In a span of about four hundred years the world has
undergone more drastic change than that which has been witnessed in all of human
history before it. Some of this change has been for good, such as our advances
in medicine and our overall standard of life (though the economic term assumes
many things and can perhaps become overinflated in the hands of zealots). But
accompanying nearly every change for the better has been a change for the
worse, as is witnessed in the paradoxical influence technology has had upon
society. This is seen in technological advancement’s increasing accessibility
to destroy nature, by the methods of industrialization, and even in its capacity
to destroy its masters, by the methods of war machines and nuclear science. This
wide gamut of influence emerged from a drastic shift in the paradigm of
philosophy. While the ‘old world’ was concerned with its role in the greater
world its small intellect was but a part of, the ‘new world’ is concerned with how
the world can either accommodate the intellect and personhood or how the world
can be changed and altered according to the whims of subjective passions or worldviews.
This is perhaps ever
more made clear in the virtues that are most prevalent to each time. The old
world cared most for the virtues of patience, wisdom, and honesty. The new
world cares most for the virtues of tolerance, humility, and flexibility. But
oddly enough, and as shall be shown in a comparative analysis of the
philosophies involved in the times lost and the times that are now, the shift
that ensued was all bluff. Our virtues are thus flakes of meaningless rhetoric floating
in a sea of other ideas. That there are some who believe there is some
absolutism after all that holds us
accountable rather than the other way around is drowned out by the waves, and
those absolutist ‘nutjobs’ aren’t even considered to be worth hearing,
precisely because they aren’t heard. But these same waves are
drowning those who would try to surf them (have you had enough of the clichés?).
This is what I plan on attempting to show in this first series of blog posts.
So this post is considered to be a preface to the series titled lux in tenebris, meaning ‘light in the
darkness’ (quite full of self-pity and self-confidence I realize, but that’s
where the Latin comes in you see; it makes it seem slightly more profound and
less whiny).
This preface was also written in order to draw attention to
the name of the blog, being parvus animus
(I have a thing for Latin if you haven’t noticed). It means ‘small mind’, which
I am indeed referring to myself as having. I recognize that probably no one
will be looking at these first couple of posts, so it seems good to me to keep
that in mind in the most obvious way possible, namely by the very title of the
blog itself. If you are interested in this series, which shall be about the
mechanical worldview of nature and the radical skepticism that ensues from this
philosophy, then go ahead and check back in to see my introduction to the
series which shall be posted in a couple of days (hopefully). For now, vale!
