WEBVTT - SYSK Selects: How The Enlightenment Works 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:03.840 Hey there everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:07.520 s Y s K Selects, I've chosen How the Enlightenment Works. 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:10.400 And the reason we named it works rather than worked, 0:00:10.440 --> 0:00:13.800 just because we realized during this episode that this battle 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:18.400 between rationalism and superstition is still going on today. The 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:21.520 Enlightenment is still going on today. And I've chosen it 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:24.280 this week because I feel like it explains a lot 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:28.280 a lot of the division in the world today, not 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:30.160 just in the United States, not just in the West, 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:33.560 but all over the world where there's a dividing line 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:36.839 that is separating people. That this gulf, this wedge is 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:39.839 getting deeper and deeper, and I think that this is 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:42.960 the basis of the whole thing. See if you agree, 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:46.800 If not, it's fine. It's still an interesting episode either way. 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:52.040 I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, 0:00:52.240 --> 0:01:00.760 a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:03.720 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:08.319 w Chuck Bryant and Jerry are So this is Stuff 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:12.520 you should Know. The Enlightened Ones exactly, the three of us, 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:19.039 no one else, No, we're the Enlightened Ones. I am 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:20.920 gonna go ahead and preface this what what I just 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:24.280 said off the air. This is a very tough subject 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.440 to distill in a thirty to forty five minute podcast 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.320 because volumes of books can be written on the Age 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:33.679 of Enlightenment and have been and have been. So this 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.800 is this is stuff. There's gonna be a very bird's 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:40.080 eye view. Yeah, there's a dude named Jonathan Israel who 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.840 just came out with I think this third volume of 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:48.240 a three volume set on the Enlightenment, and he wrote 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:52.680 literally several thousand pages of it and it's considered an 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:56.440 obscure text. Yeah, he probably doesn't even think that he 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:59.760 covered it in full. No, Betty doesn't. Although he's for 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.600 flame coming right. I think he does have another one coming, 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:07.680 So maybe it was a second but um he uh 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.480 that that The idea that um, he doesn't think that 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:14.280 it's done, that it's not finished is actually a pretty 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:18.320 standard view of the Enlightenment. Like during research for this, 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:24.679 I realized that there are tons of intellectual arguments going 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.239 on right now, like the Bill Maher thing. Bill Maher 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.600 and Islam. He's been accused of being like a just 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:37.400 a complete racist, xenophobic dude. Um because of his recent 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:42.680 statements on Islam. Did you see him and Ben Ben uh? 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:46.720 Did you see them get into it? Okay, that argument 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:51.239 is an Enlightenment argument. Yeah, it's like it provided the 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.720 Enlightenment was so massive that the ripple effects are still 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.119 being felt on a daily basis because it was such 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:02.960 an enormous change in the way humans think that we're 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:06.359 still trying to sit there and analyze what the heck happened, 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:10.880 And that is one manifestation of it. Yeah, is is 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:13.840 like what Bill Maher is saying is, well, you know, 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.919 Islam is a religion or whatever, and therefore it's um 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.959 an athetical to progress and culture and like real thought 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:25.680 and rationalism. And Ben Ben yeah, Ben Affleck is saying, like, 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.440 you can't say that about a culture, Like each culture 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:31.160 is its own thing. So what we're seeing there is 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:36.000 the idea of moral absolutism arguing with moral relativism, and 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:42.640 that is like textbook Enlightenment argument. Pretty interesting. Sure. Like 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.200 researching this article seriously, I tied together probably ten different 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:49.400 things that I didn't realize We're connected. Yeah, I love 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:51.360 it when stuff like that happened. It was the start 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:56.000 of and you know, the age of Enlightenment. Quote unquote 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.600 started and ended, but it was the birth of just 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:07.000 a new kind of thought, a new value system, UH, philosophical, scientific, cultural, intellectual, 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:13.080 basically saying reason over this previous long held belief that 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:16.919 just strict religious dogma is all you need to worry about, 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:21.080 don't question anything, don't try and think about science and 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.479 nature and things like that other than just this is 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:27.400 God's creation and what does it mean in terms of 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:29.919 religion exactly. So of course it's still going on. But 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.080 it wasn't. It wasn't just that it was definitely Enlightenment 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:38.360 was the If you're an Enlightenment UM fan, you would 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:42.080 say Enlightenment was the domination of reason over religion or faith. 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:45.080 It was a value system basically. But there was another 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:50.240 aspect of the Enlightenment, the domination of UM, the will 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:57.760 of the people over the monarchy, UM, economic economic change, UM, 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:01.680 huge economic changes. Think. To Adam Smith, there were a 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:07.120 lot of like huge monumental changes in the way people thought, UM. 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:10.039 So much so that modern historians who are trying to 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.200 unpack the Enlightenment still one of the schools of thought 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:16.120 is that you can't just call it the Enlightenment. It 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:21.680 happened in too many different places under different circumstances. Um. 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:24.720 And then the again, like the the different aspects of it, 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.159 the fact that one part of it dealt with governmental change, 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:30.680 one part of it dealt with religious change, another part 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:34.800 that with economic change. That they it's been kind of 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:39.280 distilled into separate compartments. Now, yeah, I mean separate compartments 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:46.599 somewhere divergent and contradictory. Uh. Occurred nearly simultaneously in the 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:50.920 eighteenth century in France, Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:55.839 American colonies all over the place. Um. I like to 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:58.760 say it's the period of time where the world started 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:04.320 waking up, pulled their heads from their rear ends. Right basically, Well, 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:07.159 the the the question now, I mean, if you're a 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:14.160 religious type, you're probably happy about the fruits of the Enlightenment. 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.400 Like everybody points at, the Industrial Revolution is proof positive 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:21.240 the Enlightenment was great. Where the American experiment proof positive 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:23.720 the Enlightenment was great. But you probably don't like the 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.839 fact that the world completely turned its back on religion, 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.000 or not completely but largely did. If you're a pro 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:34.000 Enlightenment type, you're probably saying this was for the best, 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:36.679 like we were backwards, we emerged from the dark Ages 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.800 thanks to the Enlightenment. Um. And this is the argument 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:43.320 that's still going on today, like, yes, the Enlightenment changed everything, 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.640 but did it go too far? So that's we'll get 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:49.360 into all that. But Conger, who wrote this article, I 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:53.040 think did a very good job of taking the whole 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:56.479 thing back further than the eighteenth century out of the 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:01.160 French salons and set the stage for what created the 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.560 basis for this this change in thinking. Yeah, I think 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:07.480 Kristen did a great job of distilling a complex topic 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.440 down to like an eight page article, but she does 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:12.800 take it back to Um. There were a couple of 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:16.080 things that sort of laid the groundwork. Um, well, a 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.720 lot of things, but a couple of them are Mr 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:23.280 Sir Isaac Newton and the famous story of the apple 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.160 falling on his head, which makes a great story. He 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:28.120 told a lot of people that I don't know how 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.440 uh factually exactly true that is, but it makes for 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:35.360 a great story. But either way you want to look 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.600 at it, Isaac Newton looked at the space at some 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:42.560 point between that apple in the ground and said, there's 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.640 something going on in that empty space. That should be 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:49.280 explained because that apple doesn't fall up. Something's keeping us 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:51.320 all rooted here on the ground, and I want to 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:53.200 look into that. Although if you were a fan of 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.520 David Humes, you would say, uh, well, actually it could 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.520 consumably fall up, because we've never proven it won't fall up. Yeah, 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.760 and him was one of the proponents, were not proponents, 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:06.120 but uh he was active in the Age of Enlightenment. 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:09.920 Another thing that really laid the groundwork was the Thirty 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:13.880 Years of War from six eighteen to sixty eight, which 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:20.240 pretty much paved the way for Protestant Reformation, and the 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:22.720 Roman Catholic Church took a lot of the teeth away 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.160 from the Roman Catholic Church first time. Yeah, it was. 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:28.840 There was a huge change. So what you just described, Chuck, 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:35.040 is a the foundation for the intellectual branch of of 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:41.120 the Enlightenment thinking usurping the power from theological thinking. And 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:44.600 then with the Thirty Year War, the political power was 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:46.880 taken away from the Church because for the first time 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.320 now the precedent has been set that you, as a citizen, 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:54.200 your allegiance is not split between church and state. Your 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:57.680 allegiances first and foremost to the state. And we see 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:02.400 that still today. Like if somebody uh kills their um, 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:06.480 their parents or whatever because it's the Seventh Sign and 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:09.959 Demi Moore's running around and they it turns out that 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:11.960 they were brother and sister, so you kill them because 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.080 it's the will of God. State says, I don't care. 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:16.319 If it's the will of God, you can't kill your parents. 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:20.400 The state's law is more powerful and more important than 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:23.480 God's law. That's straight out of the Thirty Years War 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.920 that changed everything. Have very seen the Seventh Sign, Man, 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.320 I saw that, like when it came out. I don't 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:34.960 remember anything about it. I just remember like one of 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.960 the characters was this kid with down syndrome and he 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:40.080 murdered his parents because he found out that they were 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:42.600 brother and sister and he was super religious. They were 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:45.839 going to execute him. Yeah, when they execute I think 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.400 he was like the last martyr. Man. I'll have to 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.400 check that out again. Yeah, tell me more. Uh So, 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:56.160 Conger points out even further back about the Dark Ages, 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:58.760 sort of laying the groundwork which the Dark Ages were 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:01.240 dark for many reasons. It one of the big ones 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:06.000 was that the Roman Catholic Church basically ruled everything. Uh. 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:10.120 Latin was the language, the center of life and academia 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:14.079 where monasteries and abbeys, you weren't encouraged to get educated 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:20.960 outside of uh theological uh realms. It was not encouraged. 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:23.160 Do you have to actually, I want to say, you 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:27.440 have to be carefully using the term Dark Ages, because uh, 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:31.040 apparently it is a disparaging label that people on the 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:35.280 pro Enlightenment side of the argument, the humanists, they say, 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:37.280 they say, these are the Dark Ages. That was back 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.040 when the Church controlled everything, when everybody was just an ignoramus. 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:45.160 Once the Enlightenment came along, we emerged from the Dark Ages. Technically, 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:47.439 once the Renaissance came along, we emerged from the Dark Ages. 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:49.360 So if you're in a Storian, you call it the 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.160 Middle Ages. But even the Middle Ages are kind of 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.480 sad because it just says these a just kind of 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.679 existed between this important age and this important age. We 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:00.880 just call those the Middle Ages. But it's better than 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:04.240 the Dark Ages, like dark Ages. But that's a that's 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.920 a um an argument or a label that a disparaging 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:13.480 label that UM humanists use. Yeah, unfairly, because there were 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.640 scientists working and laying the groundwork for future science in 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.319 the Dark Ages and congret even mentions them in this article, 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:24.599 like Thomas Aquinas came up with scholasticism. Yeah, And scholasticism 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:29.480 is basically the idea that you can understand God even 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:33.679 more and be even more pure and divine yourself by 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:37.400 studying nature. Yeah. Roger Bacon was another monk who as 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.880 a proponent of that, and I think, um, that allowed 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:42.400 them and don't I don't think that's the reason they 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:45.000 did it, but that allowed them to pursue the scientific 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.319 avenues because it was still tied to God. Another big 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:54.520 change was, uh, Like I said before, in the not 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.959 so Dark Ages, perhaps Latin was the language, and they 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:01.720 didn't have something called the printing press until Johann Gutenberg 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:03.800 came along in fourteen thirty eight and says, you know what, 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:07.280 everyone should be able to read, start printing stuff in 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:11.120 your native tongue. Uh. And that led directly to people 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:15.439 starting to educate themselves. It was the democratization of education 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:18.280 right exactly. And all of this didn't happen like out 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.480 of the blue, like Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas and 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.640 a guy named Leonardo Bruney, they didn't necessarily come up 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:27.680 with their ideas on their own there was some this 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:31.440 really seminal thing that happened back in the mid UH 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:35.920 century where somebody, I don't know who did somebody translated 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:41.400 Um Aristotle I believe, his works into Latin, and all 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:48.560 of a sudden, the Greek rational thinkers of antiquity, their 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:52.280 ideas were suddenly available to the West for the first time. 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:55.240 And it just so happened that some people started paying 0:12:55.240 --> 0:13:00.400 attention to these things. Leonardo Bruney read Petrarch and revived 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.040 the idea of humanism, which was a huge sea change, 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:08.040 because humanism says humans are pretty awesome and the fruit 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:10.679 of our labors, the fruit of our intellect, the fruit 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.880 of everything that we do comes from human ability, not 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:19.000 God Like, we're not just vessels for God's brilliance to 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:22.040 be shown through. If you create something, you come up 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:25.439 with a work of art because God did that. You 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:27.840 did that, and let's figure out how you did it. 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:32.320 That's humanism. And this is what the Renaissance started to 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:34.880 revive and was a huge change, like, maybe we should 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.800 start paying attention to ourselves a little more exactly, let's 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:42.080 explore the human condition. Yeah, Um Aristotle was not a 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:47.160 heretic because he tied his geocentric universe ideas to God 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:50.560 as well. Um, he thought the universe was composed of 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:54.760 ten separate crystal spears, and beyond the tenth sphere that 0:13:54.880 --> 0:14:00.720 was Heaven and God. Uh. Copernicus um Shah pretty said no, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:05.120 that's not true. The universe is infinite. Uh. And he 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:10.080 was pretty alone in that thinking. Early on, he faced 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.720 a lot of criticism from like every every religion, Protestants 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.920 and Catholics. Yep, it was a They thought it was 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:19.280 a dangerous way of thinking because he didn't make room 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:21.440 for God in the cosmos. And it definitely was a 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.600 dangerous way of thinking to the Church. Like the Protestant 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.520 Reformation was going on, you had the Thirty Years War 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:31.800 coming down the pike, you had Copernicus Um thanks to 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:37.200 this revival of interest in astronomy and yeah, starting to 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.360 to look at the the universe around us and finding 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:44.600 even like symbolic stuff like, um, who was it? Kepler, 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:49.640 he was an assistant to Tycho Brahe and Kepler figured 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:54.320 out that the planets uh revolve around the Sun in 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:58.760 an ellipse. Yeah. Well, the Church, the Holy Roman Church, 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.440 said that the circle was a symbol of perfection. So 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.080 of course everything revolves around the Earth in a circle. 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:07.520 Not only did things not revolve around the Earth, it 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:09.720 revolved around the Sun. And they didn't even do that 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.160 in a circle. They did an ellipse. So the church 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.000 is just losing its mind because all these people are 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:19.160 coming forward saying everything that you're saying over here is 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:23.160 starting to prove to smell like bs. And the church 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:26.280 is losing its power left and right, both politically and intellectually. 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.600 It's losing its authority. Yeah, Galileo even recanted uh because 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.320 he was accused of heresy for his theory that the 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.240 Earth rotates on its axis. So he said, I'll take 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.400 it all back. I didn't mean that. Please don't kill me, 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:43.160 He's like, but just make sure my manuscripts survive. So 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:47.680 we were talking about Bacon. He is a creator of 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:50.880 the scientific method, and he says, you know what, we 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:55.320 should use experiments to actually try and explain things, and 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.040 so it's I think it's high time we have a 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:01.000 method for doing so. So that was its is Bacon. Yes, 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.160 I wonder if he was related to Roger Bacon. I 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:06.320 don't know. They were separated by a few centuries, but 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:10.200 they could have been fam Sure. I think so uh, 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:13.960 and he was did you ever take philosophy in college? No? Um, 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:15.960 I think I might have. I didn't get much out 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:17.360 of it if I did, because I don't remember. I 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:21.720 took one class. We'd studied Descartes um a lot. I've 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:23.840 grown to be a little more interested in it, but 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:29.600 I like them more. I like like existential crisis philosophy, 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:32.080 like Nick Bostrom stuff, and I don't know what that is, 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:36.400 just basically how the world's gonna end. Okay, this stuff is. 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:39.400 I think like Descartes is interesting, but I'm not like 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.160 a I'm not. It doesn't light my fire. Yeah, it 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:43.480 was all right. I think I made an a in 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.080 that class actually because it interested me at the time. 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:48.160 But I never took a follow up class. It just 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:50.600 took the intro. So it clearly didn't mean that much 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:53.080 to me. But I get it. Well. Yeah, And what 0:16:53.200 --> 0:17:00.320 dey Cart was saying is our experience is not It's 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.880 not what you thought. Like mind and matter are two 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:07.160 different things, and of the human experience as a subjective 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:10.280 experience and the mind, what the mind produces is different 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:14.720 than what is reality and really kind of um that 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:17.520 changed things tremendously too, So You've got all these people 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:20.080 like contributing to this. We haven't even reached the eighteenth 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:24.040 century yet. Like the groundwork is definitely being late and 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:27.520 it's still being laid. Um as far as the like 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:31.919 the government goes. John locke Um was one of the 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:34.960 people who contributed to the idea of the social contract 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:39.159 and social contract. There was Hobbes Lock and later on 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:43.320 Rousso and others contribute to this idea that humans are 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.679 born with natural rights. You're born free, I'm born free, 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.560 even Jerry's born free, look at her. And to form 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:54.320 a society, you give up some of these natural rights. 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.080 For example, one one thing that you give up is 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:02.800 your right to kill and retribution. Uh. Any society typically 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:06.480 demands a state monopoly on violence, which means that if 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:10.240 somebody kills your family member, you don't go kill that person. 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:12.320 You go to the state and say that guy killed 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:15.439 my family member, triumph convictim, and kill him on my 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.280 behalf because there's a state monopoly on violence. So that's 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.440 a natural right that you give up, I think appropriately 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.040 so and for the better, but as part of the 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.960 social contract and so uh, the idea that that humans 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.440 had these rights and that society in turn had rights 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.520 because humans gave them rights. Um. That was a big 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:38.400 basis of enlightenment thinking that would be added to later 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:41.000 on too. Yeah. And Locke also was one of the 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.680 first champions of uh, what would kind of become nurture 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:48.280 over nature his idea of the tabu larassa that when 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:51.360 humans are born, their minds are clean slate and they 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.040 are shaped by experience and education and not some preordained 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.520 thing that you're born with. And uh, this French intellect 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.119 gobbled that stuff up. As name was Francois Marie Arouette, 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.080 and he went by a name you might know, Voltaire, 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:07.800 and he really loved this stuff and went back to 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.720 France with all these ideals and said, we got to 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:14.040 get on this and let's uh, you know, we can't 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:16.119 go out in the streets right now and talk about 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.320 the stuff, but we can meet in private and homes 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.040 like a Tupperware party, and we'll call them salons and 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:24.879 we'll we'll talk about these radical ideas and um, in 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.760 this new way of thinking in the privacy of homes 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:51.800 for those that are willing to host it. So he chuck, 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.639 Voltaire has been lit up. He was in England from 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:00.640 seventeen twenty nine, living in exile because he was already 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.359 critical of the French monarchy. While he was there he 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:08.080 ran into the ideas of lock of apparently Descartes as well. 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:13.000 He he basically got turned onto rationalism and he was 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.159 primed and ready for it. Like this guy was just 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.080 waiting for these ideas to pour into him, and when 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:21.800 they did, he became a lightning rod for what we 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:25.760 think of as the Enlightenment. Like Voltaire was the main 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.600 dude to start from what I understand. Yeah, and um, 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:31.639 like we mentioned the salons, they had to do this 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.680 in private because Louis the four that right, Yeah, getting 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:39.600 better at that. Uh he he was pretty hard on 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:44.000 to try. He didn't like that kind of talk. It 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:48.040 threatened him for a good reason. Uh well, yeah, I 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:51.200 mean the reason why. It's like the power was taken 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:53.720 from the church in place more in the monarchy. But 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:56.000 in very short order, people said, you know, we're not 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:58.080 really that fond of the monarchy either. We think we 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:00.680 should rule ourselves, or at least a leed people to 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:03.520 rule ourselves. To this divine right of kings. Things seems 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:05.800 kind of hinky now that we think about it. So 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:09.000 the monarchies were threatened as well by the Enlightenment. So yeah, 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:13.080 the monarchy, like the dumb masses that stayed under their 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.560 thumb and any kind of like radical thought or original 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:21.520 thought was super dangerous. It sounds familiar exactly. It is 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:24.520 interesting how you talked about. I think there are periods 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:26.800 of time where things like the Age of Enlightenment keep 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:29.920 popping up. That's like the nineteen sixties and the United States, 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:32.360 and I think, like you said, we're in one right now. 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.000 I think we're in probably more than even the sixties 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:37.000 right now. Yeah, And I think there are periods where 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:42.320 that lulls, like maybe the nineteen eighties where they're the seventies, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:45.320 remember Disco, like a dumbing down of things. Yeah, just 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.360 people not caring or whatever. Yeah, it's weird and cyclical. 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:51.800 I've read I read this article um called Things Fall Apart, 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:55.159 How social Media leads to a less stable world. It 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:58.119 was by a guy named Curtis Howland, H. L and 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:01.040 DY and it's on Knowledge at War there like the 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:04.320 Warton Business School website, and it was basically saying it 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:06.359 wasn't I thought it was condemning social media and this 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:10.040 guy was just basically stating matter of factly that social 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:15.320 media erodes the state, and that now we have ways 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.720 to connect with other people in ways that are more 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:21.800 important to us than, say, our allegiance to the state. 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:26.000 So you may feel, um, you may feel more connected 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:30.679 to somebody over Hello Kitty and your fondness for Hello Kitty, 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:34.160 more than you would identify yourself as saying American. And 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:36.880 with social media, you're able to connect with other people 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:39.159 who feel the same way, and so you form on 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:44.360 social media basically bodies that supersede the state in your opinion, 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:47.720 no boundaries exactly. And as this happens, more and more 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:51.080 of the states, what's called sovereignty erodes more and more 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:54.480 and more um and it becomes a less and less 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:57.719 stable world. The guy's point was that, yes, while it's 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:00.760 very unstable and things are much more dangerous streaming periods 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:04.240 like this, it's it's basically just a period of upheaval 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:07.400 and change and then eventually things stabilize again. But what 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:10.000 this guy was saying, using this as an example, is 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:13.439 that we're in a like right now, possibly on the 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:17.680 cusp of a period of tremendous fundamental change in the world. 0:23:18.359 --> 0:23:22.520 I see that every day Yeah, it's pretty interesting time 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:25.919 to be alive. Yeah, a little scary to me. Yeah, well, 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:28.040 I mean it's like the guy said, it's it's more 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:33.720 dangerous than your average time because change frequently comes out 0:23:33.720 --> 0:23:38.480 of spasms of violence or um upheaval, like just where 0:23:38.480 --> 0:23:41.680 nobody's in charge because there's a power struggle going on, 0:23:42.080 --> 0:23:47.360 or our normal structures are being eroded. It's interesting, it's 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:51.640 super interesting. Uh So back to the Salons, We're back 0:23:51.640 --> 0:23:56.960 to the age of Enlightenment, the traditional age of Enlightenment. Uh, 0:23:57.000 --> 0:23:59.960 the Salons, the members were known. There was a group 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:03.399 of people known as the philosophics. Uh. We've mentioned a 0:24:03.440 --> 0:24:06.919 few of them. Rousseau, did Hero, Voltaire, Um. How do 0:24:06.920 --> 0:24:10.440 you pronounce that? Is that it's not montgue is it Montesquieu? 0:24:10.640 --> 0:24:17.320 Montesquieu um. And they were they're kind of skeptics and 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:22.520 critics of not everything, but the establishment of government or 0:24:22.560 --> 0:24:25.440 the way government was at the time, especially the church. 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:30.679