Here day fights with night.
- Victor Hugo, final words.
What a waste it is to lose one’s mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.
- J Danforth Quayle, not his final words, alas.
No, the Prince of Darkness is not Mandelson. Or Quayle (he put his cowl on backwards, tripped-over a coffee table and is now in the ER).
It is this fuckwit. Yes, the heir to the throne has declared war on the Enlightenment. Cheerless Charlie Chuckles is a well of pissulence that never runs dry. He truly is a twatmeistering cunt-bugle of the very first water. When he isn’t building Potemkin villages or talking to organic vegetables or wishing he was an unattractive woman’s tampon he is being over six feet (I never knew they stacked shit that high in Windsor) of national embarrassment in a double-breasted jacket and uttering pearls of wisdom such as this…
The Prince of Wales has never been a man to suffer from a lack of enemies, from modern architecture to intensive farming. Yesterday, however, he declared war on a new — but also ancient — adversary: the Enlightenment.
Wait for it. Wait for it! I shall expand.
Long regarded as the foundation of contemporary political and intellectual culture, by way of influences ranging from the American Declaration of Independence to the scientific method as embraced from Isaac Newton on, the Enlightenment was based on the belief that all society’s ills could be vanquished by the application of reason.
I would quibble with the “all” in the last bit but I dunno maybe the Times staffer is being cutesy because the application of reason is not the Chuckles’ strongest attribute. He of course does excel at being the highly enriched weapons grade tit-end of the nation. Sell him to Iran and we can all kiss our arses goodbye.
Its seminal figures included the likes of Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau. To Prince Charles, however, it is old hat. “I was accused once of being the enemy of the Enlightenment,” he told a conference at St James’s Palace. “I felt proud of that.”
Well, with the exception of Rousseau who was indeed a right cunt (actually rather a left cunt but the key point is that he was a cunt and French to boot) they were all great thinkers which is more than can be said about the cunt left, right and centre behind Duchy Originals.
The Prince, who was talking at the annual conference of The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, went on: “I thought, ‘Hang on a moment’. The Enlightenment started over 200 years ago.
The profundity of that observation leaves me pitying the plants he talks to. I mean they can’t get away. Poor fuckers.
“It might be time to think again and review it and question whether it is really effective in today’s conditions, faced as we are with huge challenges all over the world. It must be apparent to people deep down that we have to do something about it.”
If I were Chuck’s doctor I would diagnose a severe case of dosomethingitis compounded by a case of handwringiness and suggest he is put-down so he suffers no more. Look Chuckles, I shall if you wish, tap the truth into your dense skull with a ball-peen hammer in a way that no homeopath can cure if you want. Science is the solution: science, reason, technology, logic, the values of Enlightenment are the solution. Ever wondered why it’s called the Enlightenment? No, you twat, you haven’t. You think you should rule over some rustifarian demi-paradise as some sort of philosopher-king. That’s it in a nutshell isn’t it? No fucking wonder the Enlightenment thinkers in the American colonies got rid of twatting cuntpoles like you.
“We cannot go on like this, just imagining that the principles of the Enlightenment still apply now. I don’t believe they do. But if you challenge people who hold the Enlightenment as the ultimate answer to everything, you do really upset them.”
Oh sweet Jesus in a Toyota Yaris with a stuck accelerator (the apostles on the other hand fared better - they were all in one Accord) where to start with that complete twatteration of best bollocks. Yeah, us folks get upset and when we get upset despotic monarchs called Charles have a disturbing tendency to have to take their heads home in a basket. I’m already sharpening my little mashie.
Instead, the Prince advocated a holistic approach to the world’s problems — including housing, healthcare and agriculture — that involved local initiatives rather than globalisation, and worked in harmony with nature rather than against it.
When I hear the word “holistic” I reach for my BAR and don’t worry about the safety. As to the rest… I shall not comment much for fear of giving myself some sort of cardiac episode. What an utterly spherical cunticule of a buggerfucktwat!
“I believe it is of crucial importance to work with, in harmony with nature, to rediscover how it is necessary to work with the grain of nature, as it is necessary to work with the grain of our humanity,” he said. “What is the point of all this clever technology if at the end of the day we lose our souls, and the soul of nature of which we are a part?”
So all this tech you are against Chuck, all this product of far, far better men and women than you could ever be if you had a Poincare time-scale of self-improvement that are advances in the natural sciences is to be junked? I’m getting angry now… Fuck you Charles. Fuck you and fuck the Bentley you rode in on.
Acknowledging that his views did not always fit with the mainstream, he said: “It is very difficult to challenge and overcome current conventional ways of looking at the world.”
Yes it is Chuckie Egg. That’s why the likes of Newton, Darwin and Einstein had to be geniuses. And you are not. I have seen my cat catch things smarter than you.
The Prince also made an impassioned call for houses to be built so that birds, such as swallows and swifts, could make their nests there. “It is immoral not to consider those other species that share this planet with us,” he said. “If the swallows and swifts stop coming here and nesting on the buildings that I love, then there is no point to life. Literally. It is symbolic, like the albatross. If that becomes extinct then I think we deserve nothing but reprobation.
He’s having a go at the birds now! He’s totally lost even the dismal turdulence of a plot he had earlier.
“We have to consider these issues. That is another reason why I have battled so hard in this area, despite the unbelievable abuse that is heaped on me every time I open my mouth.”
One wonders why that happens Chuckles? It must be fucking awful for you to be so misunderstood and I’m sure two palaces and half of Cornwall are not suitable compensation. Please Charles, just fuck off and live in a yurt and contemplate your own arsehole (if you can find it with both hands) and let the rest of us get on with the twenty-first century. Please do it because I’d rather be forced to felch Bernard Bresslaw live on an ITV1 show hosted by Ant and Dec than see you as King.
I am a product of the Enlightenment and you will not be the head of state of the nation that basically invented the modern world. I shall fight against the endarkening you propose. I shall fight against you being “Defender of Faiths” you fuckulent cockmonger of a wanker’s biscuit and it’s not just me. I shall do this because I do not wish to see the country of Newton, Locke and Maxwell ruled by some sort of thickie retread of a dark age king - Charles-a-Mangey perhaps? You have been warned Chuckles. We will not stand for this deranged feudal nonsense. It’s our country now and not your fucking fiefdom. We are free men and women because of the Enlightenment and we shall defend that. And there are an awful lot more of us than there are of you.
If this blog has purpose (a very moot point) it is to speak-up for the values of the Enlightenment. Certainly the Anglospheric one. And if that means me suggesting The Prince of Wails (if he doesn’t shut the fuck-up) is dragged through the streets on a tumbrel and pelted with crappy organic vegetables to being made permanently non-holistic by a sharp item taking him in the neck at 9.81m/s/s then so be it.
Everywhere we are beset by mysticism and tyranny and I’m taking my world back one blog-post at a time. (And yes, people do read this drivel - probs at the mo it’s Special Branch).
We are the greatest civilization of all time and we are not going down without one hell of a fucking fight.
I’ve always felt that while it’s not what you’d do if you were starting from scratch (like the Yanks), a constitutional monarchy is entirely compatible with a free, liberal state if you do it right. If nothing else, it prevents those 600-odd twats in the Commons from ever becoming our Head of State.
And I suppose I still do, but can you imagine that mystical cuntwit sitting in Buck House, his dirty great lugholes defacing our coinage, signing off all our statutes, and parading off around the globe as our national figurehead? I’d be embarrassed to admit I was British.
William looks like proper king material. Can’t we just skip straight to him?
“If the swallows and swifts stop coming here and nesting on the buildings…”
Swallows don’t like nesting on buildings, he’s thinking of house martins. You’ll find swallows nests inside buildings.
Not merely a highly enriched weapons grade tit-end but an ill-informed one too.
I wonder how he reacts to Mitchell & Webb’s Homeopathic A&E sketch, which beautifully wiped it’s arse on this kind of nonsense. Pure fucking genius. If you’ve never seen it, find it on YouTube. To reduce the risk of an embarrassment, it might be a good idea to have a pee first.
Sadly enough, Chuckie provides weapons-grade justification for disestablishment of the British Monarchy. And I always thought that it’d be a cold day in hell before I said that.
Just goes to show you that tolerating a monarchy that is so inbred that even the corgis have a club foot is a recipe for disaster.
Having said that, I have considerable admiration for Liz, who has (until recently) beaten the odds and managed to keep the moribund edifice out of the shit most of the time. It might have been better if old traditions had been honored, keeping the more outre genetic accidents in the basement with Mad Cousin Ruprecht.
Despite her many failings (being dumber than a box of hammers, and having excrabale taste in men being just two of the most obvious) - Diana at least managed to deliver heirs whose DNA is noticeably different from the last 4 or 5 generations of royals. I note (approvingly) that Harry may in fact have NONE of Charles’ DNA - how many prior red-headed Saxe-Coburgs can anyone name?
You really are writing up a storm lately Nick.
I had to change my trousers after reading that!
If Chuckles becomes King, we are going to be facing a madness of George 111 situation. The braindead twat isn’t going to shut up and just shake hands and cut ribbons like his mum is he?
No he is going to be sticking his oar into everything, and that will be the end of the monarchy, and with it 1000 glorious years of history.
Apparently his mum knows this, and there are rumours that there are backstage machinations afoot to get the blokes in white coats in sharpish, get him banished to the West Wing, and skip straight to William.
Pity Anne cant get the job. Now there is a Monarch we could be proud of.
The Prince stressed his belief in the importance of working with nature, warning that nature should not be ‘’suppressed and humiliated”
Says it all doesn’t it?
Camilla dear, contact the kitchens, we are having nature round for beer and sarnies and some hard talk. It could be a long night.
Anyone who thinks nature is a person who can be worked with, that actually possesses emotions, needs a little rubber room all to himself.
Barking! utterly Barking!
Bod,
I felt sorry for Diana. Chuckles shagged Camilla the same day (or day before - I forget) he married her. That is the action of a weak-willed cad of the first order. As to her taste in men. Not the finest but she was a nineteen year old virgin (as checked ut by the Royal Gynaecologist apparently). Jesus Christ. What chance did she have. And ironically if the Firm hadn’t behaved like something from the dark ages over the mating of the fruits of their loins how many sex-scandals and divorces could have been avoided? It was the Dear Old Queen Mum who was at it breeding them like her gee-gees. I’m glad that William and Harry have had (relatively) normal lives and depite her myriad faults I think Diana was clearly important there. I think they have coped admirably. I felt sorry for William and Kate when he and Kate split. I mean it’s a tough call to break with your girlfriend and then have the entire press team of the world park their Nikons on her lawn. I mean when I’ve split-up with girls I couldn’t even get the Buxton Advertiser to run it on an even-numbered page.
Oh and I descended into giggles just at the name “Ruprecht”.
RAB,
No, he will not ever shut-up. That’s the thing with twattishness - it’s an incurable progressive disease. He’s only going to get worse.
So we’ve got the rump parliament and we’re soon to have the ‘king Charlie on the throne so who’s gonna play the Oliver part?
Ya doing anything over the next few years Nick?
@ Sam Duncan ‘William looks like proper king material. Can’t we just skip straight to him?’
I’m afraid it sounds like William is turning into a chip off the old blockhead.
Not for the first time three words keep jumping around in my head:
Republic.
Now.
Please.
Kevin,
I’m forming a New Model Army and with these days defense procurement over-runs and delays that’s gonna be murder.
That’s great news Nick, but are a load of skinny birds falling out of their frocks gonna be a lot of use against the Household Cavalry?
Hang about, I’ll have to think about that one.
I daydreamed years ago about a new Good Queen Anne. Might get some good furniture out of the reign, plus maybe a Duke of Marlborough.
Long may Her Maj reign!
One is also reminded of the Chinese politician who was asked - in about 1970 - whether the French Revolution had had an impact on China.
He said it was too early to tell.
Charles thinks: It did have an impact on the West, but I don’t like it. So it should be reversed.
Yeh, go off and do it yourself, don’t make me do without science. You can eat turnips for three months of the year, I want the fruits of the industrial and agricultural revolution.
The monarchy are no longer relevant to this island. HM stayed quiet while GB signed away our sovereignty at Lisbon. Her (and their) silence signalled their funeral march.
” William looks like proper king material. Can’t we just skip straight to him?”
Personally, I prefer Hewitt’s boy.
Kev, from what I’ve heard of the Household Cavalry, skinny blokes falling out of frocks would probably be more effective
paulo, the Queens power is mainly theoretical. If she actually tried to use what powers are left to her, that would be the end of them. What New Labour would do to them would make what happened to Charles1 look like a shaving nick…
I do think it would have been worth it though for the fuckin stink it would have caused.
Bravo! It would be fitting to see him end on the guillotine (rather than the axe his ancestor benefitted from) an the ultimate symbol of the logics of the Enlightenment and the application of science to executing folk efficiently and humanely.
Well yes and no PT.
remember this? Drop it in the basket, I’ll read it later…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoTCdPPlZCs
Well I read somewhere, and I have no idea if it is true, that a severed head retains conciousness for about a minute after severance. Not all that humane surely?
There are aprocryphal stories from the French Revolution about heads speaking after they parted company from the body, but what the truth of that is - who knows?
I was being obliquely facetious, RAB. No such thing as a humane execution. The guillotine was regarded as an improvement on the axe because there were plentiful cases of it taking two, three or more blows from an axe to sever the head (poor aim, blunt axe, moving neck), and of the victim rising after the first blow with a partially severed head and attempting to run away. The guillotine did at least guarantee success first time every time.
He’s a bit of an easy target, as he’s not very bright. I met him years ago and was underwhelmed.
And that clothes whorse with whom he had one son filled his little brain with new age cockwaffle.
Ed.
The point is there are two types of dim folk. Those who know it and those who don’t. It’s the later you have to watch out for.
Yes I rather thought you were being something of the sort PT, but for my part, I never miss an opportunity to bung in a classic Carry On clip, especially if it is on topic.
I’m shocked Ed P!
Are you implying that Harry isn’t his? I know he is an expensive waste of space, but I always got the impression that screwing and watercolours, he was quite good at.
I’m afraid the whole family have been off with the fairies for quite a while, hence their addiction to Homeopathy.
It’s not a job that anyone can do successfully, not without absolute power. Charles means well which is more than we can reasonably expect. Sadly we all, through our own neglect and poor judgement, elected a House of Commons full of shyster crooks who handed all power to Brussels, who now call all the shots and are supported fully by the British political classes. Too late to bleat on all the time about it being someone else’s fault. The state is not now your friend.
Brilliant brilliant blogpost.
It’s Ball Pein btw
You are quite correct on our bloody politicians, Hal Le Roi, but Buggerlugs??
Charles means well which is more than we can reasonably expect.
The trouble is although he has no real power, he has considerable influence.
He was a keynote speaker in Copenhagen remember, and almost swung it round to a done deal.
A friend of mine went to Gordonstoun with him, and can attest that he is not just thick as two short planks, but a boatload of unsustainable Amazon hardwood.
His type of “means well” can seriously damage your wealth! (but not his of course).
[...] Ever wondered why it’s called the Enlightenment? No, you twat, you haven’t. You think you should rule over some rustifarian demi-paradise as some sort of philosopher-king. That’s it in a nutshell isn’t it? No fucking wonder the Enlightenment thinkers in the American colonies got rid of twatting cuntpoles like you. The Brilliant Nick at Counting Cats in Zanzibar [...]
Angry Exile: Two words. The first one is “Oh”. The second can be any profanity you like, the profaner the better. What is it with these people? They’re on a good thing there. You’d think they’d want to keep their heads down and their traps shut.
I wonder if the Dutch could sort us out with a little something in the off-the-peg monarch line again. They had a BOGOF deal going last time, as I recall.
The fact that Chuckles was a keynote speaker at Copenhagen is beyond human comprehension. He has a dodgy Desmond from Cambridge in “British Constitutional History”.
So what the flying fuck on a rocket tricycle did they think he could reasonably contribute to a conference on what is essentially a scientific question?
They had clearly scraped the barrel and were now digging below it where the woodlice live.
[...] Nick M @ CCinZ [...]
Funny post. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t the Prince declaring any war or inviting the Enlightenment randomly into the discussion. It was The Enlightened Ones declaring war on him. He was, as quoted, once accused once of being the “enemy of the Enlightenment”. I’d love to know by whom and why. But taking a clue from the audience he was addressing it was probably by the kinds of people who shoved up the current monstrosity at St Giles Place without so much as a public discussion. For however dimwitted he might be to some, he was certainly bang on the money when he pointed out that if you challenge people who hold the Enlightenment as the ultimate answer to everything you really upset them!
He’s been accused of being an enemy of The Enlightenment and ‘Progress’ in general. I enclose ‘progress’ in quotes because I don’t want to confuse progress with what ‘progressivism’ is now taken to mean.
Charles is strongly opposed GMO crops - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4520568.ece .
If he believes the biggest issue is keeping money out of Big Agri’s pockets, maybe he should reflect on the fact that GMO keeps millions if not billions of people alive. And I have to say, given a choice between being “driven off [my] land into unsustainable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations’ (which I dispute anyhow) is far better than dying of caloric restriction or outright starvation.
At a push, I could go on and find lots of other examples of him inserting his inarticulate oar into public debate, exploiting his celebrity, chunnering on, and on, and on about stuff he is profoundly unqualified to opine.
I have no problem with him proudly admitting that he is opposed to The Enlightenment. There’s something very refreshing about having an enemy who wears a uniform and is prepared to recieve fire.
My overall impression, from hearing decades of his sermons is that the world would be a far better place, with the serfs touching their forelocks in due deference as they stand by their duck ponds in the Duchy of Cornwall, as their betters glide past in a convoy of gleaming alloy aircars. Once the cavalcade passes, they return to their bioengineered domes and eat their locally produced, organic tofu pies and celebrate the fact that their chocolate ration was increased to six ounces.
One wonders what Charles does think is the “Answer”?
Back to thatched cottages (locally sourced thatch of course), the three field system, tallow candles and Sedan chairs?
At the risk of inheriting the title Princess of Darkness but in answer to Rab… The fact that we need an answer demonstrates that it is a valid question.
The Enlightenment ideas were both benign and malign. Malign when the belief in cold deductive reason goes too far and leaves out the non reasoning parts of human nature that have to be addressed. Feminism springs to mind. Malign when thinkers forget that “they see through a glass darkly” that is, when they forget to be aware that our science is still limited and that scientific ideas have to be constantly revised. At least religion taught us to have intellectual humility. I’m pretty sure Charles is not advocating a return to absolute monarchy.
The Enlightenment ideas were discussed in coffee houses and in debating societies. Nowadays we throw ideas and debates and gripes around on blogs. We are probably living now through an age of new discussion about where Our Great Leaders are headed and how to shape that debate. Unless of course we all very content with where we are currently at. I just didn’t think we were.
I was wondering if I should acknowledge this post. Seeing as alison has had the outrageous cheek to stick her neck out I must agree with her, that the arrogance of mankind thinking he has got all the answers is pathetic and very sad. And when it all goes nasty because we think we can sort it all out it will be the libertarians who should have been blowing the whistle.
Statism, Nazism, Sovietism, many hundreds of millions of horrible deaths in the last century alone, all the result of mankind thinking he has got all the answers.
Use your brains, sure. Think things through and explore. Use reason. Explore reason. But foul arrogance has no place in improving anything.
Which perhaps is what Prince Charles was trying to say?
I don’t know. I wasn’t there.
I agree the holist, global warming, house martin stuff is way off, but then we all are in some direction, hey?
If I may be so bold.
Be as bold as you like John B, that’s what it’s all about.
At least religion taught us to have intellectual humility.
Sorry Allison, I’d say the exact opposite. Religions of almost all stripes tell us that we are in charge, created in the image of God to do his will. We have the sanction to do as we want with the Earth and to and for it’s creatures,and as long as we please our God by following whatever arcane rules he /she or it lays down for us on occasion, then even death shall have no dominion over us.
This has led us to believe that we can do anything.
But reason and Science, when used properly, tells us that we are but fleas on the back of an elephant, hardly having any real effect at all.
Real enlightenment says that if someone gets a whacky idea like Communism, it’s ok to test it out and find out if it works, and if it doesn’t to ditch it and try something else. It doesn’t say it’s ok to murder millions of people who may have an equally valid, but contrary idea, whilst you’re trying it.
The Enlightenment is really all about knowing our limitations, as good old Clint used to say. To know how much we yet have to know.
Progress is just one stumbling step after another. Trying to understand, trying to develope, trying not to do harm if we can possibly help it.
Issac Newton, a true son of the Enlightenment, said once, and I will have to paraphrase because I can never find the proper quote (I would be grateful if someone has it)…
People call me a genius. But for myself, I see myself as a small child, amusing himself in the rockpools of life, playing with the shiny pebbles and shells that take my fancy, while all the time behind me, unnoticed, lies the great ocean of the unknown.
Now that’s Enlightenment.
Alison, John B,
Are you daring to question the absolute authority of Science?!
Good! That’s an Enlightenment value you’re using there. The Enlightenment was all about the transition from tradition, authority, hierarchy, and keeping everything the same to a system of changing society, questioning authority, extending boundaries, and making things better. It is about learning, about checking facts, about trying to figure out better ways to do things, and better things to do. It is about being never satisfied with what you’ve got.
The Enlightenment has its enemies - people who fear change, who fear what we might do if allowed to develop unchecked, who cannot bring themselves to believe that the party can go on indefinitely - and so they try to rein it in. We’ve got to stop consuming. Stop degenerating. We’ve got to control society. Not hurtle blindly towards the singularity; the catastrophe curve’s edge.
What you are both complaining about is in large part the fruit of their efforts. Reason being used to justify more control is not what the Enlightenment was about! Thinking we had all the answers is not what it was about! Those are the anti-Enlightenment. Those are our regression to what came before.
Feminism, the overturning of patriarchal assumptions, is pure Enlightenment thinking. The awareness that Science is limited comes directly from the Enlightenment - Scholasticism before it thought Aristotle had all the answers, to the point where they didn’t even bother to look. Religion taught that all the answers we needed were to be found in the Bible. (Or the Koran, in other jurisdictions.) The freedom of blogs is very Enlightenment - you wouldn’t even be on here if it wasn’t for this philosophy.
While Statism has often pretended to have the aims of the Enlightenment, its methods are diametrically opposed. Not control, but freedom.
And deductive reasoning is not cold. That part is about clear sight, about not lying to yourself. You might not like what it tells you about the world around you, but you have a better chance of doing something about it, and of not making things worse, if you use reason and observation, rather than what you think ought to be true. The world is sometimes cold, not reason. Some people, I know, prefer to live their lives wrapped in the warm pink clouds, but they keep on bumping into things, and then blaming somebody else. That’s their choice, though.
Charlie’s problem is that he can’t keep up. He’s not bright, so he can’t help with the mental heavy lifting involved in actually making things better. And he can’t keep track of all the changes brought about by those who do. He’s lost and frightened in the modern world. And he wants a simple world where simply making stuff up and wanting to believe it is so is enough, and has value. He acquires his beliefs from those who think the same way.
The past had its good bits, and it is important not to throw them away, in our rush to re-make the world. But it is not against the principles of the Enlightenment to do so. It isn’t about change for change’s sake. We have sometimes been careless that way, and that’s genuinely regrettable, and we ought to do better. But it’s not a reason to stop.
Here’s Kant defining it. Worth a look.
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html
We would go further today. Kant was a man of his times, publishing with an eye to the Authorities’ opinions of what he said. But it’s still very clear what it is all about.
Pa, Your 10.37 is a post in it’s own right.
God PA, there’s some nuggets in that Kant essay. Thanks for linking it, it’s really worth some study. One line that leapt out at me was “… the arrogant title of tolerance“. That one phrase crystallised so much that I find loathsome about what bloggers like DK and all call the Righteous.
Let me first state that I’m a monarchist and, should Australia become a republic, I’ll be a restorationist.
That said, Charles is a sinister loon. Even more sinister than Charles is his father, who has expressed downright murderous opinions on the subject of human population levels. Both these men would be aware that population reduces naturally in societies with a burgeoning middle class. Consequently, we can conclude that what they fear is not population, but the enrichment of the masses: of you and me.
Environmentalism is a foul, baseless and brutal mock-religion. It’s time to hit its adherents hard on the nose, as you’ve done in your article. Well done.
This response is not quite accurate:
“What you are both complaining about is in large part the fruit of their (the enemies of the Enlightenment) efforts. Reason being used to justify more control is not what the Enlightenment was about! Thinking we had all the answers is not what it was about! Those are the anti-Enlightenment. Those are our regression to what came before.”
I don’t need a label (Enlightenment) to tell me how to think. I just think. And you are presuming, incorrectly, to know what I am thinking.
I do not have a problem with the enlightenment and so I don’t really need to be encouraged to see its good points. I have a problem with arrogance.
I base my life on exploring and then exploring the exploration until it all makes sense. Which, so far it has not fully so done. Man’s wisdom will probably never be enough because it starts inside the box he lives in and cannot be externally verified.
But we have been through that.
The enlightenment is good but it is not the absolute authority. And any definite statements about anything imply one has accepted an authority.
I am not complaining about reason being used to justify control. Good grief! My basic statement as to what is wrong with the world is: The urge to control. People trying to tell other people what to do. People trying to lean on other people.
In terms of understanding what I repeatedly do find is that people get to the boundary of what they can perceive and then say, right, that’s it.
That includes all secularists, pretty much.
And any person who does not know the dynamic power of God moving in their life is basically a secularist. That is not a judgement, please. It simply is what they base their life on and therefore to all intents and purposes, what they believe.
And I’m also saying there is probably a lot more to the situation of Prince Charles that you used to go off on a hissy tangent.
I think the adults of the war generation may have something to do with it.
Best to you guys and to the enlightenment!
John,
For your purposes, you should just regard ‘The Enlightenment’ as a name for what you are doing anyway. We don’t value Enlightenment thinking because of it’s authority, and neither did its authors. We follow it because we happen to think it’s right.
I apologise if I misunderstood, but all the things you seemed to be complaining about, (Statism, etc., and mankind thinking he had all the answers), and that you seemed to be attaching to the Enlightenment label, were actually all features of the anti-Enlightenment.
You would appear to be an Enlightenment thinker without realising it. Much of what you’ve said fits into it perfectly.
“I base my life on exploring and then exploring the exploration until it all makes sense.” - Enlightenment.
“Man’s wisdom will probably never be enough because it starts inside the box he lives in and cannot be externally verified.” - Enlightenment.
“And any definite statements about anything imply one has accepted an authority.” - that’s a very ‘definite’ statement, don’t you think? But rejection of authority is a part of the Enlightenment.
“My basic statement as to what is wrong with the world is: The urge to control. People trying to tell other people what to do. People trying to lean on other people.” - More Enlightenment.
Do you see what I mean? You seem at first glance to be complaining about it, and then make statement after statement in its support.
Your statements on secularism seem at a bit of a tangent, but I’m wondering if that’s actually at the root of your objections. (No offence intended if it’s not.) You have no doubt heard that the Enlightenment led to the movement towards secularism, scepticism, disbelief, and ultimately atheism. Perhaps Christian belief feels it has common cause with Charles’ Green/Alternative beliefs.
If so, that’s another debate entirely. But my view is that the Enlightenment only made it possible for people to be atheists and agnostics. The doubt and disbelief came on their own.
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Atheism versus Belief is another debate, which I personally enjoy, but which I know some people can get deeply upset about, so I always check to see how people are liable to react before starting in on it. I’ll only do it for mutual and non-serious entertainment, when there’s nothing important riding on it.
And I’m not doing it tonight - especially as the site seems a bit sluggish. Tomorrow, perhaps.
But thanks for an interesting debate. It was one of the better ones.
Sadly royals are pretty much bred to talk down to people, so so much they say sounds condescending. Picking through it, the essence of what he says is probably correct. Presuming what he’s going on about is essentially that intellectual masturbation is bad when just getting on with simple solutions would work right away. That he scatters off onto pet interests so rapidly doesn’t help. Nor does the quality-snobbery he routinely engages in. Organic biscuits may be the perfect thing to eat, but not everyone can afford them, so stop rubbing it in their faces. And even if everyone suddenly stopped eating the “lungs and arsehole” sausages and went to prime cuts only, meat eating would get massively less efficient because a huge amount of the critters are now longer deemed worthy of our consumption. Waste would go up. Prices would go up. Same for harvests. Go all organic, yeilds fall, not enough for all.
In the “holistic” picture, going all organic on a product type would leave just an even more yawning gap between haves and have nots. People don’t fall upward, so if you remove the top rung on their ladder they only go downward.
I’d be after simpler recommendations on reclaimed meats. “Anything you have to get off a carcass with a pressure washer should be made into soup, not dried, padded and moulded into meat-scented playdough.” It could only keep in more flavour, nutrition, and decrease chances of contamination.
I also think holistic would be better spelt wholistic, since it is supposed to mean taking things as a whole.
That and “twatting cuntpole” is now in my lexicon, thankyou.