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The Age of Praise of Ignorance
İvo MOLİNAS
June 5, 2024
Albert Camus, while falling into pessimistic thoughts about the course of humanity in his time, looked for a way out and first tried to name the age in which he lived.
According to him, the 20th century is the age of fear.
According to Camus, the 17th century is the century of mathematics, the 18th century is the century of physics, and the 19th century is the century of biology.
In the 20th century, as a result of his observations, he claims that fear took over humanity thanks to the technique applied, although it was not science.
The famous thinker undertakes the task of enlightening and warning humanity, which he believes is the duty of every thinker, based on his observation that people think less clearly and less humanely than ever before, which he believes stems from fear in the age he lives in.
In line with this goal, Camus tries to explain why fear exists and how it pushes the people of the century to extinction in his article titled The Century of Fear, written in Combat magazine in 1948.
According to Camus, the most striking aspect of our age is that man has no story left about his future. He says that people who are deprived of their future are pressed against the wall. However, according to him, only dogs can live under walls. He writes in his article that a life without a projection on the future has no meaning, and a life without the promise of maturation and progress cannot be valid.
Camus develops his argument as follows:
“My generation's workers in factories and universities are increasingly living like dogs against the wall.
It is not the first time in history that people live with a wall built in front of their lives. However, in the past, they would overcome these walls with words and calls for rebellion. They would refer to the values that formed their hopes. But now they don't talk at all. Because the world seems to us today to be governed by deaf and blind forces that disregard warnings and suggestions.”
In his article, Camus states that dialogue between people is almost over and that people refrain from talking because they are convinced that callings are unnecessary.
Camus says:
"We have seen lying, humiliation, murder, exile, torture, and each time we could not persuade those who did these things not to do so because they were sure of themselves.
Because, it is not possible to convince the abstract concepts of an ideology.
For this reason, a person is afraid of the other person whom he cannot convince and falls into silence. For example, 'You must remain silent on the Anglo-Saxons trying to keep Franco positive. People were given the fear that "otherwise, every objection you make will benefit communism." And we got scared and then we kept silent.
I told you that fear is a technique...
We are drowning amongst the people who believe they are absolutely right in their opinions.
Unfortunately, for those who can only live within the values of dialogue and friendship of humanity, this silence means the end of the world."
According to Camus, the inability to object, the inability to call out, caused by fear, was, in the final analysis, the messenger of a deadly universe that the world had never experienced before...
♦♦♦
So how did the 21st century begin?
It is quite possible to argue that the new century is progressing on the axis of ignorance, beyond fear, along with post-truth, which is the product of post-modernism. Based on the fact that new technologies change human chemistry, we are living in a period where ignorance is glorified consciously and unconsciously with each passing day. While the world of perception that is created using easily obtained information removes reality from our lives, it is becoming increasingly difficult to fight against such distortion of truth as well as fear.
Critical thinking and the practice of analyzing and searching for truth through the filter of cause-effect relationships, which were indispensable in the enlightenment period of humanity , have come to this level almost for the first time since that period. Facts have been replaced by perception images that some people manipulate but which the masses want to buy immediately.
The 21st century person, who sees no harm in describing life without engaging in a deep mental activity, is unwilling to perceive or comprehend life outside his own world. Because he is already trying to shape the world with his own shallow understanding in a way that does not allow any discussion. For him, his own world is the whole, the sum of the world.
While his ignorant courage and baseless but sharp self-confidence have secured him a permanent place in society, the faithful support of his supporters even places him in the position of a false guru. He is against the intellectual, against new forms of art, against philosophy, but especially against philosophical teachings that do not exist in his world.
He believes that someone rules the entire world and tries to give meaning to all political, economic, and social developments by filtering through the belief in those who rule the world. Conspiracy theories are a must. Because he does not question the so-called facts he wants to believe in, he believes them to be absolute truth. One day, when he hits the wall, since he cannot be Camus' person who overcomes the wall, he looks for the blame in others and tries to move forward in a vicious circle, without realizing that he is spinning around his own axis...
He is like the 21st-century version of Nietzsche's famous underdog in the slave-master relationship.
According to Nietzsche, there is no action that the weak cannot do for ressentiment, in other words, revenge which is the psychological state that arises from the inferiority complex he feels due to his own existence.
Everything is allowable on this path.
This period, which came after the Century of Fear described by Camus, is even more dire than the age of fear. Because it is an age where perception created by distorted reality is at the forefront. Ignorance and lack of critical thinking have become the backbone of a new world devoid of ancient values and meaning.
What is in question is a world where truth and reality are pushed to the background and intellectualism is being buried.
The Century of Ignorance or the Age of Praise of Ignorance is a sad tragedy of human history today.
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