Prologue: to—perhaps—a Golden Age and maybe even a Second Enlightenment
This is pretty much what's in the welcome letter.
[In case you didn’t get the welcome letter:]
I ask the question, on the main page of my website www.TheSideofGood.com, if the reader, by any chance, would want our society to have a Golden Age and perhaps a Second Enlightenment. It seems like a simple and obvious enough question to me, but some young ones in the world today have wondered to me what that would even mean. Realize that this causes me consternation. It’s quite frankly a culture shock for me. What? As a civilization, do we not know what these things mean anymore? A Golden Age—a time when a society flourishes tremendously, when things happen as they ought, when the people are ambitious and happy, when the best culture and cultural tastes rise, and when a society rises in glory… am I leaving anything out? A Second Enlightenment—like the original Age of Enlightenment: a time when following the dictates of Reason becomes popular and revered—as if etched on the culture from many different angles—and its popularity branches out with vast implications that reform society for the better… that’s a flowery way of putting it, and, do note that I have another even-more-specific way of putting it, which will make up the first article, so be sure to check that out. But we, as a culture, should have at least this general sense of its meaning, shouldn’t we? The words are not meaningless, nor are the phrases platitudes. It is mind-boggling to me that anyone other than small children wouldn’t know how to interpret these questions, or might think they’re not real questions at all. They are. I’m asking.
Should we have a Golden Age? Should we start a Second Enlightenment?
A lot of cultural forces over the past few decades have been demagnetizing the moral compasses of average citizens in Western countries to the point that a lot of even educated people have a hard time answering simple questions like this. Reeling from the scale of it and the fact that it might not jive with the culture they’ve been fed so far in life, some readers —believe it or not, in order to get everyone on the same page—will need me to point out that, by definition, a Golden Age is a good thing. During a Golden Age, people become happy; things work as they ought. Right? So when I ask if we should have one, it seems to me that the answer is simple: “Yes!” Think about it seriously. Deeply. I think about it all the time.
So how do you get a population—whose current culture does not jive with these themes—to be on the same page and energized enough to start a Golden Age, and to, perhaps, launch a Second Enlightenment too?
That’s the main theme of this blog, that’s its purpose, and that’s the purpose underlying almost all of my professional projects. (You can check out the “bio” page on my website to learn a little more about me.)
We know that there have been ages when certain societies had what was undeniably a Golden Age, like the Golden Age of Ancient Athens. And we know—or should know—that having a Golden Age is a task whose work is done mostly with our thoughts. It hardly takes more effort than that—perhaps the rest of it consists only of spreading the right thoughts to others a bit. Modern media has conditioned us to think that we’re only possibly saved or improved by new technologies, but, really, it’s the right thoughts that will save us. And it is possible. If it was possible for some civilization in history, then it’s possible for us. And consider: if we don’t, then who will?
Well, at the risk of sounding…ugh, you know what—I don’t have to couch this: here’s the fact: I’m born for this (that’s an understatement), and I shall help coordinate. I am going to put forward some long-overdue articles and concepts—philosophies that will help make sense of all kinds of things, from the essence of the Enlightenment Age, to thought experiments about what our civilization is really capable of, etc. If you’re subscribed to this Substack, I will safely assume you’re on board to start another Golden Age, and you want to know how.
So, how this Substack will work:
I will be dividing this new content into two distinct and harmonious blogs that fulfill different functions. One fits an aspiring mood, the other tends toward smackdown. The first one is called “Storehouse of Vision” and the other is “Custodian of the Universe’s Truth”.
I also plan to use a third label for a few articles, which would simply overlap some of the other two—I call it “Hero Studies”. And wouldn’t it be wild if these “Hero Studies” articles were to eventually become part of the backbone of a full-fledged university degree program, in, like, 50 years? Hey. It’s conceivable. ;) I don’t know about you, but, years down the line, if some youngster were to graduate with dual degrees in Enlightenment Studies and Hero Studies, only to quickly run for political office, then age-be-damned—my vote for them would be almost a foregone conclusion. Anyway, you can look forward to my articles on Hero Studies.
Oh, and one final thing… um. You may now have a duty to read on. ;)