The Democratic Renaissance and its Meaning/Part 1

The Democratic Renaissance and its Meaning/Part 1
From Cairo and Athens to Dublin, A New Political/Intellectual Enlightenment Defined​

“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.”
-Pearl S. Buck​

To truly comprehend the demands of the people taking to the streets in the West today, it is necessary not only to document the lost promises and squandered opportunities of the Enlightenment in present day Europe—inflicted and visited upon the population by a myopic, selfish and narcissistic elite over a period of nearly 150 years—it will also be prudent to provide a complete and accurate understanding and definition of the Enlightenment itself.

But expounding upon so long and contentious a list of names and events would just turn people off from reading or pursuing such a voluminous piece filled with so many grievances, frustrations and intellectual incantations—and would only belay its purpose. Thus, another avenue of introspection must be explored here in this short essay: on the one hand allowing the context of today’s fight and subsequent demands to be clear, giving full insight into why the elite of many Western nations cower in corners hoping that the indignant will just go away, while on the other, providing the reader with some sense of what the Enlightenment was.

Much has been written over the years about how one should define or perceive this period of history. By luck or providence, Jonathan Israel has provided the world with a new work that goes a long way in helping to define the Enlightenment. As he points out in Democratic Enlightenment Philosophy, Revolution and Human Rights 1750-1790, the Enlightenment was “the most important and profound intellectual, social, and cultural transformation of the Western world since the Middle Ages and the most formative in shaping modernity.”

Granted, this historical assessment will probably be disputed by scholars and readers alike. Still, the question remains: what is the Enlightenment?

Again, Jonathan Israel provides clarity: “Peter Gay was right to claim that the ‘men of the Enlightenment united on a vastly ambitious programme, a programme of secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom, above all freedom in its many forms—freedom from arbitrary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one’s talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom, in a word, of moral men to make his way in the world.’”

This definition of the Enlightenment goes even further, pointing out that “It is also largely valid to say that the Enlightenment ‘began not as a definite “thing” or even as a chronological period, but as a process concerned with the central place of reason and of experience and of experiment in understanding and improving human society.’”

Now that a simple base of understanding about the Enlightenment has been established, how do we go about putting into context what has been lost by so many because of so few?

For purposes of expediency and thrift, it is simpler to describe the reasons that rioting and mass unrest are not taking place in the countries that have followed the principles and values espoused by the philosophers and thinkers of the Age of Reason over the past two hundred years, fulfilling their obligations and responsibility to their peoples by offering a society founded upon freedom, reason, experience and experiment.

Switzerland: a country that practices direct democracy, a country that has not fought a war in over 80 years; a country whose banking sector has come through the Great Economic Collapse relatively unscathed; a country that is the model of economic prosperity ; a country with a political system nimble enough to address the concerns of the people without a backlash or protest movement taking to the streets, without incurring the wrath of rioters torching their own communities; and a country deft enough to understand the perils of economic integration in Europe and take a pass on accepting the Euro as its currency, not in an effort to defend its sovereign monetary system, but rather to protect its democracy and Enlightened freedoms from the heavy hand of European unionism and integration.

The United States of America: a country that shares the top spot with Switzerland in terms of democratic recourse, and allegiance to the principles and values of the Enlightenment has not been a target of rioting either, despite the economic plight of tens of millions: 45 million use food stamps every month, millions have lost their homes to foreclosure, and 20 million or more are out of work. Contrast those statistics with a total population of 330 million, each having a relative amount of wealth and prosperity based upon individual skills and abilities, and yet the people still respect the rule of law, and continue to have faith in the political and economic system of the United States.

But is that really true? Some will cry out upon reading this: Have you not read the opinion polls regarding U.S. political representatives? Support of those in the U.S. Congress is the lowest it has ever been!

Agreed...but that, however, is another kettle of fish, for it is about who holds office not the office itself.

So why is there stability in a time of such trouble? Because the political system remains dynamic enough to allow the voice of all the people to be heard; the Tea Party—a real grassroots example of populism, a group of Enlightenment warriors who see the folly of abandoning principle for the sake of expediency and ideology, a group capable of pushing their ideas from mere protest and cries of constitutional abandonment into policy platforms and prospective legislation—shows that the system works as designed, the general will of the majority can be expressed and fulfilled.

Further, if one were to look deeper into the American electoral system from California to Wisconsin, one sees an engaged electorate and, more to the point, a system that still offers opportunity, reform and input at every level of power and government for all those who do not define themselves as elite.

These two countries are shining examples of what the first era of Enlightenment brought: dynamic political and economic systems, and an open and free society. They have achieved the impossible: the elimination of the soft tyranny and systemic oppression now rife throughout the rest of the Western world. Unsurprisingly, it is this stability, democratic freedom and experience—embodied by the principles and values of the Enlightenment—that the rest of the people of the Western world have suddenly realized they want.

But how do those who want to embrace the principles and values of the Enlightenment achieve it when many in the West are confronted by both a state structure and an elite consumed by ideals and philosophy that runs counter to the supremacy of the individual, the idea of reason, the soundness of common sense and the need for freedom?

J. R. Werbics is a Canadian writer and philosopher.

www.directdemocracyireland.org

All (fully sourced) essays available for free reading at: www.scribd.com

Copyright 2011 J.R.Werbics​

Coming next:

The Democratic Renaissance and its Meaning/Part 2
From Cairo and Athens to Dublin, A New Political/Intellectual Enlightenment Defined