Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause – that it must be lived forward.
– Soren Kierkegaard
Allegedly the most powerful curse ever uttered is this: “may you live in interesting times; and may you attract the attention of those in power.” Historians identify previous periods in which such “interesting times” can be found, but the present tumult in which we find ourselves also qualifies.
Unlike cousins from other species who depend upon an abundance of instincts to guide their behavior, we humans must rely upon our conscious and unconscious minds for direction in an uncertain and unpredictable world. We have a survival need for energized intelligence; but in a world in which virtually every facet of human action is dominated by political intervention, control, and dictate, the processes of intelligent thought are replaced by coercively-enforced whims and fantasies. Only individuals are capable of thought; groups of people are not. Civilizations are created by individuals; they are destroyed by collectives. When college students circulate petitions condemning the Enlightenment and the search for truth as “racist”; when students demand certain days on which “white” students and faculty are expected to stay off campus; while “white” students are to be prohibited from wearing Mexican ponchos or sombreros; and when college administrators create and enforce “speech codes,” thoughtful minds begin to take notice of the impending dangers.
Our efforts to “live forward” are underlain perhaps, by the most fundamental of questions: how do we know what we know? Each of us possesses a circle of understanding, composed of such elements as our prior…