NSRA Field Report 4: The Enightenment is dead.

[Cain]

We have killed the spirit of 1789
- Josef Goebbels, after the 1933 Nazi election victory

The great liberal John Stuart Mill was correct when he said not all stupid people are conservatives, but most conservatives are stupid people. I would add that many who call themselves conservatives are reactionary and ruled by their hate and fears.
- Mike Hersh

So, I was in London with my friend who had got back from Hong Kong, Baz.  We decided to get some drinks and talk about what we's been up to in recent months.

Just as I was about to leave, I heard on the radio that the Leader of the Oppostion would be willing to remove the Humans Rights Act, in order to stop gypsies building on land that wasn't theirs.  So, he wanted to go as far as to strip us of all legal rights, to stop some gypsies? I thought nothing more of the lunatic and continued out.

The next day, I woke up.  Part of my face was stuck to the floor, with what I don't know. Something horrible and bloated was in my mouth, and it wasn't a relief to find out it was my tongue.  I wasn't exactly seeing purple and green spots, it was rather I could see patches of reality and that was the rest.

Sorting myself out, I turned on the TV, hoping to find something mildly entertaining.  Flicking through, I came across a popular topical chat show.  They mentioned the new policy of the Oppostion.  Thing was, there was no-one really objecting to the measure being proposed.  Nope, it was the best for all to sacrafice human rights in order to deal with a minor problem.  Screw the millions of dead who fought to protect those rights.

The Enlightenment Project had failed, was the general realization that was dawning on me.  Kant, Hume, the American Founding Fathers, Locke, Paine, it was all for nothing.  Nope.  Just look around.  We had in the last 15 years several attempted genocides, a reversion to infantile outbursts that was publicly approved (Diana death hysteria etc), general bullshittery such as the false economics of the free market and many more I can't be bothered to list.

The rational, thinking person, had become a rareity. Instead, this was a world where emotions rule, and they are childish ones at that.  And childish as in the temper tantrum/sycophantism cycle. Humans aren't rational.  Maybe they were once, before Reality TV obliterated their ability to think.   But not any longer.  And that probably meant things based on ideas like that, such as democracy, were out of time.

And I really didn't care.  Even after the hangover had gone, I couldn't summon up the ability to care.  If they wanted to laugh, or cry, or act in faux-moral outrage over a piece of fiction on the idiot box while the world around them burned, that wasn't my concern.  I just had to make sure I wasn't dragged into it with them.

I left London that night, feeling depressed, and headed Southampton.  Maybe the sea breeze would raise my spirits, though I doubted it.  We had killed the Enlightenment, just as surely as Nietzsche's mob had killed God.  But who would be around to preach it, when no-one would listen, or care even if they did?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The Enlightenment Project had failed, was the general realization that was dawning on me.  Kant, Hume, the American Founding Fathers, Locke, Paine, it was all for nothing.  

Naw, we had a pretty good run.  Did you think the good times would last forever?

The wheel will turn, and someday the rationalists will be at the forefront, again.*

This, too, will pass.



* in the meantime, give the bastards hell.