Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #humanism
Most recents (2)
From #Pericles to #Trump: A brief history of the West in 21 tweets (including this tweet). Purpose is to show how through the muddled history there is a direct ideological train connecting Western Civ that is meaningful to talk abt. Obvs lots is missing. it's a tweetstorm. (1/21)
753 BCE: A little town called #ROME is founded on the banks of the Tiber in #Italy. It will invent the word Emperor & become the standard for all future western empires. Its language is still used on the seal of the American President, along w/ its symbol of the Eagle. (2/21)
387 BCE: Plato founds his Academy for philosophy in #Athens. In between bouts of mansplaining & homoeroticism they trailblaze the concept of using logic & reason to make sense of the world & develop tools for doing so we still use today. (3/21)
Now we get to strand b/ of criticism of Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now". That is, "Inequality! [& often then] Therefore Pinker is a racist, sexist, transphobe scumbag who should be scorned".
As @salonium pointed out, most of that criticism is easy to dismiss. And yet...
As @salonium pointed out, most of that criticism is easy to dismiss. And yet...
Here are @salonium's own words (in quillette.com/2018/03/11/ste…) on dismissing some such criticisms; and let's face it, she's right. Except, arrghh whoops, this means an entire system of "#humanism" values being adopted *as well as* techno yada, and things really aren't that simple. 
As @salonium herself points out, that vague values bundle includes #liberalism. And that's OK... except liberalism (& objective science) are under attack, & except Pinker simply unconsciously assumes far too much, as we shall see. But first, @salonium on some critics:
