Anchored to Reality

 

Life is better if you have a solid, sound, sure grasp of reality. It’s even better if you know you do. Prior to the advent of reason and science around 600 B.C., humanity was generally considerably ignorant and superstitious. Mankind’s contact with physical and mental reality was somewhat nebulous.

But when reason, science, and philosophy were invented, everything changed. It was a mostly personal revolution. The Holy Individual used and trusted his mind much more. Men comprehended the natural world and the intellectual world far better. They dealt with their fellow man, solved problems, and guided their lives on a higher level.

Then along came nihilism. Some relatively persuasive intellectuals claimed the universe was unknowable, knowledge unobtainable, and certainty impossible. They argued the human mind was incompetent to comprehend reality.

The anti-reason skeptics and sophists then saw to it that pre-reason polytheism was converted to post-reason monotheism. Mythology became religion. "God" was born.

And so the pandemic of ignorance and superstition was reintroduced to mankind, but in a more profound and deadly way. The universe, society, and life became more confusing, uncertain, hostile, and malevolent than ever.

Still, science continued to improve and rise. So too rational philosophy. But along with these two benefactors of mankind, the monsters of nihilism and religion also continued to exist, advance, and do terrible damage. Society, culture, and lifestyle suffered – but the Noble Individual suffered worse.

Then along came Newton, Locke, and the Enlightenment. Reason surged. Science and rational philosophy ascended too. Knowledge grew as superstition and irrationality declined. People used their thinking minds more and better, as quality of life rose. Mankind experienced more meaning, purpose, satisfaction, achievement, greatness, pleasure, and happiness.

But the nihilists, and destroyers of reason and man, soon returned. The skeptics and sophists Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel devastated understanding, humanity, and life from the early 1700s to the early 1800s.

Of course, the men of reason fought back. Mainly the weak rational philosophers Reid, Beattie, Buchner, Moore, and Wittgenstein. Plus the quite strong reasonist Ayn Rand. The war between truth and falsity, good and evil, civilization and savagery, rages.

Reason and science need to be victorious. Nihilism and religion need to be defeated. Because life is better if you have a sound, solid, sure grasp of reality. And even better if you know you do.