Re: enlightenment versus... what?

        The best evidence for regression is the world of the past quarter
century, which has seen an upsurge of nationalism, ethnicism, racism,
and fundamentalism on a planetary scale, in the wake of widespread
disillusionment with socialism and (in the once-called Third World) with
Western neo-colonialism.  The Enlightenment of the Right has lost whatever
moral advantage it may once have enjoyed by selling out more completely
than ever to megacorporate greed and militarist adventurism, and the
Enlightenment of the Left has lost some of its credibility by appearing to
bear responsibility for the failures of socialist experiments in Russia
and elsewhere.  What rushes in to fill the vacuum?  Look and weep.

        So, yes, now is not the time to abandon ship, just because the
seas are choppier and the winds fiercer.  As someone once said, hold the
tiller firm!

        Warren

                
On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Richard N Hutchinson wrote:

> Warren, Stephen and all:
> 
> I'm with Warren on this one, despite much ambivalence.
> 
> "Post-enlightenment" seems more likely to take the form of regression
> than any sort of movement toward liberation.
> 
> "We" would just have to go through the enlightenment again!  Best to work
> through the contradictions in the enlightenment, rather than jump out of
> the frying pan and into the relativistic fire, so to speak.
> 
> RH
> 
> 
> 
> 
>