The Tyranny of the Permissible: Political Correctness and the Independent Mind

Does political correctness affect a person's ability to think for themselves? I believe it can—and perhaps the most troubling aspect of political correctness is not what it prevents us from saying, but what it can eventually prevent us from thinking.

There is an important clarification to make at the outset. Civility is not the enemy of freedom. Treating people with dignity, avoiding unnecessary cruelty, and recognizing the power of language are characteristics of a civilized society. There is nothing intellectually virtuous about being deliberately offensive. Political correctness becomes something quite different, however, when it moves beyond courtesy and begins establishing the boundaries of permissible thought. At that point, the question is no longer simply, "How should I express this idea?" but rather, "Am I permitted to have this idea at all?"

A free society depends upon the ability of individuals to examine propositions without first obtaining permission from an ideological authority. The moment certain conclusions become unacceptable independently of the evidence supporting them, intellectual inquiry has already been compromised. The irony is that this problem can arise precisely among people who believe themselves to be defending tolerance.

Political correctness is a relatively modern term, but the phenomenon it describes is ancient. Human beings have always created orthodoxies. Every society develops assumptions about what is respectable, what is shameful, what is sacred, and what constitutes heresy. The Enlightenment challenged precisely this kind of intellectual authority. Its great achievement was not that philosophers suddenly discovered the truth, but that they increasingly challenged the assumption that truth should be determined by tradition, status, religious authority, or political power. Reason, evidence, debate, and individual judgment became increasingly important means by which claims could be evaluated.

John Stuart Mill understood this danger particularly well. In On Liberty, he warned not only against the coercion of governments but against the "tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling." His insight remains remarkably relevant. A society does not require an official censor to suppress thought; social pressure can accomplish much the same thing. If people become sufficiently concerned about ridicule, ostracism, professional consequences, or accusations of moral depravity, they will often censor themselves. The state does not have to silence them because their anticipation of social consequences does it for them. This is a subtler form of control because the individual can continue believing that he is free.

Nietzsche approached the question from a different direction. His concept of the Will to Power reminds us that human beings are not motivated exclusively by the search for truth. We also seek influence, status, recognition, and control. The power to define what constitutes legitimate discourse is itself a form of power.

Who determines which words are acceptable? Who decides which historical interpretations are permissible? Who establishes which grievances deserve recognition? Who determines which questions may be asked and which are considered offensive merely for being raised? These are not trivial questions, because the person or institution that controls the boundaries of legitimate discourse inevitably influences the conclusions that can emerge from that discourse.

This does not mean that every social norm is an illegitimate exercise of power. Civilization itself depends upon norms. The important distinction is between norms that facilitate respectful disagreement and norms that prevent disagreement from occurring. The first makes discussion possible; the second makes discussion unnecessary.

It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that ideological conformity belongs exclusively to one political camp. The American right demonstrated its capacity for this during the McCarthy era. Fear of communism was understandable in the context of the Cold War, and communist regimes had already demonstrated their capacity for repression. Legitimate concern became something more dangerous when accusation and suspicion began substituting for evidence. To be labeled "Un-American" could become a means of ending an argument rather than engaging with one.

The lesson should not be that opposition to communism was wrong. The message is that even a legitimate political concern can become intellectually corrupt when it is transformed into an instrument for policing ideological conformity. The same principle must apply to the contemporary left.

Over the past several decades, critics have argued that progressive assumptions have become increasingly influential within universities, the media, the arts, corporations, government institutions, and other cultural organizations. Some describe this development through Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony and the later idea of a "march through the institutions." One need not accept every version of this argument to recognize the broader principle: institutions shape the intellectual environment in which people think.

Influence over institutions can therefore become influence over the vocabulary through which reality is interpreted. This is why the battle over language is rarely merely about language. Words determine categories; categories determine what becomes visible; what becomes visible determines what can be debated; and what can be debated influences what society eventually considers legitimate policy.

George Orwell understood this relationship between language and political power with extraordinary clarity. In 1984, the creation of Newspeak was not simply an attempt to make people speak differently. It was an attempt to reduce the range of thoughts that could be expressed. The deeper Orwellian warning is therefore not merely about censorship but about the relationship between vocabulary and consciousness. If the vocabulary necessary to formulate an idea disappears, the idea itself becomes increasingly difficult to articulate.

This brings us back to one of the most common defenses of political correctness: "It's simply about being respectful." Sometimes it is. But that explanation becomes inadequate when offense itself is used as an argument against inquiry.

There is an enormous difference between saying, "I disagree with what you have said," and saying, "You should not be permitted to say it." There is also a difference between saying, "That language is unnecessarily cruel," and saying, "The proposition itself must not be examined." A liberal society has to preserve these distinctions. Otherwise, controversial propositions can be defeated without ever being refuted. Instead of answering an argument, we attack the person who made it; instead of examining evidence, we investigate the moral character of the speaker.

The result is intellectually disastrous. A proposition does not become false because its author is unpleasant, nor does it become true because its author is virtuous. Truth does not recognize our preferred political affiliations.

This matters because the major political questions confronting Western democracies are extraordinarily complicated. Immigration involves economic, humanitarian, demographic, cultural, and national-security considerations. The debate over individual versus group rights involves competing conceptions of equality and justice. Freedom of speech inevitably raises questions about harm, responsibility, social stability, and the limits of state power. The judiciary raises questions about constitutionalism, democratic accountability, and the separation of powers. Questions of race, gender, inequality, national identity, and historical injustice are similarly complex.

Yet political movements have an incentive to simplify complexity. The culture war rewards certainty. It divides the world into victims and perpetrators, enlightened people and ignorant people, good people and bad people. It gives individuals a moral identity and provides them with an enemy against whom that identity can be defined. This is politically powerful, but it is intellectually dangerous because reality rarely conforms to the categories of political activism.

People can simultaneously be privileged in one respect and disadvantaged in another. A policy can produce benefits as well as costs. A historical institution can contain both admirable and reprehensible elements. An individual can experience genuine discrimination without every social disparity being attributable to discrimination. The real world is messy, while ideology prefers clarity.

The most revealing characteristic of political correctness is the creation of intellectual sacred spaces. Some propositions become effectively untouchable. Once an idea acquires this status, questioning it can be interpreted not as an attempt to discover whether it is true, but as evidence of moral deficiency. The person asking the question becomes the problem.

This is structurally similar to religious dogmatism, although the comparison should not be misunderstood. Religion itself is not synonymous with fanaticism, nor is political progressivism synonymous with religious belief. The point is that a dogmatic system establishes propositions that are not merely considered true but are treated as morally protected from serious challenge. There are orthodoxies, heresies, approved interpretations, recognized authorities, and consequences for violating established boundaries.

The secularization of Western society has not eliminated the human desire for sacred beliefs. It may simply have transferred some of that desire into politics. The political arena increasingly becomes a place where people seek meaning, identity, belonging, moral purpose, and even redemption. Politics becomes more than politics; it becomes existential.

This brings us to the deepest question: what happens to the individual? The greatest danger of ideological conformity may not be censorship imposed from above, but the gradual replacement of independent judgment with socially approved judgment.

Instead of asking, "What do I think?" we begin asking, "What am I supposed to think?" Instead of examining evidence, we search for the approved interpretation. Instead of challenging our own assumptions, we look for arguments that confirm them. Instead of engaging political opponents, we caricature them. Gradually, we replace an internal dialogue with an internal censor.

This is where the problem becomes psychological. Søren Kierkegaard warned about the dangers of losing oneself in "the crowd." The individual who simply adopts the opinions of his surrounding culture can experience the comfort of belonging without ever confronting the difficult responsibility of becoming an independent self. The crowd provides certainty; independent thought provides uncertainty, and human beings often prefer certainty.

Genuine intellectual independence is therefore difficult. It requires a willingness to entertain the possibility that we are wrong, to expose our cherished beliefs to criticism, and to listen to people whom we may dislike. In other words, it requires humility.

This is where the contemporary discussion surrounding Jordan Peterson touches on an older philosophical tradition. The willingness to risk being offended is not an endorsement of cruelty. It is an acknowledgement that intellectual growth frequently begins where psychological comfort ends.

If every uncomfortable proposition is excluded because somebody might be offended, the range of permissible inquiry becomes progressively narrower. A university should therefore be a place where difficult and even dangerous ideas can be examined. A newspaper should be able to publish unpopular opinions. A classroom should allow difficult questions. A democracy should tolerate disagreement. An individual should be able to say, "I don't know."

That last statement may be among the most important of all. Once we become convinced that our political tribe possesses all the answers, curiosity begins to die. Intellectual confidence is useful; intellectual certainty can be dangerous.

There is an interesting paradox here. Liberal democracy depends upon tolerance, but tolerance cannot mean that every proposition must be treated as equally valid. It means that people must retain the freedom to argue about which propositions are valid.

The objective should therefore not be to create a society in which nobody is offended. That is impossible. The objective should be to create a society in which people are free to disagree without requiring ideological permission to do so.

A mature democracy does not eliminate conflict; it creates institutions through which conflict can be managed without destroying the society itself. It does not eliminate disagreement; it makes peaceful disagreement possible. That requires intellectual pluralism, recognition that one's political opponents may occasionally be right, and the courage to distinguish between an argument that is genuinely false and one that is merely unpopular.

The defense of independent thought cannot itself become another partisan weapon. If we condemn censorship when the political right practices it but celebrate it when the political left practices it, we have learned nothing. If we demand freedom of speech only for opinions we like, we do not actually believe in freedom of speech. And if we insist that our opponents listen to us while refusing to listen to them, we are not defending dialogue; we are demanding submission.

Our fundamental challenge is therefore not simply to resist political correctness but to resist intellectual dependency. We should be suspicious whenever someone tells us what we are permitted to think, and equally suspicious when someone on our own side tells us the same thing. The independent mind must remain capable of stepping outside the tribe. It must be able to say, "This is what I believe—but here is why I might be wrong."

That is a profound form of intellectual freedom. The Enlightenment did not liberate humanity by giving us a new set of unquestionable doctrines. It gave us permission to question. Mill reminded us that prevailing opinion could become tyrannical. Nietzsche argued that the search for truth is entangled with power. Gramsci made the case that institutions and culture shape consciousness. Orwell showed controlling language can constrain thought. Kierkegaard warned us of the danger of losing ourselves in the crowd. Together, these insights point toward a common warning: political identity can become a substitute for individual judgment.

So the greatest threat posed by political correctness is not that it makes us more polite. It is that, when taken to its ideological extreme, it can make us less curious, less skeptical, less courageous, and ultimately less capable of thinking for ourselves.

What were the causes of the French Revolution? Entry 25

 In brief, the French Revolution was a period of radical political and social transformation that ended the Ancien Régime, contributed to the development of our contemporary understanding of political philosophy, and established the French Republic. It is often regarded as a starting point in the transition to modern Europe and, in one respect, represents a fulfilment—although not always a positive one—of the ideals of the Enlightenment. The events that followed had far-reaching consequences during the Napoleonic era and contributed to the development of the nation-state system that would come to define Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

So what were its causes?

Several interconnected factors contributed to the outbreak of the French Revolution.

One of the most important was the financial crisis of the French state. France had accumulated enormous debts as a result of costly wars, most notably the Seven Years’ War and France’s involvement in the American War of Independence. By the late eighteenth century, the government was struggling to service this debt, while a large portion of its revenue was already committed to paying interest. France was, in effect, drowning in debt, and attempts to reform the financial system repeatedly encountered resistance.

At the same time, the ideas of the Enlightenment were increasingly challenging the foundations of the existing political and social order. Enlightenment thinkers criticized aspects of absolute monarchy, arbitrary authority, religious intolerance, and the privileges enjoyed by established institutions. Philosophers such as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Baron de Montesquieu, and Denis Diderot promoted ideas concerning reason, individual liberty, political representation, constitutional government, and the reform of society. Rousseau, particularly through The Social Contract, questioned traditional political authority and argued that legitimate government should be based on the will of the people. Montesquieu advocated the separation of powers and admired aspects of the English constitutional system, while Diderot played a central role in the publication of the Encyclopédie, a monumental project that sought to collect and disseminate knowledge. The American Revolution also demonstrated that Enlightenment principles could be translated into a new political order, further encouraging demands for reform in France.

The inequities of the French tax system deepened the crisis. French society was formally divided into three Estates: the First Estate, consisting of the clergy; the Second Estate, consisting of the nobility; and the Third Estate, which included everyone else, from the bourgeoisie to peasants and urban workers. Although the Third Estate represented the overwhelming majority of the population, it carried a disproportionate share of the tax burden. The privileged Estates enjoyed important exemptions and privileges, while attempts to introduce broader tax reforms faced resistance from groups determined to protect their traditional advantages. This system created not only economic inequality but also profound resentment toward the privileged orders.

There was also an increasingly important social conflict between the rising bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. Members of the bourgeoisie—merchants, professionals, lawyers, financiers, and other prosperous members of the Third Estate—were becoming wealthier and more educated. Yet their growing economic importance was not matched by equivalent political or social privileges. Many resented a system in which birth and inherited status could determine access to offices, influence, and prestige. The bourgeoisie therefore developed increasingly strong demands for political representation, equality before the law, and an end to aristocratic privilege.

The monarchy itself contributed to the crisis through political weakness and ineffective leadership. Louis XVI faced the difficult task of reforming a deeply entrenched political and social system while confronting opposition from privileged groups and institutions, including the provincial parlements, which could obstruct or resist royal attempts to implement reforms. The king's inability to resolve the financial crisis or build sufficient political support for reform gradually weakened confidence in the monarchy.

Finally, food shortages and economic hardship intensified popular discontent. A series of poor harvests contributed to rising grain and bread prices, placing enormous pressure on ordinary people, for whom bread was a basic necessity. The resulting hardship was particularly severe among the urban poor and peasants. The monarchy and political elites proved unable to adequately address the growing economic crisis, further undermining their legitimacy.

These factors did not operate independently. Financial crisis, social inequality, Enlightenment ideas, political weakness, aristocratic privilege, and food insecurity reinforced one another, creating a situation in which demands for reform increasingly became demands for fundamental political and social transformation. By 1789, the existing system was no longer able to contain these pressures, setting the stage for the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Star Wars is Evil... Yes I said it.

(I wrote this before the Disney takeover of the Star Wars Universe which based on the even greater drop off in film quality would likely have been more scathing).

I grew up in the generation that Star Wars was custom-made for. At the age of eight, I remember sitting with my jaw at ground level, mouth agape, completely fixated on a universe that was simply unbelievable. If I had been transported to a utopia, this was it. That was then.

My enthusiasm continued as I immersed myself in The Empire Strikes Back and the trilogy’s concluding episode, Return of the Jedi.

Years later, when Lucas re-released the three films with a few modifications, I sat through them again, this time with a healthy dose of nostalgia. Jedi had replaced A New Hope as my personal favourite, and Empire seemed slightly less disjointed than I remembered from childhood. Yet something had changed. The series had fallen remarkably in my overall estimation. The magic was tarnished, and I couldn’t believe how insipid both the plot lines and the acting seemed.

Of course, I was older. One cannot dismiss that variable. But when compared with the science fiction of the British comic-book world—Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper—not to mention the alternative science fiction of Blade Runner and other dystopian films, Star Wars looked remarkably inferior, at least by a parsec or two. In fact, it was downright awful.

I watched the prequels, hoping for some form of broader salvation, but loathed all three. The third was particularly bad, and I cursed the fact that I had been duped, even at a young age, by Lucas’s space odyssey of junk.

Alec Guinness, who played Obi-Wan Kenobi, was famously dismissive of Star Wars in his personal writings, and I can understand why. The series was, in many respects, a gigantic con job: the brilliance of its special effects served to conceal glaring weaknesses in its writing, characterization, and acting.

Very little substance emerges from Star Wars. It is a massive collection of clichés, but worse than that, I would argue is that its moral universe is deeply questionable—something that the masses who bathe in its subculture almost never acknowledge.

Consider A New Hope. Darth Vader participates in the destruction of Alderaan, an act that amounts to planetary genocide. I remember being shocked by it even as a child. Let’s put this in context for a moment.

History is replete with evil despots—Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot—and all of them were responsible for mass murder and genocide. But none of them destroyed an entire planet and everyone living on it. Vader does precisely that, and he does it in a matter of minutes. We are exposed to the event almost matter-of-factly because, of course, it is simply part of the story.

Here is the part I find difficult to swallow. Once Vader is redeemed, the hold of the Dark Side is broken, and he saves his son in Return of the Jedi, we are expected to cheer for him. We are encouraged to sympathize with him as he takes his place alongside Obi-Wan and Yoda in the pantheon of Jedi.

Luke Skywalker even ceremonially honours this genocidal lunatic with a funeral. Talk about turning your back on evil. What about his victims?

Was this monster not responsible for the destruction of billions of lives, at least potentially, given the population of an entire planet? Yet Lucas wants us to forget all of this because Vader ultimately did the honourable thing: he saved his son.

Frikkin' hell. Story or no story. Fiction or not. Does this not reveal something morally peculiar about Lucas’s universe?

One could argue that I am wasting far too many bytes on this line of thought—ink is so twentieth century—but unfortunately the Star Wars super-meme has infected our collective consciousness in a remarkably pervasive way. 

Children know more about asinine lines such as “I am your father” and “Use the Force” than they know about the words or ideas of Churchill, Schweitzer, or Martin Luther King Jr. Adults dress up in Vader costumes. When questioned about it, they may retort with something along the lines of, “Vader is the ultimate badass.”

Which begs the next question: where does that leave Genghis Khan, who only redrew the face of Eurasia?

A third-tier badass, perhaps. The point is not that children should not enjoy Star Wars. Of course they should. Imagination, spectacle, and myth have their place. Nor am I suggesting that watching a fictional villain somehow makes a person morally deficient.

The problem is more subtle. Ideas drive action.Stories provide us with archetypes, heroes, villains, virtues, and definitions of what is admirable. We absorb these ideas long before we are old enough to critically examine them. Lucas created a moral calculus in which redemption can apparently erase almost any prior transgression, provided the villain eventually performs the right act for the right person.

That is a troubling idea. The  Star Wars machine has become vastly larger than Lucas himself. Disney, Lego, merchandise, streaming, games, costumes, conventions, and an enormous commercial ecosystem will continue to entrench the mythology in the minds of successive generations.

We have become extraordinarily adept  at amusing ourselves. We consume stories, characters, spectacles, franchises, and fictional universes on an almost industrial scale. Meanwhile, the ideas embedded within those stories can pass into the culture largely unexamined.

It is a further statement on a sad reality—a truism we routinely overlook as we amuse ourselves to oblivion: What we repeatedly celebrate eventually becomes part of what we value.

Who were some of the most noteworthy Anglo-Saxon kings? Entry 24

The various English kingdoms were ruled from the 5th to the 11th century by monarchs of Anglo-Saxon origin. England was not a unified land for much of this period; rather, it was composed of several separate kingdoms, including East Anglia, Essex, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Wessex, and Sussex, collectively known as the Heptarchy. Minor kingdoms, such as Lindsey and Ynys Weith, also existed, while many regions were controlled by tribal chiefs and petty warlords.

Danish invaders began making incursions into the northern kingdoms, eventually conquering territory that became known as the Danelaw. In response to the continuing threat from the Danes, English kings frequently paid Danegeld, a form of tribute or tax intended to raise funds either to defend against the invaders or, at times, to secure their withdrawal.

Several Saxon kings stand out for their influence on the development of England. Aethelbald of Mercia (d. 757) was an important Mercian king during a period when Mercia expanded its influence and came to dominate many of the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. His successor, Offa of Mercia (d. 796), further consolidated Mercian control over the Midlands and strengthened the Christian tradition within his realm. Offa was one of the most powerful rulers of Anglo-Saxon England before the eventual rise of Wessex.

The emergence of Wessex as the dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom was associated with Egbert of Wessex (d. 839). His victory over the Mercians helped establish the growing superiority of Wessex and laid the foundations for the later unification of England.

Perhaps the most celebrated of the Saxon monarchs was Alfred the Great (c. 849–899), who became King of Wessex in 871. Alfred played a crucial role in defending England against Viking invasion, most notably defeating the Vikings at the Battle of Edington. He also strengthened the legal system, developed England's naval capabilities, promoted education, and encouraged intellectual and cultural activity. His reign is therefore often regarded as a major turning point in the development and consolidation of the English kingdom.

Aethelstan (d. 939), Alfred's grandson, continued the expansion of Wessex and is generally regarded as the first king to rule a united Kingdom of England. His victory at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, where he defeated an alliance of Norse and Scottish forces, further secured his position and demonstrated the growing strength of the English kingdom.

The later Saxon period was marked by renewed Viking attacks. Aethelred II, known as Aethelred the Unready (d. 1016), was king during the English defeat at the Battle of Maldon in 991. The increasing Viking threat led to renewed payments of Danegeld in an attempt to prevent further attacks. These measures ultimately failed to halt the Danish conquest, and the Danish king Cnut became king of England in 1016, bringing a period of Danish rule to the English throne.

The final significant Saxon monarch was Edward the Confessor (d. 1066), the last king of the House of Wessex. Edward ruled from 1042 until his death in 1066. His death without a clear heir created a succession crisis that led to competing claims to the English throne. The resulting conflict culminated in the Norman Conquest of 1066, bringing Saxon rule to an end and ushering in the era of Norman power in England.

The Dark Side of Adolescence

 Identification with group units forms a vital part of human psychological development—we are social animals, after all. During adolescence, an external group is often sought as an adjunct to the immediate family. In many cases, this external group can begin to supersede the family as the adolescent’s primary source of influence and belonging, and it therefore plays a critical role in shaping the young adult’s worldview.

Whether this drive is primarily genetic—hard-wired into the human brain—or environmentally determined is debatable. What seems less debatable is the power of the need to belong to something larger than oneself. This is a phenomenon I have observed repeatedly in the students I have taught.

It can be argued that human beings pass through several stages of social interaction, with the field of significant relationships expanding at each stage. As infants, our relationships are directed primarily toward our parents, usually the mother as the initial source of nourishment and security. As children, siblings and close friends become increasingly important. During adolescence, the circle expands further to encompass the broader peer group.

The emergence of the peer group often brings with it a questioning of parental values. This can lead to a rejection of the values of the home, commonly described as teenage rebellion. But rebellion may be only part of the story. The adolescent is not simply rejecting the family; they are searching for something to replace it—a larger framework within which to understand themselves and the world.

When that search for meaning is not satisfied within the peer group, the adolescent may expand their horizons again, exploring the various external groups and institutions available to them. These may include sports teams, clubs, political organizations, religious communities, or social causes. Some provide a positive sense of identity and purpose. Others may lack the philosophical or spiritual dimension necessary to replace the solidity and meaning previously provided by the family.

This can leave the adolescent particularly receptive to idealism in its many forms. That transition can be profoundly positive, leading a young person toward humanitarianism, service, creativity, or social responsibility. But it can also take a darker direction, particularly when the idealism is built around an us-against-them worldview.

The phenomenon of the homegrown terrorist—sometimes someone raised with many of the material benefits of Western society, and often from a relatively comfortable or affluent background—illustrates the extreme end of this process. How can an individual who appears to have so much be willing to kill or die for an abstract belief?

One possible answer lies in the extraordinary power of identification. The individual is no longer acting primarily as an isolated person. They have become part of something larger: a cause, a movement, a religious or political identity, or a perceived struggle between opposing worlds.

This is one reason extremist movements have historically placed such importance on young people. The Nazis understood the power of youth organizations to shape identity and loyalty. Revolutionary regimes have similarly sought to mobilize children and adolescents around political causes. In authoritarian societies, the pressure to demonstrate loyalty to the cause can even become strong enough to override traditional family bonds.

The lesson is not that adolescence inevitably leads toward extremism. Quite the opposite: adolescence is a period of extraordinary possibility. The same psychological drive that can make a young person susceptible to extremist ideology can also propel them toward compassion, creativity, courage, and service.

Adolescents need to feel that they belong to something larger than themselves. They need meaning, identity, purpose, and a sense that their existence matters.

If constructive outlets exist—communities that can engage young people intellectually, philosophically, socially, and spiritually—the search can become one of the great engines of human development. If those outlets are absent, however, the vacuum can be filled by movements offering certainty, belonging, and purpose at almost any cost.

It could be that  the darker side of adolescence: the very capacity that allows a young person to transcend the self can also make them vulnerable to those who offer them a cause worth sacrificing the self for.

The drive is extraordinarily powerful. In its most extreme form, it can become so powerful that even the instinct for survival can appear secondary to the need for meaning and belonging.

What Was the Age of Reason? Entry 23

The Age of Reason, particularly in its seventeenth-century form, can be viewed as an important forerunner to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. It was a period in which European philosophers increasingly questioned inherited assumptions and sought to understand the world through reason, observation, and systematic inquiry rather than relying exclusively on tradition or established authority.

The period witnessed major developments in philosophy, mathematics, and the emerging physical sciences. Thinkers sought to establish reliable methods for acquiring knowledge and to apply those methods to questions of human nature, morality, government, and the structure of the universe.

Two broad intellectual traditions became particularly influential: rationalism and empiricism. Rationalists emphasized reason and deduction as fundamental sources of knowledge, often drawing inspiration from the precision and certainty of mathematics. René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz were among the leading rationalists. Empiricists, by contrast, emphasized observation and experience, arguing that knowledge should be grounded in evidence derived from the senses and the natural world. John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume became central figures in the development of empiricism.

The boundary between these traditions was not always absolute. Some thinkers combined rational inquiry with observation, and the development of the scientific method increasingly encouraged philosophers to consider both reason and empirical evidence as essential tools for understanding the natural world.

Political philosophy also moved to centre stage. The upheavals of the seventeenth century—including the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, and the Glorious Revolution—forced European thinkers to reconsider the nature and legitimacy of political authority.

Thomas Hobbes, in his influential work Leviathan (1651), argued that human beings required a strong political authority to prevent society from descending into disorder and conflict. For Hobbes, individuals entered into a social contract and surrendered significant freedoms to a sovereign in exchange for security and peace. Strong government and the rule of law were therefore essential to a functioning society.

John Locke offered a very different conception of political authority in his Two Treatises of Government. Locke emphasized natural rights, individual liberty, private property, and government by consent. Unlike Hobbes, Locke argued that government existed primarily to protect the rights of individuals. If a government violated those rights or ceased to govern legitimately, the people could ultimately withdraw their consent.

Taken together, Hobbes and Locke represented two contrasting responses to the same fundamental problem: how could human beings create a stable political society while preserving individual freedom? Their competing answers would profoundly influence the development of modern political philosophy. Locke's ideas, in particular, would later become highly influential in the development of constitutional government and liberal democracy.

The Age of Reason can also be understood as part of the transition from the intellectual world of medieval scholasticism toward early modern thought. Medieval scholars had placed considerable emphasis on reconciling Christian theology with the philosophical inheritance of Aristotle. Seventeenth-century thinkers increasingly sought to establish knowledge through independent reasoning, mathematical analysis, experimentation, and observation.

This was not, however, an outright rejection of religion. Many of the major thinkers of the period were themselves religious, and questions concerning God, morality, and the nature of creation remained central to their work. The transformation was instead methodological: knowledge was increasingly expected to be justified through reason and evidence rather than accepted solely because it had been inherited from tradition or authority.

The Age of Reason was therefore a period of intellectual transition. It did not yet possess the full radicalism of the later Enlightenment, but it established many of the ideas and methods upon which that movement would build. Its emphasis on reason, empirical investigation, individual liberty, scientific inquiry, and the questioning of established authority helped create the intellectual foundations of the modern Western world.

In this sense, the Age of Reason represented an important step away from the intellectual structures of the medieval past and toward the Enlightenment, modern science, constitutional government, and the liberal political traditions that would shape the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Hollywood Law

There is something wonderfully reassuring about a legal drama. You may not know who committed the crime, who is going to win the case, or which junior lawyer is about to have a nervous breakdown, but you can be absolutely certain that specific outcomes will happen. They have to. This is Hollywood Law, a parallel universe where trials take 47 minutes, lawyers have photographic memories, judges are frequently corrupt, and crucial evidence can always be discovered with very little time left on the clock. You can always rely on the algorithm.

For starters, if there is a divorce lawyer, he or she is almost certainly having an affair with a client. Apparently, professional boundaries are simply too dull for television. The more complicated the divorce, the more likely the attorney-client relationship will become an attorney-client-love-triangle.

Most legal drama has one junior lawyer: fresh-faced, enthusiastic, ambitious and spectacularly unprepared for the case they have just been handed. Their first appearance in court will be a disaster. They will forget something important, misunderstand the judge, annoy opposing counsel and generally look as though they obtained their law degree from a cereal box. The senior partner watches from the back with the expression of someone who has just discovered that their promising new associate is, in fact, an expensive liability. To be fair, I hear that the humiliation part may not be entirely fictional.

Criminal defence lawyers, meanwhile, seem to have a supernatural ability to attract innocent clients. The client may look guilty, behave guilty, have been arrested at the scene and even have confessed, but there will always be a twist. They are innocent. The real murderer is still out there, and the defence lawyer's job is apparently not merely to practise law but also to become a detective, investigator, forensic scientist and amateur psychologist. Every episode also requires at least one bizarre, precedent-setting case. Ordinary legal disputes apparently do not exist on television. Nobody is suing over a straightforward contract. Every case will somehow redefine constitutional law, corporate responsibility, inheritance rights or the legal status of artificial intelligence.

Naturally, the trial will begin terribly for the lawyer. The witness is hostile, the judge is irritated, the jury looks unconvinced and opposing counsel is smirking. The siyuation appear hopeless until, approximately five minutes before the end of the programme, the Private Investigator bursts in with a folder and announces, "I found something." Of course they did. It will be exactly the piece of evidence required to turn the entire case around. Nobody will ask why it wasn't found three days earlier, why the lawyers hadn't thought of looking for it, or why this supposedly crucial evidence happened to arrive at precisely the moment required by the script. Evidence in Hollywood Law operates according to its own rules: it must never be discovered early enough to be useful.

Clients are equally reliable. They will always have hidden something important from their lawyer. When asked, "Is there anything else I should know?" The answer is invariably no, followed shortly by the revelation that they knew the victim, were at the scene, owned the company, had another family or were somehow involved in the crime. Why didn't they mention this earlier? Because if they had, there would be no episode.

This brings us to the  fate of the guilty client, which is when the entire firm develops a sudden and passionate interest in legal ethics. Half the lawyers argue that everyone deserves representation while the other half declare that they cannot, in good conscience, continue. The firm divides into opposing moral camps, usually for the entire episode, until someone discovers a brilliant legal solution that allows everyone to feel ethically vindicated.

Television lawyers, of course, are all eloquent. They never stumble, hesitate, ramble or say "um." They can deliver a five-minute closing argument without notes and somehow make every sentence sound like it belongs in a courtroom anthology. The legal assistants are equally predictable. They are either young, attractive and studying law at night, or they are terrifying battle-axes who have worked at the firm since the invention of the fax machine. There is apparently no room in Hollywood Law for the perfectly ordinary legal assistant who is 42, drinks too much coffee and has absolutely no intention of becoming a lawyer.

Wills are another reliable source of drama. Nobody on television ever draws up a simple will. Every person making one is wealthy, eccentric and surrounded by complicated family relationships. There is always a mansion, a secret child, an estranged relative, an unexpected beneficiary or a mysterious clause. Someone is inevitably disinherited, someone inherits everything and somebody gasps when the will is read. The judge will then call the lawyers into chambers, because judges in television dramas apparently conduct half their important business in small wood-panelled rooms while speaking in ominous whispers.

Judges themselves are remarkably unreliable. Roughly every third one seems to be corrupt. They take bribes, conceal evidence, have secret connections to litigants or participate in elaborate conspiracies. When the judge isn't corrupt, the lawyers will usually resort to courtroom theatrics instead. They pace dramatically, approach witnesses, wave documents around, raise their voices and produce last-minute revelations that would probably result in a real judge reaching for the contempt citation. But this is television, so the jury gasps, the opposing counsel looks horrified and the audience applauds internally.

The research is equally efficient. A lawyer can spend four minutes looking through a database and find the exact precedent required to win the case. It will be a case from 1978, decided by an obscure court, involving facts almost identical to those currently before the court. Nobody else has ever heard of it, but our hero somehow knows exactly where to look. In real life, I suspect legal research may occasionally take slightly longer.

Then  there is the greatest legal fiction of all: cases actually end. A complicated trial involving multiple witnesses, expert evidence, constitutional questions and millions of dollars will somehow be resolved within the hour. There are no months of discovery, scheduling problems, adjournments, procedural motions, expert reports or appeals. Evidence appears, someone gives a stirring speech, the judge makes a decision and everybody walks dramatically out of the courthouse before the credits roll.

That is the great comfort of Hollywood Law. Justice may be complicated, but it is never slow. The rich client may have the best lawyers, the opposing side may have manipulated the system and the judge may even be corrupt, but the truth will always emerge triumphantly—usually about five minutes before the end.

The junior lawyer will survive the humiliation, the client will finally confess what they should have disclosed in the first interview, the Private Investigator will find the missing evidence, the lawyer will discover the perfect precedent, the judge will summon everyone into chambers, and some lawyer will deliver a closing argument worthy of Shakespeare. Justice will prevail, the innocent will be vindicated, the guilty will be exposed, and the lawyers will walk dramatically out of the courthouse.

All in 47 minutes. The real miracle isn't that television lawyers win so many cases. It's that they never find time to bill anyone.