Recipe for Modernism

Here is the recipe: Look at a complex and confusing reality, such as the social dynamics of an old city Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of what that reality ought to look like Argue that the relative simplicity and platonic orderliness of the vision represents rationality Use authoritarian power to imp...

 Rational Ignorance

Of course, it is a cliché of our times that we suffer from information overload because of the ubiquity of electronic media. And for fifty years, cognitive scientists have been harping on the limitations of the brain in processing information. Some have argued that Grice’s cooperative maxims are a way to manage the flow of information in a conversation, maximizing the rate of transmission of usable knowledge. But the ultimate reason our speech is so indirect may lie in a different danger ...

 The Rational Versus the Irrational

Only two possible escapes can save us from the organized mayhem of our dark potentialities-the side that has given us crusades, witch hunts, enslavements, and holocausts. Moral decency provides one necessary ingredient, but not nearly enough. The second foundation must come from the rational side of our mentality. For, unless we rigorously use human reason to discover and acknowledge nature's factuality ... we will lose out to the frightening forces of irrationality, romanticism, uncompromisi...