So I had this argument in a bar tonight:

[OrwellwasRight]

My friend opined that all societies in which human life is worth living are based on the Enlightenment.

I said that that was too Eurocentric to be believable and that we should entertain the idea that non-Enlightenment-based cultures can be good, too. I cited several examples, all of which were dismissed as either "romanticizing" (e.g., because ALL native American cultures were oppressive, warlike, and filled with constant hunger and disease) or cultures only worth living in because they adapted the Enlightenment ideals into their own culture (e.g., Japan).

Nothing I said could make a dent, and I kept being told that other ideas would be entertained if I could prove sufficiently that life was worth living in these other cultures. No discussion of Confucianism, Buddhism, or the Chumash or Iroquois nations had any effect. Soon it became clear that this was one of those non-opinion opinions. You know, the ones where somebody admits that what they are stating is not a fact and yet no alternative point of view is acceptable (even for third parties to hold) unless you have facts (preferably with the footnoted article in your back pocket) to disprove<\i> what is admittedly an opinion in the first place.

And all this closed mindedness from an extremely liberal person.

I'm not anti-Enlightenment; I just think it is a hell of a waste of all other ideas to say that cultures based on them are not worth living in. And damned ethnocentric.

Am I wrong? What should I have said differently?

[rawtribe]

1. So if your not

born in the perfect society what's the option..Death?

[OrwellwasRight]

8. I don't think so

I just think he thinks that being a poor oppressed person today is OK as long as you are in a western-style democracy (e.g., India) because you are better off than under a traditional government in which he promised that you were beaten into submission, raped, got malaria, and died of starvation at thirty.

Oh yeah, and the fact that the average caloric intake of humans is higher today than in all points in human history proves that life is better.

Whatever.

[Radical Activist]

2. what a jackass

Does he really believe Europe wasn't oppressive, warlike and filled with constant hunger and disease? Does he know ANYTHING about European history? Sounds like liberal intellectual racism to me.

[OrwellwasRight]

7. Me too.

He got that Europe "used to be" like that, but there seemed to be a lot of exaggeration of the amount of political control that was possible back in the day as well, as if KGB agents patrolled every serf village listening for negative comments about the king and chopping off heads of political dissidents, and that no one in any culture could ever speak their mind before the Enlightenment. I get his basic premise of his argument, but the absoluteness of it is what I found so astounding. He literally said that people in no culture had any rights before the Enlightenment. I granted they may not have had rights in the sense of a written Constitution guaranteeing the specific items in our Bill of Rights, but that did not mean that no one had any rights. he said, no, no one did, everyone was repressed and beaten into submission everywhere and I just don't know anything about African or Native American history if I think those cultures were anything but miserable. Whatever. Maybe I have become too skeptical. I just don't think we know enough to say that only cultures modeled on X are worht living in, but I am also the person who always questions how religious people know they have picked the right religion.

[Lexingtonian]

3. you should've asked

about whether being Modern would be superior to being merely Enlightened.

[OrwellwasRight]

5. I had tried to point out that having the material goods we have

now is not necessarily objectively "better" than not having them, but that is what lead to his Enlightenment statement.

And we also argued about Emmanuel Kant and the moral imperative. I could not get an idea in edgewise.

I should have asked about Modernism v. Enlightenment, but I think I would have gotten the same response: the Enlightenment caused everything good that followed. Oh yeah, did I mention that Jonas Salk only invented the polio vaccine as the result of the Enlightenment?

I couldn't win for losing.

[Lexingtonian]

10. keep on the Modern riff next time....

The Enlightenment also created purist theism- that's what it put in place of all the superstition and occultism and paganism. In fact, pure theism is its center.

It turns out pure theism doesn't work, as demonstrated. Darwin did quite a job on it as did Hitler. And quantum physics- the Uncertainty Principle in particular- is utterly incompatible with Enlightenment thinking.

Modernism is the end of pure theism and says we have to believe in the success of the human species after all. I do hope your friend isn't a God of the Philosophers adherent, because if so he'll have a really hard time with that last bit.

[phusion]

4. Did you point out...

Did you point out that our culture is also very "oppressive, warlike, and filled with constant hunger and disease"?

And, the "warlike" characterization generally has a bad connotation. It is natural for human societies to practice agressive behavior. Usually in response to territorial pressures or traditional feuds...But, as far as I know, our generalized western Euro-culture is one of the few to ever kill on a wide scale or commit genocide. Was it "worth living in" Hitler's culture of enlightenment?

His notion is almost too narrow-minded to deal with...I'm surprised you entertained it for so long! :)

[OrwellwasRight]

6. Yeah, I lost on the war bit as well when he brought up the tired cliche

"Liberal democracies don't attack each other."

Everything can be explained away with that theory, right? Germany was "no longer" a liberal democracy when it started WWII, England and France were not attacking a liberal democracy in WWI, they were just defending themselves against the "autocratic Kaiser," and don't get him started on America, which he admits is not a perfect example, but of course Spain in 1898, Mexico in 1850, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003 were not liberal democracies anyway, so there is no example of a liberal democracy attacking another one. bla bla bla...

I guess that leaves us free to imperialize the rest of the world, and all will be fine, so long as we ensure they are not liberal democracies?

It's not that I am arguing for any thing else in particular, I was just so shocked to hear the blanket dismissal of all other cultural values that I just had to argue back. You're right, I should have changed the subject and ordered another round.

[realisticphish]

9. you go to a weird-ass bar

;)


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[OrwellwasRight]

11. Serious props for the stop motion silly walk.

They kept turning up the music. I wondered if it was to drown out our ridiculous conversation.

[realisticphish]

12. "LALALA"

"NOT HEARING INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION LALALALA"

:)


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[hickman1937]

13. All I know is that Enlightenment has something

to do with excess population. Usually theorized by people not struggling to survive.