That Enlightenment Thing? It’s a Still a Work in Progrsss.

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I won’t say that perspective and proportion are the first casualties of a crisis. But those two virtues of rational thinking have a way of quickly becoming endangered species.

While we don’t yet know the origin of COVID-19, (U.S. intelligence says it picked up no alarmed chatter among Chinese officials indicating an accidental outbreak in one of their bio-chemical labs), we do have a vividly clear picture of how thoroughly, totally and unequivocally the Trump administration has bungled — through fundamental incompetence, self-interest and naked mendacity — the preparation for and response to the pandemic. It’s all there already in the official record. Facts have been established.

But we don’t live, and — perspective alert — no human has ever lived in a world where facts alone control how critical decisions are made. As many have noticed, this is a partisan pandemic. Just as climate change instantly became a partisan battleground. Just as Galileo announcing that Copernicus was right that the Earth revolves around the Sun got him branded a heretic by the Catholic church and thrown into house arrest for the rest of his life.

It doesn’t help much, nor will it do anything to prevent Team Trump from continuing to blunder, ignore science and miscalculate the best available data. But there is a perspective on this calamity — the worst exercise of executive authority in American history (and that, I’ll debate anyone, is fully proportionate) — that I find somewhat reassuring.

A disclaimer here is that I’ve come to see validity in the brain science research that says some if not most of our tribal/partisan divide is a factor of evolutionary biology. As creatures who only a dozen or more centuries ago first figured out how to grow crops, we smugly think we’ve come along way in terms of making quality decisions based on what can be proven with the science we have. But just as with bonobos, hyenas and snail darters some are quicker on the draw than others. As with all evolution in all species, there’s a range in cognitive abilities, usually for good societal reasons.

This sort of thing — quite possibly a textbook example of a little information being a dangerous thing — is always in my mind as I watch, usually aghast, as Trump or one of his media enablers prattles on in wave after unapolgetic wave of misinformation.

So I perked up the other day when author/historian Jon Meacham suggested almost in passing that what we see today with this partisan pandemic is really just the latest battle of The Enlightment. Six hundred years later, we are still locked in the unfinished business of bringing the entire human species out of the dark ages of religious superstition, witchcraft, intellectual serfdom and blind loyalty to whoever holds power over our physical well-being.

I suspect Meacham’s been thinking about this because of the many fascinating ways that The Black Death of the middle ages set the stage for the Renaissance and Enlightenment. But the key point is The Enlightment was merely a tipping point. By no means did every member of the race suddenly reject superstition and embrace rationality. Evolutionary steps are never uniform across a species. IThe Enlightenment was merely when enough people of reason were able to network among themselves to establish a formidable, rational, scientific rebuttal to the superstitions that had failed to protect the 75-200 million who died of the plague.

But “enough” is far different than “all.” Which helps to explain the so often astonishing number of 21st century Americans, (not some lost tribe of the Amazon), who still believe in the fantastical. Like the 55% who say they believe in angels. Or the 39% who don’t “accept” the theory of evolution. Or the disparity of Americans who believe Jesus was born of a virgin, (73%), compared to those who believe humans have something to do with climate change, (61%).

As I say, I don’t know that applying this perspective helps all that much when the 21st century equivalent of necromancers, alchemists, pharisees and court jesters are making a forseeable pandemic several factors of magnitude worse than it should have been. But it may serve to fortify you and those around you for the fight to come, post-pandemic. The fight to step up the next rung on ladder of Enlightenment and prevent this kind of catastrophic failure from ever happening again.

The fight where fools, philistines and misanthropes are quarantined from power.

10 thoughts on “That Enlightenment Thing? It’s a Still a Work in Progrsss.”

  1. Thank You, Brian!
    A friend just sent me this. It may be worth you posting.
    It is “bloody”right on.

    British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read
    March 8, 2019 ~ Michael Stevenson
    Daily Kos

    Someone on Quora asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:

    A few things spring to mind.

    Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
    For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
    So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

    Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.
    I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

    But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

    Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.

    And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

    There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

    Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
    Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

    And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
    Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
    He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.

    He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

    And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
    That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

    There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

    So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
    • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
    • You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

    This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
    After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
    God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.

    He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
    In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

    And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
    ‘My God… what… have… I… created?
    If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

  2. Thank you, Brian! I really look forward to your blogs, giving me reassurance that there are minds like yours analyzing and bringing awareness and a magnifying glass to our politics. Keep up the great work!

    I’ve tried to make comments before but have run into dead ends. This new system looks promising.

    Take care and be safe! Mary

  3. “The fight to step up the next rung on ladder of Enlightenment and prevent this kind of catastrophic failure from ever happening again.”

    I’m with you here, and believe this should be our main goal going forward.

    Unfortunately, I think covid-19 is merely round one in a series of struggles between Earth’s increasingly stressed biological and geological systems and an incorrigible homo (supposedly) sapiens. We’re going to have to get a whole lot wiser to deal with what may be coming sooner than many think.

    • As bad as this is, it is not all that hard to imagine a different virus, farther more contagious and/or lethal having true plague-like consequences. That’s why I hope this experience convinces “enough”people that we can’t allow manifestly incompetent people to be in charge of vital public services.

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