I imagined that we are the last generation of the Enlightenment. It came to me while driving past interminable traffic tie ups on the freeway, and coming across two affable guys with drink cups in their hands sitting off to the left of the freeway, near thier smacked up rides, conversing in a laid-back manner. They were late twenties professionals by the looks of their outfits and the status of their vehicles...a Previa and an Expedition. The Expedition had whacked the right rear bumper of the Previa and shattered it, without ploughing further into the body or frame. There was debris on the road but no apparent injury or major damage. The two guys chatted, sipped from their drink cups, waiting for the orange pickup truck that will get them going again or help them get towed to safety.
I grasped this in the three seconds I flew past, and for the rest of the twenty minute commute mused on the idea that we are the last generation of the Enlightenment. You know the Enlightenment, right? It started in the late 16th century or so, and was given voice by Bacon, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mill, and others. They were not Atheists, but they spurned the Church, High and Low, as a source of wisdom for humanity. The movement spawned the writings and actions of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and eventually the Russian Revolution. Rooted in a practical if not entirely materialistic posture, the Enlightenment has stood for man's highest intellectual achievements for a few centuries. Unfortunately, it also has come to stand for the supremacy of the White European Male attitude toward the world.
Though not necessarily entailed, the precepts of the Enlightenment and the Colonial and rational, Imperial viewpoints of the protestant western leaders of the last few centuries have become entwined. With the jettison of White Male Privelege from the ranks of LifeBoat Earth, we have also seen the discarding of Enlightenment principles.
Our generation, the Boom Babies, are like dung beetles rolling little balls of Enlightenment shit around. It serves us individually, and is proof of excremental processes on a much grander order than we know, but it no longer constitutes an integrating principle or set of rules by which society at large can guide their lives.
What does this have to do with two guys musing over the inconvenience of their car accident on the side of a morning rush hour traffic lane?
Simply this. The Enlightenment was the philosophy of unlimited competition, of the war of all against all, of the striving thrum which utters discontent in every Capitalist and Protestant heart. The Enlightenment informed Sex in the City, Survivor, and all the Reality shows. They are the swan song of the individual pitted against the world, nature and other individuals.
Emerging from the wreckage of that whole divisive and fear-sotted world view, is a gentle blur of post-Enlightenment society. In this new reality, people who have accidents don't reach for their cell phones to call their lawyers before having an amicable chat with their accidental correspondant. They indulge the moment, and let their Prozac or Zen Buddhism or Iced Half Caf Soy Latte do the worrying and striving for them at a molecular or subconscious level.
On the surface, we will become sweeter. Down in the machinery, tools will be dropped, deadlines missed, deliveries mislaid, and the machines will gradually grind to a halt.
Who knows where we go from here? If you do, please enlighten me.
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