tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post2341948733317080337..comments2024-03-22T11:55:50.335+13:00Comments on Not PC: Quote of the day: Reasons to be Grateful, Part ThreePeter Cresswellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10699845031503699181noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-61542844578818879702011-11-25T18:32:51.044+13:002011-11-25T18:32:51.044+13:00It is only since the Enlightenment that progress t...It is only since the Enlightenment that progress that is rapid enough to be noticed within one's lifetime and stable enough to continue over many generations has been achieved. Before that, for thousands of years, the default state of humanity was static societies where no noticeable progress took place between one's birth and one's death. <br /><br />Static societies are truly awful - they resist change by using human creativity against itself to enforce conformity. They exist to perpetuate certain ideas regardless of the truth of those ideas and regardless of the harm done by those ideas to individuals. <br /><br />Our dynamic society has arisen in the face of these entrenched static ideas. We are attempted something that has never been achieved before - the transistion from a fully static society to a fully dynamic society where rational ideas hold sway. All other attempted Enlightments, like the ancient Greek one, were snuffed out before they could get going. It is indeed something to be grateful of that we live at the time we do but had any one of those earlier proto-Enlightenments not been extinguished we would have reached the stars already. That we should take personally.<br /><br />We today know that humanity is capable of unlimited progress - that there are no bounds to what we can achieve. Our Enlightenment can continue into infinity should we want it to. We can remake the universe from a place dominated by physical forces like gravity to one dominated by knowledge.Brian Scurfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14791173154893714681noreply@blogger.com