Enlightenment, The Loud Voice and the Big Stick
Well, there you have it. The Dragon Of Enlightenment. Not my first short story, perhaps not my best,
but I wanted to share it, because hopefully it will cause people to think about things they take granted--things
which should not be taken for granted.
If you read the story, you probably spent the first 90% of the story thinking "What kind of point could he possibly
be making?" and then, in the last 10%, your may have found yourself thinking, "Oh. It's a religious story." I can just
see you rolling your eyes as you think that.
But in reality, this story is not about religion. It is about how we, as a society, define enlightenment. What does it
mean to be enlightened? What does it mean to be unenlightened? How do we define these terms? Who defines what it means
to be enlightened?
The story presents two possibilities for you to consider. One possibility is that there is--somewhere out there--a clearly defined
and measurable yardstick of enlightenment, which exists independently of mankind, and is not influenced by mankind. This is the
assumption made by the King of Westerbluff, that there is some external definition of absolute enlightenment which will judge
between him and the dragon. For people of faith, we would refer to this external absolute of enlightenment as God (with a capital 'G',
not the Greek and Roman pseudo-gods which are barely more enlightened than humanity, and have little going for them but the power to
do godlike deeds.)
But there is another possibility. And it is the possibility raised by the King: If there is no externally consistent and reliable
yardstick of enlightenment, who defines what is "enlightened"? Who judges between two opposing viewpoints?
And the dragon's answer comes back, in effect, as follows: The person who has the loudest voice or the biggest stick.
In some ways it matters very little which of those two viewpoints you subscribe to. Not because the question doesn't matter, but
because we live in a society which is becoming increasingly secularized, a society which increasingly believes--or at the least, acts
as though it believes--that there is no external measuring rod of enlightenment.
In other words, whether you believe in a deity of perfect enlightenment or not, you live in a society which increasingly behaves
as though enlightenment is defined by the media (the loudest voice) or the power of the sword (the biggest stick). You live in a society in which,
even if the external measuring rod exists, it is not being used.
One of the problems we face is that, as society changes, as the media, goverment, and educational systems change, the measuring rod
of enlightenment changes. At the heart of this change there is an assumption which needs to be addressed; it is the assumption
that mankind is in a perpetual process of evolution from unenlightened to enlightened. This is at best a questionable assumption, at worst
an appalling absurdity, and in either case, cannot be quantitatively measured without resorting to the
external measuring rod which we have assumed does not exist.
The result is an absurdity which would make a logician's head spin, if only the logician would stop to think about it;
society claims that it is sufficiently enlightened to define "enlightenment", and uses as proof of its authority the fact that
it is becoming more enlightened. In other words, enlightenment is defined by society to be: exactly what we happen to believe RIGHT NOW!
Each of us, whether we happen to weigh in on the side of the king, or on the side of the dragon, must be aware of this frightening fact.
For, just as the dragon can destroy the knights, kings and seekers in the name of "enlightenment", so our society is capable
of both atrocities and irrational, logical fallacies, all the while claiming their actions as the result of enlightenment.
Pluralism and Logical Absurdities
Currently our society claims "pluralism" as one of the cornerstones of its enlightenment. This will, of course, change
as time goes on, but right now it is the "in" thing. What is pluralism? It is this:
The belief that there are multiple opinions about an issue, each of which contains part of the truth but none contain the whole truth.
Now, I don't happen to agree with that philosophy, that theory about the way the universe works. In fact, if you follow that philosophy
through to its logical conclusion, you discover that this belief leads you inexorably to the conclusion that there is no external measuring rod
of enlightenment. In other words, society goes from saying "Enlightenment is exactly what we happen to believe right now," to
"Enlightenment is acceptance of the fact that there is no such thing as enlightenment."
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Even so, it may be possible to form an entirely consistent view of the universe which incorporates the above definition of pluralism, while rejecting the notion that "enlightenment" exists.
Unfortunately, the definition of pluralism presented above is not the definition of pluralism which is being promoted in our society
and hailed as "enlightened". Though the proponents of this pluralism might not be able to put their
beliefs into words, what they are really teaching is the following:
All belief sets are equally true.
This is a terrifying proposition for one simple reason: it contains a logical absurdity that any high school student who has taken
a geometry class or any other class containing a unit on logic, could recognize - if they only chose to look for it. But of course,
this is the issue; the voices speak loud enough, and the big sticks are waved hard enough that no one stops to consider the farcical
nature of this belief which is being thrust upon us.
While the scientists and mathematicians are telling us to think logically, to employ scientific methods, and analyse rationally, other
segments of our society are telling us "close your eyes to the logical absurdity of the notion that all belief sets are equally true,
and pretend that you believe it." And you swallow the fallacies. Why? Because you want to be viewed as enlightened, of course.
So What Does The Future Hold?
It is my belief that our society's definition of "enlightenment" is not just changing, but it is accelerating in its changes. There
is a powerful inertia to the beliefs and ideas of individuals, and that inertia is greatly increased when people form communities with
like-minded belief systems. But as our media system becomes more powerful (from books to television to the internet, and whatever
information revolution comes next), the "loudest voices" begin speaking even louder and more insistently, overcoming at an even
more rapid rate the accepted views of society, demanding conformity to the current notion of enlightenment.
This accelerating redefinition process probably can be seen most clearly in our educational systems. Education in the United States
has always swung on a pendulum from one philosophy to another, and then back again, but as we reached the end of the twentieth century, and
moved into the twenty-first, that swinging motion has been rapidly accelerating, until the pendulum is gyrating wildly--perhaps too wildly
for anyone to keep up with it. We are quickly reaching the point at which our educators are spending more time being trained
to satisfy the whims of the current dragon, than they are in teaching their students. The end result is that our educational system
suffers, and will soon become the laughing-stock of the world community, if it has not become so already.
Thus, we will see a more and more rapid fluctuation in the definitions of what our society views as wise and enlightened. What is enlightened
now will seem barbaric twenty years from now, and what is deemed barbaric now will be viewed as enlightened. And if you subscribe to the belief that mankind is in a state of constant
upward evolution, this prospect pleases you. If you do not accept that premise, it frightens you.
But it is not all gloom and despair; just as a child swinging wildly at a board with a hammer may occasionally strike the nail on the
head, so our society may--from time to time, squarely connect with a valuable notion, and repair the damage of previous generations' definitions
of "enlightened". For example, I am firmly of the belief that in another fifty years, school children will have the following conversations with their teachers:
Child: Teacher, what is "abortion"?
Teacher: Well, back in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it was legal for mommies to kill their babies before they were born.
Child: What? They murdered their own babies?
Teacher: I know, it's hard to imagine. But yes.
Child: Didn't they know that was bad?
Teacher: Well, it's not as simple as that. They were part of the "me first" generation, and they thought that whatever was best for them was more important
than what was best for anyone else.
Child: That's disgusting! Didn't they understand basic human rights back then?
This is a bit of an irony, because the current notion of "enlightenment" being shouted by the loudest voices is precisely the
opposite of that view.
I wonder if, in fifty years, those loud voices will be dumped into the same category as the unenlightened slave owners in the pre Civil War era.
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