Tag Archives: Marquis de Condorcet

malthus: specter at the feast

Thomas Robert Malthus. Hunger is always at the door, even in an era like our own. People still die of starvation. Do people starve because there are too many of us ? Or, is famine the necessary companion, the price … Continue reading

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the future: misleading desires for permanence

The future is a relic, and industry and a myth. For all our scientific prognostications, do we know any more about it than the average Zoroastrian? …After Louis Sebastien Mercier passed into the dustbin of history, a new breed of … Continue reading

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future: like beads on an infinite string

The modern future was born, according to one dating, in the year 1770, when a Parisian hack writer named Louis-Sebastien Mercier wrote a book called L’an 2440… …This linear conception of the time is another essential ingredient of the modern … Continue reading

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Promise them anything

…but give them a propadeutic scenario…. Bird’s guts, crystal balls, the stars in the heavens, tea leaves- individuals have resorted to all of these and more in an effort to foretel the future. Today, the seer’s tools are charts, statistics, … Continue reading

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enlightened unreason

The Enlightenment. This is our tradition. This is our world view. The liberal, rational, humanitarian way of thought. It has persisted for over two centuries. This is a tradition which is bending against strains that challenge its hegemony. At what … Continue reading

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POKING INTO DARK CORNERS:ILLEGAL & SALACIOUS

”Whether such pronouncement represented genuine alarm or rhetorical posturing is difficult to say, but the authorities certainly took slander seriously. On may 28, 1649, the Parlement of Paris tried to restore order in the capital by threatening to hang anyone … Continue reading

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MARRIED TO TEMPTATION

”Marriage without love, is the Compleatest Misery in life. Besides, I must say, it is to me utterly unlawful, and entails a Curse upon the persons, as being wilfully perjured, invoking the Name of GOD to a falsehood, which is … Continue reading

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MR. TAMBOURINE MEN & THE WAR DANCE

The idea of American Manifest Destiny is not exclusive to the mid-eighteenth century, though the period of imperial “Westward Ho!” is one of the more conspicuous symptoms of that deeper, existential malady—the messianic mission to make the world over in … Continue reading

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NATIVE INTELLIGENCE

The concept of the Manifest Destiny has acquired a variety of meanings over the years, and its inherent ambiguity has been part of its power. ”Manifest Destiny was always a general notion rather than a specific policy. The term combined a … Continue reading

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INDIAN GIVERS & LAND DITHERS

”For a time Europeans had invented an AMERICA peopled by noble savages, men uncorrupted by civilization; as Montaigne wrote, quoting Seneca, they were “fresh from the gods”. But Europe has never stopped reinventing the New World. The eighteenth-century debate took … Continue reading

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