that we’re repeatedly choosing our own immediate capitalist gain rather than investing in our home, our food, or even our sustenance.
If you look at the laws of nature that scientists of yore discovered … that was just it. There were clear laws. Motion could be written down as a formula. As could gravity. Shells of snails and the unfurling leaves of ferns coil in a fixed set of numbers flecked in gold by the Fibonnaci sequence. You can measure distances and movement of the stars and the moon using Kepler’s Law and Parallax. Even volcanic eruptions are put nicely in their place on Benford’s curve.
The planet and nature move in harmony. Everything in its place, in balance. Until we came along with our egos and decided that it was our way or the highway. Children playing god with pretend cities, buying things with made up money, building bluff societies, and causing made up drama. Living in our narcissistic land of make believe while the planet in all her wisdom just sits, and watches, and laughs.
We are so narcissistic we put nature on Spotify.
I mean, the power in the cascades of Iguazu, the deafening noises of crickets in forests, and the vibrations that run through your body when a lion roars. We made all that so small so we can stick it in our tiny devices. So we can say, hey, we’re better than you, because look at what we can do. We don’t need nature, we can make robot pollinators, synthetic medication, and grow food in laboratories.
Show off she says … with the knowing smile of a sage.
She’s sending warnings of extreme weather conditions, horrible turbulence, and is even starting to spin off her axis. She was always on a trend toward death and disorder. We’re just speeding it up about a million times, thinking we’re making the world a better place while hurtling towards destruction.
Entropy.
She’s known about this measure of disorder all along. The second law of thermodynamics. Time moves in one direction. We’re all getting older, never younger.
Entropy, the measure of disorder in a system, will continue to cause more disorder as time increases. The general trend of the universe is based on this law, one on a slow course of death and disorder.
Nature doesn’t spend more energy than it needs, ever.
Everything is in its place, moving in clockwork, even its destruction.
We’re so convinced that we’re going to become a supernatural life force that will survive on its own once we decimate our planet way before she’s meant to go. We think we can disregard the laws of nature and survive on our technology alone. Our technology that has only been alive for a blip in terms of the evolutionary timeline. We’re only just discovering nature’s laws but still we think we’re improving life through rational change…
Our planet has been around for 4.54 billion years.
Do we really think that we’re going to outsmart and replace her with AI and talking robots?
Really?
Assholes.