WEBVTT - How the Enlightenment Works 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:04.400 Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuffworks 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:13.360 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:18.119 There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Are. So this 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:22.239 is stuff you should know. The Enlightened Ones exactly, the 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:26.960 three of us, no one else, No, we're the Enlightened Ones. 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:31.000 I am gonna go ahead and preface this what what 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:33.640 I just said off the air. This is a very 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:37.000 tough subject to distill in a thirty to forty five 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:41.239 minute podcast because volumes of books can be written on 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:43.720 the Age of Enlightenment and have been and have been. 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:45.280 So this is this is stuff. There is gonna be 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:49.319 a very bird's eye view. Yeah, there's a dude named 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.199 Jonathan Israel who just came out with I think this 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:57.960 third volume of a three volume set on the Enlightenment 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.120 and he wrote literally several thousand and pages of it 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:06.160 and it's considered an obscure text. Yeah, he probably doesn't 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.440 even think that he covered it in full. No, but 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:12.880 he doesn't, although he's coming right. I think he does 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:15.080 have another one coming. So maybe it was a second 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:20.679 but um he uh that that the idea that um 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:23.360 he doesn't think that it's done, that it's not finished 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:27.200 is actually a pretty standard view of the Enlightenment. Like, 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:32.160 during research for this, I realized that there are tons 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:37.240 of intellectual arguments going on right now, like the Bill 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:41.080 Maher thing. Bill Maher in Islam. He's been accused of 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:46.479 being like a just a complete racist, xenophobic dude um 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:50.920 because of his recent statements on Islam. Did you see 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:54.400 him and Ben ben uh? Did you see them get 0:01:54.440 --> 0:02:00.600 into it? Okay, that argument is an Enlightenment argument. It's 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.680 like it provided the Enlightenment was so massive that the 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.960 ripple effects are still being felt on a daily basis 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.960 because it was such an enormous change in the way 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.720 humans think that we're still trying to sit there and 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:19.040 analyze what the heck happened. And that is one manifestation 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:23.920 of it. Is is like what Bill Maher is saying is, well, 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:26.640 you know, Islam is a religion or whatever, and therefore 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:30.520 it's um an athetical to progress and culture and like 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:35.040 real thought and rationalism, and Ben a Ben yeah, Ben 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.560 Affleck is saying, like, you can't say that about a culture, 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:40.919 Like each culture is its own thing. So what we're 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:44.880 seeing there is the idea of moral absolutism arguing with 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:52.560 moral relativism, and that is like textbook Enlightenment argument. Pretty interesting. Sure. 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:56.160 Like researching this article seriously, I tied together probably ten 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.320 different things that I didn't realize we're connected. Well, yeah, 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:01.280 I love it when stuff like that. It was the 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:05.800 start of and you know, the age of Enlightenment quote 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.760 unquote started and ended, but it was the birth of 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:17.320 just a new kind of thought and a new value system, uh, philosophical, scientific, cultural, intellectual, 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:23.400 basically saying reason over this previous long held belief that 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.240 just strict religious dogma is all you need to worry about. 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.200 You don't question anything, don't try and think about science 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.639 and nature and things like that other than just this 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.640 is God's creation and what does it mean in terms 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.000 of religion exactly. So, of course it's still going on. 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:42.440 But it wasn't. It wasn't just that. It was definitely 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:48.440 Enlightenment was the If you're an Enlightenment UM fan, you 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.920 would say Enlightenment was the domination of reason over religion 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:54.480 or faith. It was a it was a value system basically. 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:58.280 But there was another aspect of the Enlightenment, the domination 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:04.600 of um the will of the people over the monarchy. UM. 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:10.360 Economic there was economic change, UM, huge economic changes thanks 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.120 to Adam Smith. There were a lot of like huge 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.920 monumental changes in the way people thought. UM. So much 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.880 so that modern historians who are trying to unpack the 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.960 Enlightenment still one of the schools of thought is that 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:26.960 you can't just call it the Enlightenment. It happened in 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:32.440 too many different places under different circumstances. Um. And then 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:35.200 the again, like the the different aspects of it, the 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.479 fact that one part of it dealt with governmental change, 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:40.680 one part of it dealt with religious change, another part 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:45.120 that with economic change. That they it's been kind of 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:49.680 distilled into separate compartments. Now, yeah, I mean separate compartments 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:56.120 somewhere divergent and contradictory. Uh. It occurred nearly simultaneously in 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.960 the eighteenth century in France, Great Britain, Germany and other 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:05.600 in at least Bain, Portugal, American colonies all over the place. UM. 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:07.599 I like to say, it's the period of time where 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:11.320 the world started waking up and pulled their heads from 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:16.560 their rear ends. Basically, well, the the the question now, 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:22.279 I mean, if you're a religious type, you're probably happy 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:25.800 about the fruits of the Enlightenment. Like everybody points at 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.800 the Industrial Revolution is proof positive the Enlightenment was great, 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.600 or the American experiment proof positive the Enlightenment was great. 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:34.839 But you probably don't like the fact that the world 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.080 completely turned its back on religion or not completely but 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:42.279 largely did. If you're a pro Enlightenment type, you're probably 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.520 saying this was for the best, like we were backwards, 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.080 we emerged from the dark Ages thanks to the Enlightenment. Um, 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.080 And this is the argument that's still going on today, Like, yes, 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:54.880 the Enlightenment changed everything, but did it go too far? 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:58.880 So that's we'll get into all that. But Conger, who 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:01.039 wrote this article, I think did a very good job 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:05.600 of taking the whole thing back further than the eighteenth 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.040 century out of the French salons and set the stage 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:14.640 for what created the basis for this this change in thinking. Yeah, 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:16.800 I think Kristen did a great job of distilling a 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:20.400 complex topic down to like an eight page article, but 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:22.720 she does take it back to Um, there were a 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:26.360 couple of things that sort of laid the groundwork. Um, well, 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:28.000 a lot of things, but a couple of them are 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:33.240 Mr Sir Isaac Newton and the famous story of the 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.359 apple falling on his head, which makes a great story. 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.000 He told a lot of people that I don't know 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:42.719 how uh factually exactly true that is, but it makes 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:45.480 for a great story. But either way you want to 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.839 look at it. Isaac Newton looked at the space at 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:52.680 some point between that apple in the ground and said, 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.880 there's something going on in that empty space that should 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:59.440 be explained, because that apple doesn't fall up. Something's keeping 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:01.560 us all did here on the ground, and I want 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:03.440 to look into that. Although if you were a fan 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.560 of David Humes, you would say, uh, well, actually it 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:08.920 could consumably fall up, because we've never proven it won't 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:12.400 fall up. And him was one of the proponents, well 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.800 not proponents, but uh he was active in the Age 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:19.680 of Enlightenment. Another thing that really laid the groundwork was 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.640 the Thirty Years of War from six eighteen to sixty eight, 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:29.320 which pretty much paved the way for Protestant Reformation and 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.760 the Roman Catholic Church took a lot of the teeth 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.200 away from the Roman Catholic Church. Huge first time, Yeah, 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:38.120 it was. There was a huge change. So what you 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:43.200 just described, Chuck, is a the foundation for the intellectual 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:49.520 branch of of the Enlightenment thinking usurping the power from 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:53.680 theological thinking. And then with the Thirty Year War, the 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:56.600 political power was taken away from the church because for 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.520 the first time now the precedent has been set that 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.960 you was a citizen. Your allegiance is not split between 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:06.600 church and state. Your allegiances first and foremost to the state. 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:10.640 And we see that still today. Like if somebody uh 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:15.440 kills their um, their parents or whatever because it's the 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.760 Seventh Sign and Demi Moore's running around and they it 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:21.600 turns out that they were brother and sister, so you 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.000 kill them because it's the will of God. State says, 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:25.560 I don't care if it's the will of God, you 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.560 can't kill your parents. The state's law is more powerful 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.840 and more important than God's law. That's straight out of 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.400 the Thirty Years War that changed everything. Have you ever 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:40.200 seen the Seventh Sign? Man? I saw that, like when 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.319 it came out. I don't remember anything about it. I 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.559 just remember like one of the characters was this kid 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.640 with down syndrome and he murdered his parents because he 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:51.280 found out that they were brother and sister and he 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:55.040 was super religious and they were going to execute him. Yeah, 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.600 when they execute. I think he was like the last martyr. Man, 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.880 I'll have to check it out again. Yeah more. Uh man, 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.640 she just keeps getting better looking, don't she. How didn't 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:08.480 do that? Yeah, like you look at um. Blame it 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:12.960 on Rio seeing that. Yeah, she's kind of dooey and 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.320 not tubby, but just round. And then she got all chiseled. Man, 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:23.360 they remained chiseled. That was Michael Kine. Wasn't it great movie? Yeah? 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:25.400 But I mean she was a kid back then. Everyone 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:27.520 was Dowie back then when they were kids. Blaming Rio. 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.560 It was really good movie. So Conger points out even 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:34.120 further back about the Dark Ages, sort of laying the groundwork, 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:36.959 which the Dark Ages were dark for many reasons, but 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:40.000 one of the big ones was that the Roman Catholic 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:44.960 Church basically ruled everything. Uh. Latin was the language, the 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.880 center of life and academia where monasteries and abbeys. You 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:56.360 weren't encouraged to get educated outside of uh theological uh realms. 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:58.920 It was not encouraged. Do you have to actually, I 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.320 want to say, you have to be carefully using the 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:06.480 term Dark Ages because uh apparently it is a disparaging 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:09.720 label that people on the pro Enlightenment side of the argument. 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:13.760 The humanists, they say, these are the Dark Ages. That 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:15.920 was back when the Church controlled everything, when everybody was 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:20.120 just an ignoramus. Once the Enlightenment came along, we emerge 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:23.160 from the Dark Ages. Technically, once the Renaissance came along, 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:24.800 we emerge from the Dark Ages. So if you're in 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:27.559 a Storian, you call it the Middle Ages. But even 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:30.600 the Middle Ages are kind of sad because it just 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:33.920 says these ay just kind of existed between this important 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:36.160 age and this important age. We just call this the 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.480 Middle Ages. But it's better than the Dark Ages. But 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:43.200 that's a that's a um an argument or a label 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:50.120 that a disparaging label that humanists use unfairly, because there 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.440 were scientists working and laying the groundwork for future science 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:55.640 in the Dark Ages, and Congret even mentions them in 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:59.880 this article, like Thomas Aquinas came up with scholasticism, Yeah, 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:05.520 and scholasticism is basically the idea that you can understand 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.920 God even more and be even more pure and divine 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:13.760 yourself by studying nature. Yeah. Roger Bacon was another monk 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:17.000 who was a proponent of that. And I think um 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:19.120 that allowed them and I don't think that's the reason 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:21.200 they did it. But that allowed them to pursue these 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:25.960 scientific avenues because it was still tied to God. Another 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:30.560 big change was Uh. Like I said before, in the 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.600 not so dark Ages, perhaps Latin was the language, and 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:38.040 they didn't have something called the printing press until Johann 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.640 Guttenberg came along in fourty eight and says, you know what, 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.120 everyone should be able to read. Start printing stuff in 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:48.000 your native tongue. Uh. And that led directly to people 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:52.280 starting to educate themselves. It was the democratization of education 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.160 right exactly. And all of this didn't happen like out 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.320 of the blue, like Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas and 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:01.480 a guy named Leonardo Brunei. They didn't necessarily come up 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.520 with their ideas on their own. There was some this 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:09.280 really seminal thing that happened back in the mid century 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:13.680 where somebody, I don't know who did, somebody translated um 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:18.319 Aristotle I believe his works into Latin, and all of 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:25.840 a sudden, the Greek rational thinkers of antiquity, their ideas 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:29.120 were suddenly available to the West for the first time. 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.079 And it just so happened that some people started paying 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:37.240 attention to these things. Leonardo Bruni read Petrarch and revived 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.839 the idea of humanism, which is a huge sea change 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:44.880 because humanism says humans are pretty awesome and the fruit 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:47.560 of our labors, the fruit of our intellect, the fruit 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:51.720 of everything that we do comes from human ability, not 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:55.840 God Like, We're not just vessels for God's brilliance to 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.880 be shown through. If you create something, you come up 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:02.280 with a work of art because God did that. You 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:05.040 did that, but let's figure out how you did it, right. 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:09.160 That's humanism. And this is what the Renaissance started to 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:11.720 revive and was a huge change, Like, maybe we should 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:14.640 start paying attention to ourselves a little more exactly, let's 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:18.920 explore the human condition. Yeah. Um. Aristotle was not a 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:24.000 heretic because he tied his geocentric universe ideas to God 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.400 as well. Um. He thought the universe was composed of 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:31.559 ten separate crystal spheres, and beyond the tenth sphere that 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:36.760 was heaven and God. Uh. Copernicus, Um, she uh pretty 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:41.560 much said no, that's not true. The universe is infinite. Uh. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:45.920 And he was pretty alone in that thinking. Early on, 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.679 I faced a lot of criticism from like every every 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:53.640 religion Protestants and Catholics. Yep, it was a They thought 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:55.720 it was a dangerous way of thinking because he didn't 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:58.000 make room for God in the cosmos, And it definitely 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:00.800 was a dangerous way of thinking to the church, Like 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.800 the Protestant Reformation was going on, you had the Thirty 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:08.240 Years War coming down the pike, you had Copernicus um 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:13.040 thanks to this revival of interest in astronomy, like yeah, 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.760 starting to to look at the universe around us and 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:21.480 finding even like symbolic stuff like um, who was it? Kepler? 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:26.520 He was an assistant to Tycho Brahe and Kepler figured 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:31.160 out that the planets uh revolve around the Sun in 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.960 an ellipse. Well, the church, the Holy Roman Church, said 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.440 that the circle was a symbol of perfection. So of 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.320 course everything revolved around the earth in a circle. Not 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.080 only did things not revolve around the Earth, revolved around 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.120 the sun. And they didn't even do that in a circle, 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.840 they did an ellipse. So the church is just losing 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:52.960 its mind because all these people are coming forward saying 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:57.280 everything that you're saying over here is starting to prove 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.640 to smell like bs and the church is losing its 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.560 power left and right. Both politically and intellectually. It's losing 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:07.720 its authority. Yeah. Galileo even recanted, uh, because he was 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:10.840 accused of heresy for his theory that the Earth rotates 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.600 on its axis. So he said, I'll take it all back. 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:16.680 I didn't mean that. Please don't kill me. He's like, 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.400 but just make sure my manuscripts survive. So we were 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:25.560 talking about Bacon. He is the creator of the scientific method, 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.440 and he says, you know what, we should use experiments 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.800 to actually try and explain things. And so it's six. 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:35.360 I think it's high time we have a method for 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:38.240 doing so. So that was Francis Bacon. Yes, I wonder 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:41.320 if he was related to Roger Bacon. I don't know. 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:43.600 They were separated by a few centuries, but they could 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:47.360 have been fam sure, I think so. Uh. And he 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.800 was did you ever take philosophy in college? No? Um, 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:52.800 I think I might have. I didn't get much out 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:54.360 of it. If I did, I don't remember. That's like 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:58.840 one class we studied descartes um a lot. I've grown 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:00.720 to be a little more interest it in it, but 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:06.480 I like the more I like like existential crisis philosophy, 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:08.960 like Nick Bostrom stuff, And I don't know what that is, 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:13.080 just basically how the world's gonna end. Okay, this stuff 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:15.920 is I think, like de Cartes is interesting, but I'm 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:18.880 not like a I'm not. It doesn't light my fire. Yeah, 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:20.320 it was right. I think I made an a in 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:22.920 that class actually because it interested me at the time. 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:25.040 But I never took a follow up class. It just 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:27.440 took the intro. So it clearly didn't mean that much 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:29.960 to me. But I get it. Well. Yeah, And what 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:37.160 they cart was saying is our experience is not It's 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:40.720 not what you thought. Like mind and matter are two 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.640 different things, and the human experiences a subjective experience and 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.880 the mind, what the mind produces is different than what 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:52.320 is reality and really kind of um that changed things 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:55.080 tremendously too. So you got all these people like contributing 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.560 to this. We haven't even reached the eighteenth century yet, 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:01.360 Like the groundwork is definitely being late and it's still 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:05.399 being laid. Um as far as the like the government goes. 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.800 John locke Um was one of the people who contributed 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.480 to the idea of the social contract. The social contract 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:17.359 there was Hobbes Lock and later on Rousso and others 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.680 contributed this idea that humans are born with natural rights. 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:25.240 You're born free. I'm born free, even Jerry's born free, 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:29.480 look at her. And to form a society, you give 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:32.920 up some of these natural rights. For example, one one 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:35.320 thing that you give up is your right to kill 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:41.240 in retribution. Uh. Any society typically demands a state monopoly 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:45.680 on violence, which means that if somebody kills your family member, 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:47.879 you don't go kill that person. You go to the 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:50.960 state and say that guy killed my family member, triumph, 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:53.200 convict him and kill him on my behalf because there's 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:55.879 a state monopoly on violence. So that's a natural right 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:58.800 that you give up. I think appropriately so and for 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.359 the better, but as part of the social contract and 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:05.639 so Uh. The idea that that humans had these rights 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:09.440 and that society in turn had rights because humans gave 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:14.080 them rights. Um, that was a big basis of enlightenment thinking. 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:16.679 That would be added to later on too. Yeah. And 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:20.399 Locke also was one of the first champions of what 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:23.040 would kind of become nurture over nature. His idea of 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:26.400 the Tabu larassa that when humans are born, their minds 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.440 are a clean slate and they are shaped by experience 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.640 and education and not some preordained thing that you're born 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:36.679 with and uh, this French intellect gobbled that stuff up. 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:40.240 His name was Francois Marie Arouette, and he went by 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:43.680 a name you might know, Voltaire, and he really loved 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:45.960 this stuff and went back to France with all these 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:50.159 ideals and said, we gotta get on this and let's uh, 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.120 you know, we can't go out in the streets right 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:53.960 now and talk about the stuff, but we can meet 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:56.680 in private and homes like a Tupperware party, and we'll 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.600 call them salons and we'll we'll talk about these radical 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:03.200 ideas is in um in this new way of thinking, 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:05.560 in the privacy of homes for those that are willing 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:08.520 to host it. Yeah, and we'll talk more about Voltaire 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:14.400 and what he did right after this. So, Chuck, Voltaire 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:19.520 has been lit up. He was in England from seventeen 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:23.160 twenty nine, living in exile because he was already critical 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:25.680 of the French monarchy. While he was there he ran 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:30.159 into the ideas of lock of apparently Descartes as well. 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:35.080 He he basically got turned onto rationalism and he was 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:37.239 primed and ready for it, Like this guy was just 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:40.160 waiting for these ideas to pour into him. And when 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:43.879 they did. He became a lightning rod for what we 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:47.840 think of as the Enlightenment. Like Voltaire was the main 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:51.760 dude to start from what I understand. Yeah, and um, 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:53.719 like we mentioned the salons, they had to do this 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:58.400 in private because Louis the four Yeah that right, Yeah, 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:03.920 get better at that. He was pretty hard on to try. 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:07.040 He didn't like that kind of talk. It threatened him 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.840 for good reason. Uh well, yeah, I mean the reason 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:13.879 why is like the power was taken from the church 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:16.720 in place more in the monarchy. But in very short order, 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:18.879 people said, you know, we're not really that fond of 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.320 the monarchy either. We think we should rule ourselves or 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:24.479 at least elect people to rule ourselves. To this divine 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:26.520 right of kings. Things seems kind of hinky now that 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.520 we think about it. So the monarchies were threatened as 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:32.439 well by the Enlightenment. So yeah, the monarchy liked the 0:20:32.520 --> 0:20:36.200 dumb masses that stayed under their thumb and any kind 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:40.480 of like radical thought or original thought was super dangerous. 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:44.760 It sounds familiar exactly. It is interesting how you talked about. 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:47.760 I think there are periods of time where things like 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:50.119 the Age of Enlightenment keep popping up that's like the 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:53.199 nineteen sixties in the United States, and I think, like 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:54.960 you said, we're in one right now. I think we're 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.760 in probably more than even the sixties right now. Yeah, 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:00.080 And I think there are periods where that lulls it 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:05.480 like maybe the nineteen eighties, the seventies, remember Disco, like 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:08.399 a dumbing down of things. Yeah, just people not caring 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:11.280 or whatever. It's weird and cyclical. I read I read 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:14.879 this article um called things Fall Apart How social media 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.679 leads to a less stable world. It was by a 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.720 guy named Curtis Howland h G. H. L Andy and 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:23.760 it's on Knowledge at Wharton there, like the Wharton Business 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:26.760 School website, and it was basically saying it wasn't I 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:28.760 thought it was condemning social media, and this guy was 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:33.600 just basically stating, matter of factly that social media erodes 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:38.360 the state and that now we have ways to connect 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:41.560 with other people in ways that are more important to 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:44.399 us than, say, our allegiance to the state. So you 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:48.600 may feel, um, you may feel more connected to somebody 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:53.000 over Hello Kitty and your fondness for Hello Kitty, more 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.480 than you would identify yourself as saying American, and with 0:21:56.600 --> 0:21:59.160 social media you're able to connect with other people who 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:01.679 feel the same way, and so you form on social 0:22:01.680 --> 0:22:06.440 media basically bodies that supersede the state in your opinion, 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.800 no boundaries exactly. And as this happens, more and more 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.160 of the states, what's called sovereignty erodes more and more 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:16.560 and more um and it becomes a less and less 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:19.800 stable world. The guy's point was that, yes, while it's 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:22.800 very unstable and things are much more dangerous during periods 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:26.320 like this, it's it's basically just a period of upheaval 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.480 and change, and then eventually things stabilize again. But what 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.080 this guy was saying, using this as an example, is 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:35.520 that we're in a like right now, possibly on the 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:39.800 cusp of a period of tremendous fundamental change in the world. 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:44.680 I see that every day. It's pretty interesting time to 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.000 be alive. Yeah, a little scary to me. Yeah, well, 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:50.120 I mean it's like the guy said, it's it's more 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:55.760 dangerous than your average time because change frequently comes out 0:22:55.800 --> 0:23:01.040 of spasms of violence or um upheaval, just where nobody's 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:04.400 in charge, because there's a power struggle going on, or 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:10.760 our normal structures are being eroded. It's interesting, it's super interesting. Uh. 0:23:11.760 --> 0:23:14.320 So back to the salons. We're back to the age 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:19.680 of enlightenment, the traditional age of enlightenment. Uh, the Salons, 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:22.440 the members were known. There was a group of people 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:26.480 known as the philosophics. Uh. We've mentioned a few of them. Rousseau, 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:29.720 did Hero Voltaire. Um, how do you pronounce that? Is 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:35.000 that it's not montgue is it Montesquieu Montesquieu? Um. And 0:23:35.119 --> 0:23:40.560 they were They're kind of skeptics and critics of not 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:45.400 everything but the establishment of government or the way government 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:49.280 was at the time, especially the church. Hated the church, 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:53.720 like Voltaire especially hated the church and the very fact 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:56.600 that it even existed. And a lot of the enlightened 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:02.480 Uh ones were deists um and daism Basically, I like 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:05.600 the way Conger put it um in a big picture way. 0:24:05.720 --> 0:24:08.720 They believe in a clockmaker God, which means maybe God 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:11.119 created everything and set things in motion. But then I 0:24:11.200 --> 0:24:13.000