THE QUESTIONABLE ENLIGHTENMENT

What is so terrible about Eurocentrism?

It is not unusual for participants in my classes to ask profound and even disturbing questions. As you can imagine they are not ‘safe’ spaces- they are designed to shake assumptions and question comforting myths. In that spirit, a huge thank you to Dr. Pilar Eguez Guevara (who is a participant in my current JOY OF THINKING course) for these questions.

During a class discussion about how different eras (paleolithic, agrarian, feudal, industrial) viewed the nature and purpose of ‘thinking’ as an activity, she had some thoughts:

"With respect to today's class, I got the impression that you were ranking thinking based on the phases of humanity. (As for) the example of people taking drugs who are incapable of thinking because they haven't had access to education- I lost you there.” “My question is, in what ways did the age of enlightenment contribute to humanity, taking into account it also worked to place other forms of thinking, and organizing society in a lower scale or rank? In other words, how do we account for eurocentrism in enlightenment thinking and take it's contributions while acknowledging the damage it caused to large segments of the world (not just minorities in the global north) by deeming them inferior and in need of being "civilized"?"

Here is my long response to Pilar and others like her who struggle with Eurocentrism and question the supposed virtues of The Age of Enlightenment.

1: To clarify, I was not ranking ‘thinking’ on the different “phases of human evolution”, leave alone judging societies or civilizations on a scale from inferior/ bad to superior/ good. That would not be a useful exercise. I was trying to distinguish between the ways in which the idea of thinking (and the processes involved in critical thinking) has evolved over time. The kind of ‘thinking’ needed to survive and thrive during different stages of human history/ development (paleolithic, feudal, industrial etc.) required us to 'think' in different ways. For instance, the hunter gatherer needed very different cognitive and conceptual capabilities compared to an aristocrat, merchant or cook living in Venice in Shakespeare's time. Similarly, you and I need to develop far more complex thinking skills, tools, and dispositions to merely cope with our complex lives in 2024. Imagine the kind of thinking required to operate an online bank account or pilot an airplane! This means that our cognitive capabilities need to be far more developed than that of a cobbler or a farmer who lived in the 1300s. Whether we judge it as superior or inferior is irrelevant, the fact is that it is qualitatively different- the cobbler’s thinking processes (ways of processing information, analyzing, and arriving at conclusions) would not be useful to us today.

2. To be clear, when talking about the impact of drugs and stimulants on one’s thinking, the education of consumer is almost irrelevant. Ingesting drugs or alcohol (whether you are illiterate or a PhD in Physics) will always affect your capacity to think rigorously. Stimulants by reducing inhibition may free our expression and make us believe we are “creative”. However, in general, depressants by slowing down the cognitive processes make us dull. Geniuses like Coleridge, Poe and Hemingway who consumed copious amounts of opium or alcohol produced despite, not because of their consumption. Coleridge, for instance, believed that several hundred lines of the poem Kubla Khan came to him in an opium induced dream- however he was only able to remember fragments after waking up. Who knows what he might have created if he were not addicted to opium.

The important thing to remember is that both stimulants and depressants interfere with the capacity of the mind to act in a focused, disciplined and rigorous manner- which is the basis of high-quality (complex and nuanced) thinking. Drugs are not the gateway to clear, nuanced, and complex thinking, however much they have been romanticized. When consumed routinely (or in excess) they mess with and dull the mind.

3. You ask in what ways "the age of enlightenment contributed to humanity, taking into account (that) it also worked to place other forms of thinking, and (indigenous) societies on a lower scale or rank?".

I would urge you and other readers to delve into the development of Western societies especially between the 15th- 20th centuries (spoiler alert- it is so much more complex than conventional stories about 'colonization' and 'slavery'). A listing of the benefits of the Age of Enlightenment are far too many- so here are merely the headlines.

(i): It promoted society-wide literacy and through that helped create a culture of logic and reason (as opposed to myth, tradition and emotional reactivity). This helped to further science and the discovery of the laws of nature itself.  

(ii): This in turn helped develop the idea of the autonomous individual (unrestrained by societal constraints and bias), individual rights, and finally the notion of universal human rights. 

(iii): With the coming of the age of reason and individual rights, Western societies were forced to develop a philosophy of government (liberal democracy) that could accommodate and regulate these freedoms. This also forced them to develop practical and legal innovations in governing systems such as the separation of powers, rule of law and the other complex mechanics of modern democracies.

(iv): Together they popularized the pursuit of economic, social and political progress- which was very much a Western idea. This in turn influenced every society in the world starting from the American and French Revolutions to the Asian and African independence movements that fought against Western colonization and imperialism.

(v): Finally, the advances in science, technology and the capitalist free market economy helped reduce infant mortality, created opportunities (and greater equality) for women and allowed for the greatest reduction in poverty in human history.

4: As for the Enlightenment having "worked to place other forms of thinking and organizing society in a lower scale or rank?", this was not unique to the Enlightenment or to Western societies. Historically notions of quality (as well as progress) depended upon the values and standards of the powerful. Ideas were not always replaced because they were deemed ineffective or had become irrelevant. Old ideas were almost always supplanted by new ones through:

(i): Conquest- the West conquered the South or the East and brought their ways to these societies.

(ii): Cultural obsolescence- popular new ideas (sometimes Western) drove out old ones.

(iii): Technological superiority- more efficient gadgets always drove out less efficient ones and with it the old ways.

(iv): Changing environment- as climate changed, grasslands were denuded, and rivers dried up, old habits and practices were discarded.   

Any (and all) of these shifts forced societies and civilizations to jettison old ways and adopt new ones. When this happens, the society itself ‘ranks’ practices as good or bad. The old is almost always valued as ‘inferior’ and the new as ‘superior’. The only exception were the conservatives who bemoaned and cursed the new-fangled ways. But it didn’t make any difference, the new, the powerful and the shiny always displaced the old, weak, traditional and the boring.

To put it bluntly, the fact that the Enlightenment was placed above other older systems was not the fault of Westerner scientists or imperialists. The Westerners merely did what the Muslims had done to Spain and Portugal when they conquered those kingdoms, they did what the Mughals had done to India. The powerful always brought with them their ways and mores and this led to the destruction of the old.

It is important to realize that the current enthusiasm for reviving ancient and indigenous ways of food, housing or lifestyles is because of (a), our recognition that these have values that are sorely lacking in modern life, (b), a romantic/ political reaction against the modern, industrial and commercial world and (c), a few generations of liberal (reason based) thinking that helped us see value in alternative forms of thinking, beyond what we are used to.     

5: “In other words, how do we account for eurocentrism in enlightenment thinking and take it's contributions while acknowledging the damage it caused to large segments of the world (not just minorities in the global north) by deeming them inferior and in need of being "civilized"?"

This is an important critique of the Enlightenment thinking- undoubtedly, the effects of industrialization and capitalism have played havoc on the planet and all traditional societies.

• First a qualification: Just as every human is egocentric, every society is sociocentric- as is every nation and civilization. So, there is nothing unusual in Europeans being Eurocentric. Russia, China and the Arab states are emphatically Russo-centric, Sinocentric and Islamo-centric even as India is trying to become more Indocentric. The reason we focus on the Europeans is because they are the latest hegemons (unless you count the USA which has been the most powerful force in the last century). So yes, as I explained in #4, the military, economic and intellectual prowess of the Europeans diminished other societies and ways of thinking. But this is natural and the way things happened throughout human history. The culture of the ancient Egyptians, Indians, French, and Britons (for instance) had been completely supplanted by conquests and other shifts, way before European colonization and the Enlightenment.

• Even today in North and West Africa the Arabs who settled there through conquest consider the non-Muslim Africans as inferior. The same differentiation exists in every society on the planet (Chinese and Japanese, Japanese and Koreans, Russians and Ukrainians…etc.  

• The original Enlightenment values were open-mindedness, individual liberty, reason, and the settling of quarrels through dialogue and argument.  

• However very soon these values also (naturally) spurred scientific discovery and technological invention.

• Once technological development became widespread (mechanical machinery, steam engines, electricity, telegraph, automobiles, telephone, radio, television, computer, internet), it needed a financial and market system that could finance and distribute this increasing productivity. This led to the development of a kind of globalized capitalism that very soon commodified all resources, people, skills and values.

• This, as we now realize, has resulted in a degraded planet, the commodification of all culture and values, and fragmentation of community and society, and the destruction of all pre-industrial ways of life.

• This may lead you to conclude that Eurocentrism, and even the Enlightenment, were a net negative for the world- and there are those who believe that reason and science have had mixed results for humanity.

• But if we are to critique them, we should be very precise about what happened and why. We should also recognize that the Europeans were not exceptionally cruel, they just did things on an industrial scale.

• A blanket denunciation of Europe, Eurocentrism, or the Age of Enlightenment is not useful. Most things we value today, the need for political and creative freedom, individual autonomy, minority rights are because of the European Enlightenment.

• Also, at least indirectly, the Enlightenment, scientific progress and the industrial revolution together conspired to the loss of indigenous ways of life, the breakdown of the extended family, community and society as well as the large scale pollution of the planet.  

Life on planet Earth has always been difficult and humans have lived lives that are as Hobbes put it “nasty, brutish, and short”. All of us who read this are fortunate to have lived exceptionally affluent, free and secure lives. Lives that, I might add, have allowed us to critique the very system that afforded us these privileges. I, for one, am grateful to a few centuries of Eurocentrism, even as I trash its excesses and bemoan what it has done to traditional societies.

In pre-modern India I would not exist as a free thinking man.