12 Comments on 21st century enlightenment – a new plan

carl allen on Wed, 28th Apr 2010 6:22 pm


On point 2 … even with the evidence of the past in writing, I am not sure one can state with certainty what and why original enlightenment was. We can certainly state a number of features and impact of that enlightenment but it may be restrictive to attempt to state what it was. And do we need to be definitive?

It would be useful to say, very briefly, a bit about the economic/ political/ social/ technological and legal environment of that time. And here a comparative aspect of life now and life then would perhaps establish a feel for what is afoot in the world of 21CE … perchance point 3 could flow backwards into point 2.

Three pictures of the past and three pictures of the present would be worth a thousand words, for the purposes of enlightenment. My teenage child mentions that the Romans had perhaps a better idea and practice of personal and public health than some modern states. And what happened to personal and public health between these periods … what happened to enlightenment?

DaveG on Wed, 28th Apr 2010 10:01 pm


Matthew,

I like it but more on the original enlightenment please, 3 needs strengthened- isnt population growth an issue? Or technology development for good or ill? And what about communications and new media technologies?

On emerging thinking, what about critiquing some really radical thinking to show how your enlightenmnet values fit (or not). So for example, the transhumanist argument? Or the movement for ending ageing? Are they to be supported, resisted or simply accepted. etc.

Keep going, fascinating

Chris Cook on Wed, 28th Apr 2010 11:18 pm


It’s been almost 10 years since I first cottoned on to the effects that direct instantaneous ‘Peer to Peer’ connection would have, from a background at top level in global markets, followed by a Dot Com I set up.

In recent years I’ve had a little seed funding from Innovation Norway to develop new partnership-based legaland financial structures or ‘enterprise models’.

http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/000085

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/social-investment-mechanism-12-03-09

I think that a New Enlightenment is indeed possible, and in fact already under way.

The UK is pretty well-placed to lead this.

Stanley Parker on Thu, 29th Apr 2010 9:30 am


Matthew, this sounds good but I agree with DaveG that population growth is an issue

Socialreporter | Social entrepreneurs add zest to RSA’s civic innovation mission on Thu, 29th Apr 2010 11:36 am


[...] Malcolm thinks that William Shipley and other founders of the RSA, meeting in the coffee shops of Covent Garden, were early social entrepreneurs. I think the social entrepreneur network is important for the RSA – and social action – on several counts. Most importantly, the people who turned up last night, and the many who couldn’t make it to London, have great stories to tell about how individuals and small groups can make a difference in the world. We heard four brief presentations last night, and I’m sure it could have been 40. These stories will provide substance to Matthew Taylor’s latest mission, which is to develop a 21st century version of the Enlightenment that fostered the origins of the RSA. The recognition that it is OK to use RSA networks to make business connections, where these lead to social benefit, should release a lot of energy. The connections made will, I suspect, benefit not just the people and projects involved, but also increase activity online and face to face across the RSA’s diverse Fellowship. It will increase the social capital. So what’s next? There was a comments and ideas wall at last night’s event, and I’m looking forward to a summary. Meanwhile my suggestion for a start is modest: meet up and tells good stories. It is difficult to get a room at RSA HQ without paying for it, and the bar is rather small … but there’s now a coffee point on the ground floor where Fellows are encouraged to gather for a chat. Why not fix a time each week, and see who turns up? That’s the way the now hugely successful Tuttle Club started. (I think ace-networker and entrepreneur Oli Barrett has ideas on this front, so there’s a good chance something will happen). Then invite anyone interested to tell their story in a three minute video, posted to the network, with an invite to people to get in touch. Once we got started I’m sure there will be no problem in developing the idea, and – most importantly – coming up with ways of working outside London. Last night’s event was made possible by the work of RSA staff including Sarah Tucker, Laura Billings, and Clare Reilly … and that’s just who I spotted. I’m know there’s been more work behind the scenes. Thanks. Maybe I’m being over-optimistic, but I thought the event was the most interesting step towards realising the civic innovation potential of the RSA since the November 2007 get-together. There’s now a chance that some bottom-up personal passion may match the top-level thinking from Matthew Taylor on 21 century enlightenment, now clearly set out in yesterday’s blog post. [...]

nano on Thu, 29th Apr 2010 12:05 pm


Much clearer – many thanks. I’m still struck by the leap between points 4 and 5. Why is point 5 necessarily the best or only vision? Some of your unconverted listeners might see this vision as overly idealistic. Could it be worth exploring why they might instinctively feel this, as a way of refining the argument? Am wondering whether you could do this by weaving in more of the RSA’s social brain work at this point.

For example, you seem to be suggesting that there’s now a very clear gap between our rapidly expanding global influence and our sense of global empathy – also expanding, but lagging badly. Bit of indulgent speculation here as I am under-read: is there any evidence that suggests human ethics adjust over time to balance what might be called our sphere of empathy with our sphere of influence? (power/love balance?) Would you justify your vision as a required gap-closing mechanism? Is there evidence for successful evolutionary catch-up mechanisms for empathy (e.g. religion)? Is the problem more urgent now because our actual influence and our visible, day-to-day, perceived influence are not the same (increasing tragedies of the commons)? Also could consider whether /why there is no evolutionary benefit to expanding empathy beyond influence e.g. we’d waste effort on worrying about things that have no value to us (e.g. bystander effect or similar apparent irrationalities may be a control on our sense of empathy?). Is this why it could be hard to convert a majority of the population to your vision, and why that makes it all the more important?

No doubt I am missing some fundamentals of social psychology – apologies. My only concern is a possible accusation of unjustified idealism from your wider audience. Good luck.

carl allen on Thu, 29th Apr 2010 4:36 pm


21CE enlightenment on managing differences or facts

FRAGMENTS OF THOUGHT

… dilemma, tri-lemma, paradox, paradign shift, irreconciliable principles, puzzle, innovation, discovery and invention

… reduced impact of war disease famine and natural disaster alongside an expanding population and finite resources. No new lands or perhaps a better term would be no unknown lands

… the religious and the secular. Will equal but non-equitable interpretation of new western laws that enable child adoption by same sex couples be more than a line in the sand, overtaking the clash of civilisations theories. Common and perhaps sacred ground between religions now exists.

Jonathan on Fri, 30th Apr 2010 11:17 am


I like the structure

Some quick (I hope) interelated thoughts that (I hope) add to your argument rather than clash with it

1) this is very much within the western intellectual tradition – different intellectual traditions have some very different less individuated conceptions of the self.

John Gray is good on this in Straw Dogs

This matters because as per your point 4 we are transitioning to a much more homogenous world in which different intellectual transitions interact

2) There are questions of power and agency that need to be addressed. Cf Partha Chatterjee’s response to Benedict Anderson: “whose imagined community?”

3) There is a constant dialectic between universalism and particularism – so while for example Benedict Anderson’s book tells us some very useful things about the growth of nationalism as an intellectual paradigm it is also very specifically about the impact of the print technologies in Indonesia.

The ways in which technologies are used are always specific to particular contexts. We have of course moved from closed homogenous communities to diverse open ones, but the traces of the old communities remain: the way in which societies construct meaning are always local as well as global. There’s a lot of anthropological literature on this

4) When we read texts from different times or cultures we are struck not just by how far people are different but y how much they are the same. How we think about the world and ourselves within it changes radically but maybe this is not a transition from one state to another but an addition to it. Not A to B; but A to A+B (then maybe to A+B+C; B+C; B+C+D; C+D etc).

Are some interesting parallels here with philosophy of consciousness and personal identity?

I was also thinking about method (at the risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs) – it’s great the way you’re doing this so openly and I hope it’s adding value – but while your blog commentators are great they are self selecting – if I were you (and I may just be more of a control freak) I’d make sure that I’d also had feedback from experts in relevant fields i.e a philosopher of mind, a neurologist, a historian, an anthropologist and perhaps a theologian. We know that there are all these people within the RSA network but they may not be commenting on line.

Alternatively, you might want to line that sort of panel to respond to your lecture (if you’re having respondents).

Or you could get written responses and publish them with the lecture and perhaps some selected comments from the blog. Either as a stand-alone pamphlet if you could get funding (a dip into the Shipley fund?) or if not as a feature in the Journal?

carl allen on Fri, 30th Apr 2010 1:32 pm


One of the end impacts of technology is to compresses time and distance making timeliness and physical availability instanteous.

And one result of instaneous is that local physical pollution, for instance, was compressed into a few dozen years and instantly (so to speak) became global and not local.

Also pollution of the mind, through the technology of communication, has been compressed into minutes, nay seconds.

Is modern compression one of the great new enemies of enlightenment?

Chris Cook on Fri, 30th Apr 2010 1:42 pm


@carl allen

“Is modern compression one of the great new enemies of enlightenment?”

It’s a double-edged sword.

IMHO instantaneous direct ‘Peer to Peer’ communication will, in a networked and non-linear Economy, enable the creation of value one or two orders of magnitude greater than in the current linear paradigm of newtonian absolutes.

But it will only do so if we address the issues you raise, and I think a precondition for this will be to reinvent the basis and denomination of value from the current artificial basis in deficit and scarcity to a basis in sustainable value, such as location, energy, knowledge, and other less tangible value.

Katy T on Sat, 1st May 2010 1:12 pm


Fantastic progress, have read some sublime contributions.

@ Jonathon questions of Power and Agency.
Maybe worth bringing to light the increase in power of the Financial and Economic system, highlighting the Market’s ability to control and influence governments. Interestingly David Cameron cautioned against a hung parliament on the grounds that the Markets wouldn’t like it. Who is controlling who here?

For me, 21st CE enlightenment must encompass a discourse on this relationship of power with a view to reconstructing our notion of and engagement with The Markets/ (or as I affectionately call my former bosses) “The Masters of the Universe”.

Interesting to note that the term “post financial crisis” is now being used as it implies the crisis is over.

Under point 6, maybe could include debates around adversarial politics and the growing awareness of the need for parliamentary reform.

Have sympathy with the advice to curb the reading/theorising. To paraphrase Marx, philosophers only describe whereas the point is to do – the seed fund is great and hope to see stress placed on the material manifestation of 21st Enlightenment in your argument.

Nice to see religion/ mysticism/romantiscism permitted as contrasting practices of thought- think life without a splash of the unknown and unpredictable would be so dull.

David Wilcox on Sun, 2nd May 2010 11:06 am


Thanks Matthew, this is really clear. Just checking … “21CE is the new mission for the RSA.” Does that mean it should be, is, or will be if Fellows and others in RSA endorse the vision?
I believe it is important to be clear on the status of 21ce because the last big vision in 2007 “that the RSA becomes a network for civic innovation, empowering both Fellows and staff to develop new initiatives that promote and deliver progress in society ” foundered in part because of lack of understanding and support among staff and Fellows.
Now that there is a an outline of the new vision, how about generating some discussion within RSA Fellowship to gain commitment? That engagement could be the first step towards making RSA a collaborative 21ce institution.
Don’t want to be disappointed again:-)

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