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2. undoubtedly 2.
consider the age that preceded the enlightenment. this was an age in which millions of people died simply due to lack of proper sanitation, an age when people would be burned at the stake for questioning the archaic dictates of an omnipotent religious monarch, an epoch where the proper means to knowledge was a profession of faith in an unknowable, intangible deity and any rational thinker had to operate within the confines of the tyranny of church and state by becoming a monk or religious philosopher. this was the feudal era when people were considered subservient to others merely by the circumstances of their birth, an age characterized and dominated by perpetual warfare, stagnation, and intolerance.
then one day someone spoke up and decided that the universe was knowable, that we could elevate ourselves out of the abyss we had been digging ourselves for well over a millennium -- and that all that needed to be done was to cast off the deadening doctrines of subservience to church, state, lord, and master and embrace reason, science, reality. we did, and the world hasn't been the same since.
when i first heard that handel's water music was written for an outdoor festival my disappointment was boundless. i could have sworn the work was written as a towering testament to the glory of the mind, an immense liberation of reason after 1000 years of exile.
long live the enlightenment. may its legacy last forever.
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