Monotheist / Pro-Omni
(~Enlightenment)
Virtual
Collective
Interdependency
Objectivity
Conform to nature
Contradiction:
In order to conform to the realities of human nature and achieve peace in an inter-connected world, we have to spend much of our existence in a virtual realm and artificially construct an objective narrative to bind us together as one people.
People have the ability to express greater individuality, but not the impetus to do so.
(~Romanticism)
Reality / Physical presence
Individuality
Independence
Subjectivity
Embrace nature, but push the boundaries
Contradiction:
If everyone is to be self-sufficient, then we lose our systematic freedom to be individuals as we all must exhibit the same skill sets to survive.
Notes / Quotes from The Better Angels of Our Nature
- "The universe of ideas, in which one idea entails others, is itself an exogenous force and once a community of thinkers enters that universe, they will be forced in certain directions regardless of their material surroundings... The reason so many violent institutions succumbed within so short a span of time was that the arguments that slew them belong to a coherent philosophy that emerged during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. The ideas of thinkers...coalesced into a worldview that we can call Enlightenment humanism... It begins with skepticism."
-BAON, pg. 180
- "Morality is not a set of arbitrary regulations... it is a consequence of the interchangeability of perspectives and the opportunity the world provides for positive-sum games."
-BAON, pg. 182
- "Enlightenment humanism did not, at first, carry the day... its full implications were roundly rejected in much of the world."
- "Burke was the father of intellectual secular conservatism.... In that vision, human beings are permanently saddled with limitations of knowledge, wisdom, and virtue. People are selfish and shortsighted, and if they are left to their own devices, they will plunge into a Hobbesian war of all against all. The only things that keep people from falling into this abyss are the habits of self-control and social harmony they absorb when they conform to the norms of a civilized society."
-BAON, pg. 184
- "An acknowledgement of human nature may have been the chief difference between the American revolutionaries and their French confréres, who had the romantic conviction that they were rendering human limitations obsolete... The two extreme visions of human nature - a Tragic vision that is resigned to its flaws, and a Utopian vision that denies it exists - define the great divide between right-wing and left-wing political ideologies... A better understanding of human nature in the light of modern science can point to an approach to politics that is more sophisticated than either."
-BAON, pg. 186, commenting on the primary argument of The Blank Slate
- "A child of the counter-enlightenment does not pursue a goal because it is objectively true or virtuous, but because it is a unique product of one's creativity"
- BAON, pg. 187