Thank you Ellie (or Eleanor?) for this brilliant romp through history with lightning clarity on the present moment. So refreshing and vital. Yes, to your invitation to ''blow the fucking walls off everything we think we know about the past, present, and future.'' YES!
Thank you, Julia! And, ha, yes, I'm being absolutely rubbish at being consistently Ellie or Eleanor. I really just wanted to start publishing as Eleanor, and quite like using both/either in conversation. Which is probably confusing and unhelpful. Sorry!
Thank you so much for reading, so glad this hit a spot for you. I've got some of your latest pieces bookmarked and am so looking forward to reading now that I'm not feeling all distended and pregnant with this essay. xx
I can hardly listen to talk of the Enlightenment without thinking of Steven Pinker's "Englightenment Now," which is the perfect example of a public intellectual letting his fame go to his head and tell him he's qualified to write about things way outside his bailiwick. Actual historians panned it because Pinker either didn't do his homework or didn't care and just wrote what suited his goal. Either way, "Age of Anger" sounds like a great antidote!
Thanks so much for reading! "Age of Anger" is a really good read; maybe a tiny bit dated now even though it's only eight years old. History moves fast these days, I guess. Mishra's "Bland Fanatics" from 2020 built on a lot of the same themes. I think he sees English culture in particular very clearly.
I think it was Josh Schrei who said in an episode of The Emerald that he wished he had a sound effect he could play every time Steven Pinker is proven wrong, haha.
"I think it was Josh Schrei who said in an episode of The Emerald that he wished he had a sound effect he could play every time Steven Pinker is proven wrong, haha."
Ha. Really. I mean, even his most famous book *in* his bailiwick ("The Blank Slate") hasn't stood the test of time.
You've given beautiful words to a clarity to which I have also arrived via another path, exploring the deepest structures of inner experience and discovering so, so much that is completely absent from the modern "understanding" of human existence. Thank you!!
"It’s uncomfortable to admit it, but this means we have more in common than we might think with those who are acting out in rage against the broken promises of the Enlightenment. We’re all, in our very different ways, fighting a ghost."
I think this is key. Social media has created a balkanisation of opinion where, particularly on the "left", or whatever we are now*, it's considered bad taste to admit this "something in common" (this has reached insane extremes in America, where I was once cancelled for speaking to someone who speaks to someone who speaks to "Nazis"). I don't necessarily mean that there are "good people on both sides", but there are certainly people on both sides, and we need to do the impossible, to rediscover our common humanity, get to the heart behind the hurt.
* Your "populist/anti-populist" categorisation is useful, another one which I refer back to a lot is from John Higgs, here – https://johnhiggs.com/newsletter-12/ – where he said that Brexit, Trump et al reveal a divide "between those who are pro-doom and those who are pro-hope – between those who want to find a better system, and those who are content with the system we have, even though it dooms us all, because it’s just easier that way."
Absolutely agree with all of this. And I think more history is often one of the best ways to help us understand where and how we might have things in common with people across the divide.
Reality appears to shift so strikingly when one tunes into the collective. My attention has been turned to the 'Enlightenment' period lately. Everywhere I seem to turn, I'm finding others' attentions turned in that way also. I'm really grateful to have found your post today! I look forward to checking out more of your writings!
Thank you for such a deep dive... I'd like to say, by now, that enlightenment mixed with intuition, magic and tradition has already been performed. Nazi Germany was exactly that. A fantastic myth as national ideology and an industrial death machine together. So I don't think there's a solution to avoid violence and ressentiment, unless we stop thinking dualistically. Enlightenment, since it's dawn, has been an ideology that empowered European colonization of the world. It looks like a betterment only if you aren't a native from America (which is a continent, not a country) or Africa or Asia or Oceania. And if you're a child, a woman, an elder, a somehow disabled person, a poor, a non-human animal, a forest, an ocean, the atmosphere, Enlightenment never was meant for you. I perceive the current dismantling of enlightenment thought as a natural movement towards balance, in a very taoist way.
Thanks so much for this — so interesting. I hadn’t thought of Nazi Germany as a combination of Enlightenment philosophy with fantastical myth, but now that you point it out it makes perfect sense. And, point totally taken about Enlightenment ideas having been a justification and engine of colonialism from the start. Perhaps what I should have emphasized is that we need a balance between reason and intuition, rather than between Enlightenment philosophy and intuition. Thank you as ever for reading so deeply and giving such generous and thought-provoking feedback.
We need to liberate or possibly just duplicate that clay model of a sheep's liver in the British Museum. It has helpful info in cuneiform about what a blemish here or there indicates omen-wise. Then we'll know what the hell's going on
YES. Also, have you read Ruth Padel's "In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self"? Starts with a long section on divination from entrails in Greek tragedy that is fascinatingly intricate. x
Have you read Netherworld by Robert KG Temple? Like much of Temple's work, the possibility that his theses are correct is probably about as likely as the possibility that a stopped clock is correct, but nevertheless they are *utterly* fascinating.
At one point he finds a friendly slaughterhouse owner, so that he can go deep on divining with entrails. At another point, he speculates that the I Ching may work by tapping into some sort of crystalline structure of "events", in which new events pop into the universe off of stacks of hexagons, somewhat like human skin cells.
Oh, he also visits the site of the Greek underworld, the *actual* Greek underworld (which apparently is on the Bay of Naples).
Completely bonkers and very, very, *very* worth reading
PS. Also, r"these turbulent, transitional years, years when there is still so much to play for in the state of the world (will there always be? Has there always been?" -- the balm for this is CS Lewis, Learning in Wartime. Either that or Ecclesiastes :)
Whatever ___ is, we are not the first, and probably won't be the last.
Hi! I will be overseas so cannot meet you in person for this event next month! However, would love to spark up a conversation some time...
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” 0s core to my syllabus at Kingston School of Art -- where I teach 'Thinking About Ideas: Understanding Media & Worldbuilding'
Who controls the present -- is the starting point.
And cultural literacy is really an existential mission.
As for all the Enlightenment, I strongly recommend this genius work by Roy Porter.
Yes! It would be lovely to meet sometime. I'm back in London in mid-March, if you happen to be around then.
That Roy Porter book looks AMAZING, I am buying it now. Thank you so much. Thanks also for the nudge above to read more C.S. Lewis -- he is perennially on my list of writers to revisit/get better acquainted with, so I v much appreciate the reminder.
Your course at Kingston sounds amazing. Very important work you're doing.
It seems we are susceptible to corruption no matter what--and if such is the case we may as well have the more imaginative, ritualistic, more beautiful ,more meaningful versions of it! Absolutely. So often I think people want a world free of corruption, it doesn't exist, I would bet it never will--but a world that includes its own being and belongingness even alongside our corruption is not only possible, it's already here, we just have to at any moment remember and breathe her in.
Ah, thanks so much for the lovely comments. Loved reading your thoughts on this piece. I suppose if we remember that corruption is a (twisted and unhelpful) response to a sense of fear and insecurity, it stands to reason that it will always exist, or at least is always possible. I think the best-case scenario would be to bring that fear into right size, and temper it with imagination and a sense of belonging. I've already written about him in this comment thread, but for my money, this is why Blake is so brilliant. He identifies Urizen -- the judging, separating, rationalizing, deadening impulse that can easily lead to corruption -- but he doesn't condemn him; he just suggests he needs to be brought into alignment/harmony with the other mythic/enduring qualities of humanity -- the other Zoas.
you worded all of this much better than I. It really is all about right size ness. My these egos are powerful tools! But our belonging and imagination, even more so!
I love reading , or listening to your words, Ellie. Totally agree that we need ritual, magic, faith and a deep connection to nature and imagination to be fully human. I am currently nerding away studying the male, Norman version of history of the Middle Ages in Britain, and searching for clues of the ancient wisdom that I know in my bones and hear in my heart. Enjoy your green cell and the wildness of the moors. With love, Josie
Oooh, your nerdery sounds fascinating, Josie! What are you reading? And what are you discovering? Hope you’re finding all the ancient wisdom you seek. xx
Thanks for this piece. I've just got a couple of things that you might wonder about if you are so inclined. The first is this: are power and wisdom incompatible aims in life? Does the pursuit of one turn the other into an obstacle? The second is this: if you are an epistemological anarchist or a value pluralist, or both, how do you respond to the disintegration of the unitary narrative that has upheld state power in the West for generations? What if the Enlightenment replaced the monism of the one god of the Christian churches, with the one Truth 'out there' of science, the rule of facts? But never seriously questioned the habit (article of faith) of monism? If the state can no longer command a unified narrative, will it have to turn to other means of coercion? For those who see wisdom in pluralisms of all kinds, pluralism all the way down so to speak, what to make of those who bemoan the dissolution of the monist narrative?
Thanks for this, lots to think about here. I definitely think there’s something in the idea that the Enlightenment replaced Christian monism with a monism of science. Both of them posing their own dangers of course. I don’t have any absolute answers as to what to do with those who bemoan the dissolution of the monist narrative, but I do think that telling a more varied history, and bringing back some of the surprising threads that have been dropped under monist repainting of the past, is a helpful step.
I’m not sure that power as a goal or an aim is ever compatible with wisdom. But I do think it’s possible to have power and be wise — so long as you didn’t pursue power for its own sake in the first place, but rather found your way into it because of your devotion to something else. I’m not sure if this answers that question in the context in which you asked it, though!
Thank you so much for asking such thought-provoking questions!
Well done Ellie. Good read. Its the old "may you never live in interesting times" syndrome. But I have a suspicion that those of us that are sitting in our nerdy garrets, providing commentary, held up our hands to be part of them somewhere along the line. After all, someone has to do it or there won't be anything for future nerds to pore over. Bless.
Jay! Lovely to hear from you, and thank you for you generous and brilliant insights, as ever. Very glad to connect to your garret from mine, across the seas. I think you're right about us having held up our hands to incarnate now -- though that's probably true of all of us in some way or other, don't you think? xx
Thank you Ellie (or Eleanor?) for this brilliant romp through history with lightning clarity on the present moment. So refreshing and vital. Yes, to your invitation to ''blow the fucking walls off everything we think we know about the past, present, and future.'' YES!
Thank you, Julia! And, ha, yes, I'm being absolutely rubbish at being consistently Ellie or Eleanor. I really just wanted to start publishing as Eleanor, and quite like using both/either in conversation. Which is probably confusing and unhelpful. Sorry!
Thank you so much for reading, so glad this hit a spot for you. I've got some of your latest pieces bookmarked and am so looking forward to reading now that I'm not feeling all distended and pregnant with this essay. xx
I can hardly listen to talk of the Enlightenment without thinking of Steven Pinker's "Englightenment Now," which is the perfect example of a public intellectual letting his fame go to his head and tell him he's qualified to write about things way outside his bailiwick. Actual historians panned it because Pinker either didn't do his homework or didn't care and just wrote what suited his goal. Either way, "Age of Anger" sounds like a great antidote!
I really enjoyed the piece. Thanks!
Thanks so much for reading! "Age of Anger" is a really good read; maybe a tiny bit dated now even though it's only eight years old. History moves fast these days, I guess. Mishra's "Bland Fanatics" from 2020 built on a lot of the same themes. I think he sees English culture in particular very clearly.
I think it was Josh Schrei who said in an episode of The Emerald that he wished he had a sound effect he could play every time Steven Pinker is proven wrong, haha.
Thank you so much for stopping by xx
"I think it was Josh Schrei who said in an episode of The Emerald that he wished he had a sound effect he could play every time Steven Pinker is proven wrong, haha."
Ha. Really. I mean, even his most famous book *in* his bailiwick ("The Blank Slate") hasn't stood the test of time.
You've given beautiful words to a clarity to which I have also arrived via another path, exploring the deepest structures of inner experience and discovering so, so much that is completely absent from the modern "understanding" of human existence. Thank you!!
Thank you for reading! Your work sounds fascinating; I wasn't acquainted with the concept of psychotopology. x
"It’s uncomfortable to admit it, but this means we have more in common than we might think with those who are acting out in rage against the broken promises of the Enlightenment. We’re all, in our very different ways, fighting a ghost."
I think this is key. Social media has created a balkanisation of opinion where, particularly on the "left", or whatever we are now*, it's considered bad taste to admit this "something in common" (this has reached insane extremes in America, where I was once cancelled for speaking to someone who speaks to someone who speaks to "Nazis"). I don't necessarily mean that there are "good people on both sides", but there are certainly people on both sides, and we need to do the impossible, to rediscover our common humanity, get to the heart behind the hurt.
* Your "populist/anti-populist" categorisation is useful, another one which I refer back to a lot is from John Higgs, here – https://johnhiggs.com/newsletter-12/ – where he said that Brexit, Trump et al reveal a divide "between those who are pro-doom and those who are pro-hope – between those who want to find a better system, and those who are content with the system we have, even though it dooms us all, because it’s just easier that way."
Absolutely agree with all of this. And I think more history is often one of the best ways to help us understand where and how we might have things in common with people across the divide.
Brilliant, thought provoking and appreciated.
Thank you for reading!
Reality appears to shift so strikingly when one tunes into the collective. My attention has been turned to the 'Enlightenment' period lately. Everywhere I seem to turn, I'm finding others' attentions turned in that way also. I'm really grateful to have found your post today! I look forward to checking out more of your writings!
Ah, thanks so much for reading, Josh! Lovely to hear from you. We’re definitely all swimming in some kind of collective consciousness.
Thank you for such a deep dive... I'd like to say, by now, that enlightenment mixed with intuition, magic and tradition has already been performed. Nazi Germany was exactly that. A fantastic myth as national ideology and an industrial death machine together. So I don't think there's a solution to avoid violence and ressentiment, unless we stop thinking dualistically. Enlightenment, since it's dawn, has been an ideology that empowered European colonization of the world. It looks like a betterment only if you aren't a native from America (which is a continent, not a country) or Africa or Asia or Oceania. And if you're a child, a woman, an elder, a somehow disabled person, a poor, a non-human animal, a forest, an ocean, the atmosphere, Enlightenment never was meant for you. I perceive the current dismantling of enlightenment thought as a natural movement towards balance, in a very taoist way.
Thanks so much for this — so interesting. I hadn’t thought of Nazi Germany as a combination of Enlightenment philosophy with fantastical myth, but now that you point it out it makes perfect sense. And, point totally taken about Enlightenment ideas having been a justification and engine of colonialism from the start. Perhaps what I should have emphasized is that we need a balance between reason and intuition, rather than between Enlightenment philosophy and intuition. Thank you as ever for reading so deeply and giving such generous and thought-provoking feedback.
We need to liberate or possibly just duplicate that clay model of a sheep's liver in the British Museum. It has helpful info in cuneiform about what a blemish here or there indicates omen-wise. Then we'll know what the hell's going on
YES. Also, have you read Ruth Padel's "In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self"? Starts with a long section on divination from entrails in Greek tragedy that is fascinatingly intricate. x
Have you read Netherworld by Robert KG Temple? Like much of Temple's work, the possibility that his theses are correct is probably about as likely as the possibility that a stopped clock is correct, but nevertheless they are *utterly* fascinating.
At one point he finds a friendly slaughterhouse owner, so that he can go deep on divining with entrails. At another point, he speculates that the I Ching may work by tapping into some sort of crystalline structure of "events", in which new events pop into the universe off of stacks of hexagons, somewhat like human skin cells.
Oh, he also visits the site of the Greek underworld, the *actual* Greek underworld (which apparently is on the Bay of Naples).
Completely bonkers and very, very, *very* worth reading
PS. Also, r"these turbulent, transitional years, years when there is still so much to play for in the state of the world (will there always be? Has there always been?" -- the balm for this is CS Lewis, Learning in Wartime. Either that or Ecclesiastes :)
Whatever ___ is, we are not the first, and probably won't be the last.
Hi! I will be overseas so cannot meet you in person for this event next month! However, would love to spark up a conversation some time...
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” 0s core to my syllabus at Kingston School of Art -- where I teach 'Thinking About Ideas: Understanding Media & Worldbuilding'
Who controls the present -- is the starting point.
And cultural literacy is really an existential mission.
As for all the Enlightenment, I strongly recommend this genius work by Roy Porter.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/105973/flesh-in-the-age-of-reason-by-roy-porter/9780140167351
Finally, the Oracles will return in force, as it's Pluto O'Clock in Aquarius now.
Yes! It would be lovely to meet sometime. I'm back in London in mid-March, if you happen to be around then.
That Roy Porter book looks AMAZING, I am buying it now. Thank you so much. Thanks also for the nudge above to read more C.S. Lewis -- he is perennially on my list of writers to revisit/get better acquainted with, so I v much appreciate the reminder.
Your course at Kingston sounds amazing. Very important work you're doing.
Thank you, I was just writing on many of these things, including native contact in 1600, and "The Past controls the Future" https://substack.com/home/post/p-156204153
This piece sounds fascinating — I can’t wait to read. Thank you for sharing!
It seems we are susceptible to corruption no matter what--and if such is the case we may as well have the more imaginative, ritualistic, more beautiful ,more meaningful versions of it! Absolutely. So often I think people want a world free of corruption, it doesn't exist, I would bet it never will--but a world that includes its own being and belongingness even alongside our corruption is not only possible, it's already here, we just have to at any moment remember and breathe her in.
Oh and thank you, I always love reading what you have to say and very much apprecitate it's spaciousness.
Ah, thanks so much for the lovely comments. Loved reading your thoughts on this piece. I suppose if we remember that corruption is a (twisted and unhelpful) response to a sense of fear and insecurity, it stands to reason that it will always exist, or at least is always possible. I think the best-case scenario would be to bring that fear into right size, and temper it with imagination and a sense of belonging. I've already written about him in this comment thread, but for my money, this is why Blake is so brilliant. He identifies Urizen -- the judging, separating, rationalizing, deadening impulse that can easily lead to corruption -- but he doesn't condemn him; he just suggests he needs to be brought into alignment/harmony with the other mythic/enduring qualities of humanity -- the other Zoas.
you worded all of this much better than I. It really is all about right size ness. My these egos are powerful tools! But our belonging and imagination, even more so!
I think instead of tools I mean processes
I love reading , or listening to your words, Ellie. Totally agree that we need ritual, magic, faith and a deep connection to nature and imagination to be fully human. I am currently nerding away studying the male, Norman version of history of the Middle Ages in Britain, and searching for clues of the ancient wisdom that I know in my bones and hear in my heart. Enjoy your green cell and the wildness of the moors. With love, Josie
Oooh, your nerdery sounds fascinating, Josie! What are you reading? And what are you discovering? Hope you’re finding all the ancient wisdom you seek. xx
Thanks for this piece. I've just got a couple of things that you might wonder about if you are so inclined. The first is this: are power and wisdom incompatible aims in life? Does the pursuit of one turn the other into an obstacle? The second is this: if you are an epistemological anarchist or a value pluralist, or both, how do you respond to the disintegration of the unitary narrative that has upheld state power in the West for generations? What if the Enlightenment replaced the monism of the one god of the Christian churches, with the one Truth 'out there' of science, the rule of facts? But never seriously questioned the habit (article of faith) of monism? If the state can no longer command a unified narrative, will it have to turn to other means of coercion? For those who see wisdom in pluralisms of all kinds, pluralism all the way down so to speak, what to make of those who bemoan the dissolution of the monist narrative?
Thanks for this, lots to think about here. I definitely think there’s something in the idea that the Enlightenment replaced Christian monism with a monism of science. Both of them posing their own dangers of course. I don’t have any absolute answers as to what to do with those who bemoan the dissolution of the monist narrative, but I do think that telling a more varied history, and bringing back some of the surprising threads that have been dropped under monist repainting of the past, is a helpful step.
I’m not sure that power as a goal or an aim is ever compatible with wisdom. But I do think it’s possible to have power and be wise — so long as you didn’t pursue power for its own sake in the first place, but rather found your way into it because of your devotion to something else. I’m not sure if this answers that question in the context in which you asked it, though!
Thank you so much for asking such thought-provoking questions!
Well done Ellie. Good read. Its the old "may you never live in interesting times" syndrome. But I have a suspicion that those of us that are sitting in our nerdy garrets, providing commentary, held up our hands to be part of them somewhere along the line. After all, someone has to do it or there won't be anything for future nerds to pore over. Bless.
Jay! Lovely to hear from you, and thank you for you generous and brilliant insights, as ever. Very glad to connect to your garret from mine, across the seas. I think you're right about us having held up our hands to incarnate now -- though that's probably true of all of us in some way or other, don't you think? xx
I do indeed. We are all part of the Web of Life, each connected, node by node, to the whole, whether we realise it or not. Bless
What an inspiring peice !
Thank you so much for reading!