The Revolt Against Reason
Everyone must discover for himself what kind of world he lives in. 300 years ago the world was trying for something like this:
A desire for human affairs to be guided by rationality rather than by faith, superstition, or revelation; a belief in the power of human reason to change society and liberate the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authority; all backed up by a world view increasingly validated by science rather than by religion or tradition.
This is a definition of the Enlightenment, taken from Wikipedia. We still like to think of ourselves as enlightened people, but this is just one of our many illusions. We have become religious people again, and have little interest in science—only in technology.
I am indebted to Popper, and his book The Open Society and It’s Enemies for the ideas behind this posting. He wrote this book in 1945, while in exile in New Zealand, and considered it part of the war effort. It was an attempt to prevent another takeover by totalitarianism, similar to the Third Reich. As events would show in the last half of that century, he failed. The forces against reason are too strong—and that is one of the basic facts of our time—something I have discovered for myself.
This is part of another subject: the decline of the West, especially of America. This is something else we need to recognize—but usually don’t.
We have discovered that reason alone is not adequate. It can easily be overridden by the emotions, and usually is. The logical way to cope with this is to simply recognize the problem and guard against it in our individual lives. But few people are interested in this, and once a majority loose their interest in using reason to solve their social problems, the society as a whole ceases to function as a modern society.