"We in the West were born into a world that reflects the legacy of Socrates and the agora (...) We aim, in Michael Oakeshott’s words, to live amid the conversation — 'an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure in which, in imagination, we enter a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves and are not disconcerted by the differences or dismayed by the inconclusiveness of it all.' We believe in progress and in personal growth. By swimming in this flurry of perspectives, by facing unpleasant facts, we try to come closer and closer to understanding (...) Our mind-set is progressive and rational. Your mind-set is pre-Enlightenment and mythological. You fundamentalists have turned yourselves into a superpower of dysfunction, demanding our attention week after week. But it is hard to intimidate people forever into silence, to bottle up the conversation, to lock the world into an epic war only you want."
- David Brooks (via; via)
(via)
No comments:
Post a Comment