The idea that the enlightenment was necessary but not sufficient gelled for me while reading the first chapters in Van Reybrouck’s ‘Congo’ tome. He paints life of the indigenous Congolese in a vivid way showing their self-sufficiency as a functioning culture. I have been aware of such from Canada’s own First Nations, as well as from other readings.
Chapters two (2) and three (3) contrast this well functioning Congolese culture with the incoming West European one. Its newly acquired scientific and economic values, conviction and … attitudes not to forget, ignore what it finds. The author also shows how little ‘the Whites’ really knew about the way those ‘primitive’ societies functioned. They just had to be brought up to speed with the Western ways and the colonisers knew just how to do that.
These West European attitudes then, I consider to be rooted in the Enlightenment, which is now bolstered with newly acquired scientific findings and technological applications to go along with that. That was a very unique and significant development of course. Thinking about this I get the notion that along with the missions of the church we are also seeing missionary zeal in the actions and attitudes of the secular colonisers. The existing cultures in the colonies were seen as obstacles to real progress.
Thinking about this I get the notion that along with the missions of the church we are also seeing missionary zeal in the actions and attitudes of the secular colonisers.
It could not have been different I think, because what we now know about early human cultures and how the encountered indigenous societies functioned, was totally unknown in the 1800s.
Now we know that all of human culture shares this common background. It is part and parcel of being human, forming the foundation of the very ‘Western’ culture that felt so superior one hundred fifty (150) years ago.
The enlightenment was the phase in which humanity let go of the ties that bind and realised its own human potential as independent beings. Preceding and subsequent discoveries only confirmed this newly discovered insight and attitude of independence. Humanity was now in the process of freeing itself from the strictures of religion and handed down traditions. It could define its own destiny from now on and Western culture and power would show the way.
All this was necessary and even unavoidable, but we now know that there is more to it than throwing off the old and taking on the new. The natural processes of change are those of gradual adaptation and not of severing the past. The past must be adapted, but not be discarded is the lesson we have learned and gleaned from evolution.
So, the insufficiency of the enlightenment and its aftermath is that it considered its own past that led to enlightenment as superfluous.
So, the insufficiency of the enlightenment and its aftermath is that it considered its own past that led to enlightenment as superfluous. This led to many mistakes, which served as equally many lessons, which were learned in many cases.
This process is still going on to day as we are searching to resolve conflicts between societies that honour different values. We can read in our daily news notices that there is no military - read coercive - solution to the conflict, but only a negotiated one; i.e. Syria.
This illustrates that we are equal partners on the dance floor of human development, which could become progress is we’re careful.
<9:41am~
