Knackered musings on Enlightened dreaming....

I find myself sitting alone in my living room on a Friday night having just drank 2 cans of lager in about 10 minutes, not cool you may say...but I’ve gotten to thinking a bit and anyone who has ever read these blogs (or spoken to me, ever) probably knows what that means. I thought I might put that fact to good use and get finger tips to keys in an outburst of meandering ‘think bits’ just to try and make life a little more coherent, for myself if nobody else.

Anyway. While eating my din dins and necking those beers I sit in silence with a book by A.C Grayling about the history of the Enlightenment. I’m not pretentious, trying to be clever (I’m not) or a pompous twurp, I just found it in a charity shop in Notting Hill. I inevitably relate this evenings readings to myself, I am human after all and humans do this an awful lot.

(Please bear with me, this will eventually relate to C90’s, sort of)

I’ve not finished the book but so far Grayling has mostly been giving an historical account of the oppression of ideas, science, creativity and human flourishing exercised by absolute monarchy and its relationship with organised religion, mostly Christianity: “For religious orthodoxy attempts, in the interests of holy truth, to constrain not just enquiry and expression but thought itself”. As he approaches the time of the enlightenment however, he begins to speak about an exciting time of the movement towards the freedom that many of us in ‘the west’ currently enjoy (or take for granted). My mind is humming with the excitement that must have been felt by the intellectuals engaged in this project and I try to realise just how fortunate I am to be in the position I am. I will be in no way dubbed a heretic, burned at the stake or both for disagreeing with the values of a monarch or poxy government, in fact I can barely remember who the pissing monarch is. My degree of freedom is unprecedented, more than I could possibly hope to understand so be thankful for that friends, not for the ready meal with the 20p yellow sticker on it or a free pint.

The book features a quote from Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay ‘What is Enlightenment?’:

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Saper Aude! [dare to know] - “Have courage to use your own understanding!” - that is the motto of enlightenment.”

Powerful stuff I think, and it begins to smack of C90 dreams (to me anyway). To understand the simple possibility of an act or event is understanding none the less. So here’s to the knowledge that any distance across land is possible to travel, regardless of the means. Here’s to the knowledge that you can drop what you are doing and it will either be ‘ok’ or it wont. Here’s to the knowledge that only you can do stuff, others can’t do it for you. Most of all: ‘HERE’S TO CREATIVE AND INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM!!!!!!!’

I raise what has now turned into a mug of tea to you my friends (getting drunk alone usually turns sour), because regardless of my 10 hour crappy day at work (it was crappy) I am now free to be creative, enjoy or make music and art, discover new science, make movies about C90’s or piss about in any way I like. Without the enlightenment, I would probably have no C90, and definitely no dreams.