Enlightenment

 

Isaac Newton: the gravity guy, right? Well, sort of: considering his manifestly wide portfolio of interests and talents, which covered pretty much every aspect and discipline of what are now quite disparate spheres of activity and expertise, and covering all the sciences, mathematics, engineering and the arts; that might be considered a bit of a reductive appraisal of the bloke. His era of practice is historically known as The Enlightenment, a period of scientific, engineering and cultural exploration and experimentation, like none before, nor since. It was Newton's 17th century forebears, such as Robert Boyle, who founded the Royal Society on 28th November 1660, an institution that continues to operate to the present day: indeed one which is part of the fabric of these islands' life and culture. And there is the thing; although in contemporary society we choose to bifurcate academia into the spheres of Arts or Sciences, often relegating Engineering to some step further down the pecking order of perceived importance, the fact is that Newton would have been utterly discombobulated by our modern attitude.

The original title The Royal Society was given, was: The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, and those involved considered themselves Natural Philosophers; Natural Philosophy being an all-encompassing and accepted term for the general acquisition of knowledge of the world they inhabited. The subsequent, historical fragmentation and specialization of such areas of knowledge has inevitably led to a kind of closeted and territorial mode of thinking that frankly has done us little service, particularly in very recent times. We now have a societal mindset that values finance above all else, where those from the very kind of privileged class background that so many of the pioneers of The Enlightenment hailed from - not exclusively - now seem to have set their stall firmly in the halls of the money-changers and usurers that certain, rather prominent religious founders exercised a very physical and theological exception to.

In short, the wielders of right-wing political power seek to convince us that Science, Engineering and The Arts are inherently inferior and hence, subservient to, commerce, rather than what is actually, historically, the converse. Without the former, the latter is barter, pure and simple. The increasingly - wholly perceptual - importance of the latter is the sole reason why we are in the global shithole we currently inhabit. The likes of Re-Smog and his Uber-capitalist money launderers - wealth management, for fuck's sake; it's just a euphemism for avoiding responsibility, fiscal or otherwise - will continue to wholeheartedly support the very things that are very rapidly destroying the fabric of human existence, in the pursuit of short-term profit for themselves and their ilk. I guess they figure that the planet will hang on just long enough to see them out in continued luxury, leaving their and our descendants to fry, drown and starve in the mess they leave in their sorry wake.

What is needed, very, very quickly - in the next eight years, maximum - is a complete reset of global economic values and systems. From our current perspective, we might just be staring down the barrel of one of Bowie's narratives from Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: "Five Years". If you don't know this fifty-year-old song, maybe it's time you acquainted yourself with the lyrics. More often than is not, The Arts are a prescient, fundamental and pivotal aspect of human life: something the Natural Philosophers of The Enlightenment would have taken as read and not treated as a trivial and subservient frippery to be ridden roughshod over by the world of finance. What we desperately need now, more than ever, is a second Enlightenment.