Sonic Youth Gossip - View Single Post

!@#$%! · 04.04.2006, 03:16 PM

^^^awesome reply saoq!

the enlightenment gave us liberty and democracy, progressive political revolutions across the americas and france, revolutions in mathematics and science and the formalization of the scientific method, freedom from religious and superstitious rule, the metric system (i love it), the common coin of rationality in public discourse and politics, etc etc...

sure there were excesses: absolutist tendencies, rationalistic justifications of monarchies, positivism as a religion, the exclusion of non-western cultures, etc, but i see them as growing pains rather than evils that overwhelm the good. by comparison, what did romanticism give us? some great poetry, but also the plague of nationalism, which continues today, and many bloody wars that cascaded into the XX century.

i *do not* want to go back to the dark ages, thanks very much, and i think the baroque was a pretty awful period too, socially.. anyone tempted to think that we would be in a better world without the enlightenment needs only to think of life under the taliban or what would happen in the u.s. if christian fundamentalists came to power.

04.04.2006, 03:16 PM	#8
!@#$%! invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: mars attacks Posts: 42,460	^^^awesome reply saoq! the enlightenment gave us liberty and democracy, progressive political revolutions across the americas and france, revolutions in mathematics and science and the formalization of the scientific method, freedom from religious and superstitious rule, the metric system (i love it), the common coin of rationality in public discourse and politics, etc etc... sure there were excesses: absolutist tendencies, rationalistic justifications of monarchies, positivism as a religion, the exclusion of non-western cultures, etc, but i see them as growing pains rather than evils that overwhelm the good. by comparison, what did romanticism give us? some great poetry, but also the plague of nationalism, which continues today, and many bloody wars that cascaded into the XX century. i do not want to go back to the dark ages, thanks very much, and i think the baroque was a pretty awful period too, socially.. anyone tempted to think that we would be in a better world without the enlightenment needs only to think of life under the taliban or what would happen in the u.s. if christian fundamentalists came to power.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|