RE THE ENLIGHTENMENT AGE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

Prior post excerpt:

 

' "The cause of the problem is merely "the scale, scope, and speed of change." (Tony Blair) It's as simple as that for him really. Very scientific, very rational, very enlightenment, according to the LIEO interpretation of enlightenment.'

 

I want to revisit this discussion, because it seems to me, and I have said this in somewhat different terms in the past, that the problem of change, itself, only became truly insoluble, for the West, with The Age of the Democratic Revolution after 1760, which was also the tail end of the Age of Enlightenment on which Blair's, and our, LIEO has been based.

 

Blair does not raise the subject, nor challenge the legitimacy, of the concept of change itself, as if change were a wholey naturally occurring phenomenon over which humans and politicians have little or no real control, and over which they should refrain from even trying to fully understand or manage.

 

He doesn't say, less change, or slower change, or no change, or different kinds or qualities of change, or causes of change, or better managed change, would be feasible or useful for any particular nation, civilization, or government to seriously undertake.

 

One of the reasons that LIEO theoreticians and politicians cannot tackle such a concept is that they have embraced the model of human society as inherently governed by larger economic, and almost inexorable, constantly moving and transforming, blind but idiot savant, democratic market forces, benevolent forces in the largest scheme of things, which they have come to identify as the only natural and proper motors for human history, even though in human society they function imperfectly, often out of equilibrium. The Wealth of Nations set out such a theory and discussion. The concept of the market, as supplanting and overriding traditional society's hierarchy, order, and system of governance bacame entrenched in the West after Adam Smith. it dovetailed with, and influenced, other Enlightenment ideas in different practical and intellectual fields.