Four Things You Need to Believe if You Want to be an Enlightened Moron

Photo by Nghia Le on Unsplash

You wanna be enlightened?

Believe four tenets:

1. Every genuine question can be answered. If it can’t be answered, it’s not a genuine question.

2. The answers to the questions can be discovered, learned, and taught.

3. All the answers are compatible with one another.

4. Any experience that doesn’t fall within the above is illegitimate and ought to be discarded as superstitious, dinosauric, dangerous, or simply stupid.

If you believe those four tenets, you’re enlightened.

You’re also a moron.

The Future Was So Bright, They Had to Wear Shades

Those tenets, said Isaiah Berlin in The Roots of Romanticism, drove the Enlightenment, which was modernity’s coming of age.

Picture a promising 21-year-old man: handsome, smart, ambitious, and cocky. The world waits for him to conquer it.