IS it accurate to say that we are an “enlightened” species? Scientifically we certainly are. We have made great leaps in science of all sorts to be comfortable with ourselves. Yet on such thin ground alone, one cannot say that it is enlightenment; to be more accurate, it is called knowledge.
Enlightenment, in my book, is knowledge coupled with the appropriate behavior. Flying in an airplane does not make me knowledgeable in its mechanics nor does it protect me from “air-rage.” Trusting a drug company with my medication and buying snake oil from a charlatan are basically the same thing. Living in great cities that are the hallmark of urban planning came from new discoveries based on accumulated knowledge, yet we still suffer cockroaches and vermin of all kinds.
What about the arts? They are usually a better gauge of human “enlightenment” since they speak directly to the inner core of our beings. Do we have today anything that can match the Iliad or Hamlet? If the sum of one’s reading is comic books and Harry Potter, the point is lost from the start.
Are we better informed with the explosion of information technology apparatus? Blogs and all, we still have to see something on the scale seen when Woodward was typing his articles on a typewriter. What you get instead is a writer in this paper claiming that “heads rolled” at Jeddah airport because of an article he had written when the world knows it was because a moving lounge collapsed with a VIP inside it.
Tolerance (not scientific discoveries or self-serving lies in print) is the measure of an enlightened society. For all you read about Roman violence and what you see in semi-historical films about the same subject, pagan Rome was a much more enlightened society than any country in the world today. Measure for measure, they could match us today with their “enlightened” behavior and laws. They persecuted Christians? Yes they did, only because the Christians declared exclusivity and threatened to disrupt the mosaic and the security of the empire. Ring a bell?Bull fighting is nothing but a gladiatorial game played out, ironically, in a Roman-style stadium. The NFL is a gladiatorial game of magnificent proportions that can result in injury and damage regardless of the protective gear.
An enlightened age would produce a Leonardo. The sum of talents gathered in that man could suffice for a whole nation today if distributed properly. And yet, he had to suffer the venom of Michelangelo and run away to France with his Mona Lisa wrapped under his arm. Having the two of them in one place, however, is a feat the world has not been able to replicate since.
Today we lack new and potent ideas. We regurgitate the old and think it is new. What better example than the appellation of “neo-conservatives?” Does that mean they are different from regular conservatives? Are the originals extinct? The same goes for neo-Nazis.
Why can’t they be called neo-Hun? Is this a precursor in a hundred years time for the neo-Al-Qaeda that is bound to spring up somewhere in the world?
If it weren’t for our scientific advances, it might come to pass that historians in five hundred years’ time might dub our age The Dark Ages Part Two.
