The Enlightenment: "Modern" Western civilization began during what is termed "the long 18th century" (1685–1815) sometimes called "The Age of Reason," but better known as "The Enlightenment" because of its centuries-long evolution and final intellectual emergence from Europe's Medieval Catholic-Church-dominated "Dark Age."
That era's focus on pro-reality, pro-individual, pro-reason, pro-liberty ideas not only rejected religious (and eventually monarchical) supreme authority but also produced colossal life-altering scientific and societal advancements at a quality and speed never before experienced in human history and remained dominant (at least in developed countries) until its slow deterioration began during the last century.
Results of those liberating Enlightement ideas?
Along with the first-time-in-human-history conscious creation of a liberty-based constitutional republic called "The United States of America," a tsunami-level flood of individually created commerce, scientific inventions, and cultural innovations that culminated in the magnificent 19th Industrial Revolution enriching the lives of all Western civilization populations.
To name just a few: the steam engine, electricity, telegraph, telephone, internal-combustion engine, and automobile.
The dark evil of tyranny, however — the craving for power — did not wither under the bright glare of Enlightenment values; therefore, although no longer anointed by some civil or religious higher authority, there would and will always be those who will strive to dictate or control the lives and conduct of others.
Today, "those who would strive to dictate or control the lives and conduct of others" are individuals (or groups) with a great deal of . . . money.
Forget "millionaires," it's a new crop of billionaire elites who are fast-gaining global control today. Private individuals, crony-corporate CEOs, large public companies, nonprofits, NGOs, the UN, outright governmental bribes, politicians on "kick-backs". . .
The list is long and growing.
How are they dictating and controlling?
Those with eyes to see and ears to hear know about the mainstream media's lies that have replaced journalistic reportage, the schools on all levels that indoctrinate rather than educate, politicians open to bribes, power, and/or celebrity who pass unconstitutional laws, social media that censors critics and supports would-be controllers, parents who deliver their children to government-controlled institutions, paid-for or election-financed district attorneys and judges who twist and turn the courts into unrecognizable pretzels of "lawfare" aided by jurists who judge according to political preference rather than objective facts.
The list is long and growing.
So who is missing in this list of those to blame for the fast-growing assault on liberty, law, and the lives of hundreds of millions of people being shackled to the will of the few who wield . . . money?
It’s "the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people" who bear the bulk of the blame.
Why?
Because the people suffering from the assault on their own liberty are contributing to their own demise by bowing to the pressures or believing the lies of the monied, or by bowing to the pressures and believing the lies of those who are bought by the monied, or those actually partaking in the loot themselves.
Partaking in the loot is reprehensible yet understandable as a motive, but the rest of those who willingly bend under the yolk or believe the falsehoods? What is their motive?
Well, it’s not an active motive but more of a passive surrender.
And why is that?
It's because they do not think.
And why do they not think?
Because thinking requires the use of reason, a human being’s unique-among-animals survival tool.
As a rabbit must be fleet of foot to outrace a chase and a lion powerful physically to conquer its prey, so humans must exercise reason — non-contradictory thought — to judge the good from the bad affecting their own wellbeing.
And why don't they use reason?
Because unlike other animals, humans do not have instinct built into their nature.
Although most animals teach their young the craft of surviving, a rabbit does not need to be taught to run from a pursuer nor a lion taught to kill other animals for nutrition.
But rational thinking for humans is not innate and teaching its use is critical.
This is why the three "Rs" — Reading, WRiting, and ARithmetic — used to constitute the core curricula of schooling for children.
These fundamental skills require thinking in order to master them.
The majority of people today — precisely because they are not taught to think for themselves, hence not able to judge good ideas from bad ideas — live on a pragmatic practical method of survival. They learn the essentials: shop, cook, and eat food for physical survival, acquire skills to pay money for housing, clothing, etc., and drive a vehicle to get from here to there. But they don’t learn abstract thinking — integrating observational percepts into mental concepts and concepts into a value system of principles—so they are clueless when it comes to rationally and logically assessing—judging--the validity of what they hear or see from others, including from those power-luster who would ensnare them into the net of submission in order to sate their own insatiable hunger for power.
Feelings — fear, desire for acceptance, greed for the unearned, fake self-aggrandizement, lazy observations — take the place of critical mind work. Promises of security — survival needs — from others take the place of personal responsibility.
"Bread and circuses" provide distraction from thought.
Electronic devices become addictions to trivia.
Meeting the financial "nut" for elementary living replaces ambition.
Mental inactivity replaces innovative creativity. Conformity replaces achieved value system. Compliance replaces happiness.
Dreams replace reality.
Lies replace truth.
The list is long and growing as is the list of controlling elites.
Unless the "woke" and weak wake-up to reality soon, the sun of enlightenment values—liberty, individualism, independence, realism . . . reason! — will finally set permanently.
Then, the darkness of authoritarianism wielded not by priests or potentates this time but by an equally powerful monied elite will again cover all of western civilization, and there will be no light in the coming era because doom will take the place of dawn.
(Related columns by Alexandra York may be found here, here, and here.)
Alexandra York is an author and founding president of the American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) a New-York-City-based nonprofit educational arts and culture foundation. She has written for many publications, including "Reader's Digest" and The New York Times. She is the author of "Crosspoints A Novel of Choice." Her most recent book is "Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks." For more on Alexandra York — Go Here Now.
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