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Archive for the ‘Enlightenment’ Category

BOOK NOTES: Tied to the sea and other mysteries – Wicked Local Beverly

Posted: August 16, 2020 at 9:54 am


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High drama amid furious winds, perilous ocean voyages and murder most yummy

Brief reviews of three books kick off Book Notes return after a bit of a hiatus. Readers, however, have not taken a hiatus. Book lovers of all ages have been busy this summer. Fifteen percent more books sold the first week of August 2020 than sold last year at this time. Juvenile nonfiction saw a 40 percent jump in sales and adult nonfiction saw an 18.9 percent increase in hardcover sales due in part to Mary Trumps book, Too Much and Never Enough.

All the books featured here are written by authors living on Bostons North Shore. Two are nonfiction books on the topics of hurricanes impact on the United States and the engrossing origin story of what is now the Peabody Essex Museum. Both are deeply researched, rich with fascinating detail and first-rate storytelling. The third is a cozy mystery with as much tasty food writing as suspense; happily, recipes for some of the Mexican dishes so lusciously described are at the back of the book.

Collecting the Globe: The Salem East India Marine Society Museum

By George H. Schwartz. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst and Boston. 2020. Paperback, 296 pages, $28.95.

George H. Schwartz, associate curator at the Peabody Essex Museum and teacher of museum studies at Tufts University, has published a fine book about (among other things) how Salem, Massachusetts one of this countrys busiest ports in 1799 came to be the home of the United States oldest continually operating museum.

Schwartz starts off with the dramatic story of sail in Salem. Great risks at sea led to great wealth and also a keen awareness of cultures far from home. Master sailors and business agents known as supercargoes traded around the world. Complex trade schemes involved Japan, Jakarta, Yemen, China, India, the West Indies and ports along the western coast of what is now the United States. The countrys first millionaire, Elias Hasket Derby, was one of Salems captains who traded in the Baltic and Far East. The ports rise to great prominence, with its 40 busy wharves and growing fleet, writes Schwartz, mirrored the rise of the burgeoning nation.

The East India Marine Society was formed in 1799 by 22 of these pioneering sea captains. Membership was exclusive. Candidates had to have sailed the harrowing seas off the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. Among the Societys aims was to form a Museum of natural and artificial curiosities known as the East India Marine Society Museum. This museum, transformed over time, would eventually become the Peabody Essex Museum that still retains much of the original collection.

The book, says Schwartz, demonstrates how the Society used its collection to support a vision of Americas identity tied to the sea. A fastidious researcher, he tells a story of risk and wealth and cunning. In 1795, for example, Salem captain Jonathan Carnes discovered a place to buy valuable pepper directly from local inhabitants of Sumatra. He went back to Salem and found a wealthy merchant to outfit a schooner he then sailed back to Sumatra where he bought pepper that yielded a 700 percent profit. This trip kicked off what was to be 50 years of lucrative trade for Salem merchants.

Fiction writer Arlo Bates (18501918) described Derby Street, along Salems waterfront, as follows: Derby Street was alive with bustle and excitement; when swarthy sailors were groups at the corners, or sat smoking before the doors of their boarding-houses, their ears adorned with gold rings, and their hands and wrists profusely illustrated with uncouth designs in India ink; when every shop window was a museum of odd trifles from the Orient, and the very air was thick with a sense of excitement and of mystery.

The acquisition of items from abroad meant that Salem residents possessed commodities normally associated with large European cities. Captains built elegant homes and owned art and objects from distant cultures. There were two newspapers in the city, 10 churches, along with schools, banks and much more. The community was, according to Schwartz, on the forefront of the American Enlightenment. It also accounted for 5 percent of the nations per capita income.

It was in this time of largess and cultural awareness that the captains built the museum on Essex Street and displayed some of the 6,400 objects they had collected from around the world. A canoe, kayak, a 6-foot, 7-inch sculpture of the Hawaiian god Kukailimoku, portraits, books, busts, spears and much more were exhibited.

Together, writes Schwartz, the vast ensemble was an organized display of the natural, cultural and spiritual world bound by the sea and open to visual inspection through the efforts of the American maritime trade. In so doing, it opened Americas eyes to a world beyond imagination and to relationships between world cultures that continue to this day.

Nacho Average Murder

By Maddie Day. Kensington Publishing Corp., 2020. Paperback. $7.99.

Award-winning author Maddie Day of Amesbury, Massachusetts, has published another of her increasingly popular cozy mysteries. Nacho Average Murder, set in Santa Barbara, is lots of fun despite the inevitable murder. This book is part of Maddie Days Country Store mystery series that is usually set in Indiana.

Amateur sleuth Robbie Jordan, owner of a restaurant and B&B in Indiana, traveled to her hometown of Santa Barbara for her 10th high school reunion. She meets Paul, a committed activist working to ban a prominent agrochemical companys fumigants. He believed the fumigants were a threat to the regions farm workers and animals. He tells Robbie that her recently deceased mother, who worked alongside Paul, may not have died of natural causes. A few days later he is found dead in his apartment. It turns out he died of an aneurysm, just as Robbies mother had. Robbie begins digging into her mothers and Pauls deaths.

Maddie Day does a fine job capturing the specialness of Santa Barbara. Her writing delivers something more than a virtual vacation to a beloved place. She nails the citys charms, with its miles of coast, the vast rolling expanse of foothills, the farmers market unlike any other for all that it has to offer, the delicious Mexican cuisine made with just-picked ingredients, the sweet and tangy perfumes of orange blossoms and gardenias, and that quirky side not everyone notices. Robbie visits a palm reader while out on a stroll. Madame Allegra tells her to pay attention. Danger lurks.

A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of Americas Hurricanes

By Eric Jay Dolin. W.W. Norton & Co., 2020. 393 pages. $29.95.

I happened to have read most of Eric Jay Dolins new book, A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of Americas Hurricanes, while Isaias was busy declaring itself. Reading about hurricanes while knowing one is headed your way is good and bad. We love weather. We fear weather. Hurricanes, a feature of summer and fall, are reliant on a handful of elements scorching desert air, 80-degee-plus ocean water, moist heated air and a low, horizontal wind shear. While landfall or colder waters can seriously alter their might, a hurricane fully manifest is among natures most deadly and destructive forces. You just never know.

And Dolin is not about to sugarcoat the story.

You can rely on this Swampscott author to dig deep, unearth reams of fascinating anecdotes, seek detailed historical records, and then tie it all together with plenty of his signature, edge-of-the-seat storytelling. Like so many of his earlier books on topics like whales, fur trade, privateering, lighthouses and more, Dolin has a special way of filling sentences with information while retaining your full attention. I brought his book with me everywhere.

He writes that a hurricane is the meteorological equivalent of a temper tantrum on steroids, with moods that rank from a Category 1 to Category 5 with winds that equal or exceed 157 mph. He reminds readers that a measly Category 1 rating is a ferocious thing, ripping off house shingles and siding, uprooting trees and tangling power lines. A No 5, however, is akin to catastrophe.

Dolin had to cover a lot of territory to write about hurricanes. We learn about Morse code, the impacts hurricanes had on Americas early settlers and settlements, the geographical configuration of this country, wars, and even the names of places, like Thacher Island off Rockport, Massachusetts coast. He tells the tragic but riveting story of how a hurricane drowned 21 of 23 people sailing from Ipswich to Marblehead. Thacher and his wifes survival was miraculous but horrific for they had to watch their children and relatives wrenched away by the storms roiling waves.

Books about weather are especially nerve-wracking. While reading A Furious Sky I was reminded of Sebastian Jungers Perfect Storm. He wrote about a Gloucester fishing boat that vanished in a late October, 1991, confluence of storms. Junger covered several related subjects including rogue waves, weather forecasting and harrowing rescues at sea. Dolins book is similarly instructive about related topics.

Dolin, with the benefit of hindsight, looks at the heroics and the mistakes made in the face of furious skies. He investigates the countrys most significant hurricanes including the Great Hurricane of 1938, Sandy, Katrina, Andrew, Camille and those that came much earlier in our history. The book is filled with images and meaty captions. And, like George Schwartzs book on the early days of Salems groundbreaking enterprise, the notes in the back of both books are exciting adventures, also.

Rae Padilla Francoeur is an author and journalist. She can be reached at rae@raefrancoeur.com.

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BOOK NOTES: Tied to the sea and other mysteries - Wicked Local Beverly

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August 16th, 2020 at 9:54 am

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Us and Them, or US – LA Progressive

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Our country is deeply divided along racial lines as we continue to try to shake off roughly 400 years of prejudice. Jim Wallis, in his book

Americas Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America states unequivocally The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the near genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another.

Despite major advances in paring back de jure racism, we continue to struggle with de facto racism. Racism is still alive in America, and there are troubling signs that we may in fact currently be losing ground in this epic struggle.

A recent exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC intending to encourage a dialogue entitled Talking About Race sparked major controversy as itself being racist. The museum, a part of the Smithsonian, bowed to pressure to remove a chart outlining signs of Whiteness used to describe salient aspects of White Privilege.

Such is the tinder box of political division currently in this nation. We are not even comfortable with posing propositions, regardless of their merit, that encourage debate and seek resolution. The maddening paradox remains as many who adamantly insist they abhor racism as a concept sit idly by while institutional barriers to equal justice perpetuate a definitive racist system.

Civil discourse, if exercised correctly, requires an ability to disagree and reach for a complete examination of the differences that separate those discussing the topic.

White privilege, defined as white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not, is central to our racial division and is a good starting point for a national dialogue on racism.

Civil discourse, if exercised correctly, requires an ability to disagree and reach for a complete examination of the differences that separate those discussing the topic. If we cannot even begin a discussion without extracting concessions on potentially controversial assertions we seriously diminish the value of the discussion and its ultimate conclusions, or lack thereof.

I have often written over the last several decades about the conclusions reached by the Kerner Commission in 1968, a Presidential commission established by LBJ in the wake of riots that ripped through American cities during the 1960s. In short, the Commission concluded Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one whiteseparate and unequal.

If a Presidential Commission on Race were instituted today would they disagree? I sincerely doubt it, in fact I would assert that an objective assessment today might conclude that in fact we as a nation have already arrived at the point where we are two societies, one black, one whiteseparate and unequal.

The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report in March of this year that showed a 55% increase in white nationalist hate groups since 2017. The report also concludes the following: The most powerful force animating todays radical rightand stoking the violent backlashis a deep fear of demographic change. This fear is encapsulated in the conspiratorial notion that a purposeful white genocide is underway and that its driving the great replacement of white people in their home countries by foreign, non-white populations.

We are flirting dangerously with the medieval concept of a closed society, something that is prevalent in dictatorial and authoritarian regimes throughout human history. The very concept of an open, transparent, civil, and democratic society is characterized by its openness, inclusion and diversity. In order for our civilization to move in a forward looking direction we must reject the concept of us and them, and focus on us.

The American experiment in representative democracy has been the gold standard not because we shut ourselves off from the rest of the world, either through destroyed alliances, name-calling or walls to keep others out, but rather through the inclusiveness encouraged by the welcoming light emanating from the torch of Lady Liberty, modeled after Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom. Her torch symbolizes enlightenment, Liberty enlightening the world. This is what will make America great again.

Our strength reflects our diversity and is our strongest asset. Mahatma Gandhi teaches us Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation.

Our nation is fast approaching the day when we will be a majority minority population, hence it is in our best interest to develop a civic acknowledgement of the importance of unity through diversity. It is who we are and we must live up to the image we project not only to ourselves but to the rest of the world.

Dr. Martin Luther KingJr., taught us to reject violence in our pursuit of enlightenment and justice. Violence from either side of the ideological spectrum only breeds deeper division and must be rejected. Diversity bonds us together and represents conviction and strength, understanding and compassion, the key ingredients to success.

Lance Simmens

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Us and Them, or US - LA Progressive

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August 16th, 2020 at 9:54 am

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India rejects Nepals stand on Buddha row – Hindustan Times

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The Indian side said a comment by external affairs minister S Jaishankar on the shared Buddhist heritage of the two neighbours was misunderstood in the Himalayan country. (ANI)

India on Sunday dismissed a controversy over the birthplace of Gautam Buddha and said a comment by external affairs minister S Jaishankar on the shared Buddhist heritage of the two neighbours was misunderstood in the Himalayan country.

The clarification came a day after Jaishankar referred to the teachings of Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi at an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries. The remark triggered controversy in Nepal with political parties saying that Buddha, the philosopher and religious teacher who founded Buddhism, was born in Nepal and not India.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said Jaishankars remark referred to common Buddhist heritage of India and Nepal. There is no doubt that Gautam Buddha was born in Lumbini, which is in Nepal, he said.

The Indian side said at the time of the Buddha, who lived in the 5th and 4th century BC, there was no separate nation state called Nepal, and that the Siddhartha Gautama became Buddha after attaining enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, which is in modern day Bihar.

Earlier in the day, Nepals foreign ministry said that historical and archaeological evidence showed Buddha was born in Nepalese territory. It is a well-established and undeniable fact proven by historical and archaeological evidences that Gautam Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal. Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha and the fountain of Buddhism, is one of the UNESCO world heritage sites, a statement by the ministrys spokesperson read.

There were also protests by political parties such as the main opposition Nepali Congress and individuals such as former foreign secretary Madhu Raman Acharya and former prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, a top leader of the ruling Nepal Communist Party.

The controversy came against the backdrop of a border row that erupted earlier this year when India opened a new road leading to Lipulekh on the border with Tibet. Nepal responded by publishing a new political map that included Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura, which are controlled by India, as part of Nepalese territory.

Last month, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli sparked a controversy with his remarks that the real Ayodhya is in Nepal and that Lord Ram was Nepalese.

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August 16th, 2020 at 9:54 am

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The Road to COVID-19 Enlightenment by Ricardo Hausmann – Project Syndicate

Posted: July 3, 2020 at 5:47 pm


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We have yet to identify the best explanations for countries varying success in controlling the pandemic, which obviously is enormously valuable when designing public-health strategies with potentially huge consequences. But knowledge does not advance just by formulating plausible hypotheses.

CAMBRIDGE Certainty is like a rainbow: wonderful but relatively rare. More often than not, we know that we dont know. We may seek to remedy this by talking to people who may know what we want to know. But how do we know that they know? If we cannot ascertain whether they actually do know, we must trust them.

With COVID-19 inflicting massive economic costs around the world, the two billion people working in informal sectors will be the hardest hit. But if these workers are brought into the fold of the global economy, they can tap into huge stores of wealth that already lie at their fingertips.

Historically, we have bestowed our trust on the basis of science, experience, or divine inspiration. But what if the knowledge we seek does not yet exist, and even science knows that it does not know what is being asked of it?

That is the situation we currently find ourselves in with COVID-19 and the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes it. Our knowledge of the new coronavirus is rapidly increasing, but utterly inadequate. We have not yet learned much about how to treat the infected, much less figured out how to make an effective vaccine. We do not even know how to control the pandemic reliably through social-distancing measures.

True, some countries have been remarkably successful in reducing COVID-19 cases and deaths from terrible peaks. The four countries that have so far recorded the highest number of deaths per million inhabitants in a single week are Belgium, Spain, France, and Ireland. New cases in these countries have now declined by over 95.5% from their respective peaks (and by 99.1% in Irelands case), suggesting that their lockdowns actually worked.

And yet, while other countries that introduced legally stricter lockdowns (as measured by the University of Oxfords Blavatnik School) and reduced mobility more (as measured by Google) avoided early deadly peaks, cases have continued to grow exponentially. Countries in this category include India, Chile, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Kuwait, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia. And another group, including Israel and Albania, have experienced a resumption of exponential growth after they lifted successful lockdowns.

It doesnt take long to devise many hypotheses from the mundane to the speculative to account for these differences. And, obviously, identifying the best explanations for countries varying success in controlling the pandemic is enormously valuable when designing public-health strategies with potentially huge consequences.

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For example, large households may facilitate intra-family transmission of the virus, while a lack of refrigerators in some countries may force people to go to the market often. The unavailability of running water may prevent frequent hand washing. The publics willingness to wear masks may vary. The size of a countrys informal economy, households financial capacity to abide by lockdown measures, and the generosity of social transfers may be contributing factors. The seriousness with which lockdown measures are enforced, the level of trust in government, and even features of a countrys national character seem relevant as well.

But knowledge does not advance just by formulating plausible hypotheses. We must find out which ones hold water. And we can shorten the list by applying the nineteenth-century British scientist Thomas Huxleys dictum that many a beautiful theory has been killed by an ugly fact.

To do this, we just need to collect more data and make it available for analysis. In the United States, for example, about 40% of COVID-19 deaths to date apparently are tied to nursing homes. Likewise, a recent study of more than 30 European countries by researchers from Tel Aviv University found a relationship between installed nursing-home capacity and COVID-19 deaths.

These analyses are not rocket science. In fact, if anything, they are extremely crude, because they use national rather than postal-code-level data. Moreover, these studies appeared only after tens of thousands of people had already died from COVID-19.

Rather than being a scientific triumph, therefore, such findings illustrate how unscientific public-health policies to combat the virus have been. If we had assumed from the outset of the pandemic that we know that we do not know, we would have created rapid feedback loops to learn as quickly as possible from experience.

Specifically, we would have focused on gathering simple data about each COVID-19 case the date when the infection was confirmed, the patients age, gender, home and work addresses, means of transportation, and contacts and supplemented this with additional data on hospitalization and outcomes as the disease progressed. These data may already exist in many cases, but are hidden from society and often from officials by overzealous or turf-minded health ministers, and are not being made available to the many trained analysts who could contribute to policymaking. And as the OECD has suggested, governments could also adopt approaches that use individual cellphone data, Internet searches, and rapid telephone surveys, with due regard for privacy concerns.

Many governments believe that this kind of data-driven strategy for tackling the pandemic is beyond their capacity, and decide to piggyback on what other countries have learned by adopting best practices. This is the wrong approach. The pandemics effect on countries differs in ways that we currently do not understand and need to discover. Are people living in Peru in households without refrigerators actually more likely to be infected, for example?

Moreover, each lockdown and social-distancing regime is different, reflecting the many degrees of freedom in their design. Finding out what works and what doesnt on a daily basis is now critical, especially as we try to find ways to open up economies while holding down infection rates.

The fight against COVID-19 is still in its early stages, and it is not too late to start this effort. After all, Socrates said that knowing you know nothing is a contradiction in terms. Let us therefore make our knowledge of our ignorance about the virus, and of our ability to overcome it, a source of strength. Lets set ourselves up to learn.

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The Road to COVID-19 Enlightenment by Ricardo Hausmann - Project Syndicate

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July 3rd, 2020 at 5:47 pm

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Religious faithful still ignore the Enlightenment. Thanks, Tom Paine. – Patheos

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If anyone needs a reminder of supernatural religions power over the conservative human mind, note that the European intellectual awakening of the 17th and 18th centuries the Enlightenment centuries later, is still a work in progress.

The movement, characterized as sicle des Lumires in French (literally century of the Enlightened), synthesized radical new attitudes about God, reason, nature and humanity into a human- rather than God-centered worldview, the Encyclopaedia Britannica asserts.

Central to Enlightenment thought were the use and celebration ofreason, the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition. The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness, according to the encyclopedias online description of the movement.

Today, although more than two-thirds of the United States population claims belief in divine beings and an affiliation with Christianity, roughly a fourth of Americans are largely irreligious (many of them atheists) and are unaffiliated with any faith group and the so-called nones (the religiously unaffiliated) are among the countrys fastest growing religion-related demographics. Western Europe is already much further along the path of jettisoning supernatural faith altogether.

It wasnt always this way, and in historical terms, open religious doubt and faithlessness are a relatively new cultural phenomenon. In fact, although religious skeptics and atheists have always existed in human societies, after the eruption of impiety in ancient Greece and until the Enlightenment, divine religions for the vast majority of human beings on the planet were virtually the unquestioned be-all, end-all of existence. Nonbelievers and doubters heretics in medieval parlance were for centuries, even millennia, brutally persecuted and officially executed, often in depraved ways.

So the Enlightenment provided a shockingly welcome window of opportunity for pan-European doubters which were legion, it turned out to say what they really felt about the Christian faith that continued to fundamentally control not only their lives but their thoughts across the continent.

All you need to understand how suddenlyunchained Enlightenment intellectuals felt is to read a few lines from American revolutionary gadfly Thomas Paines scorched-earth assault on institutional Christianity in his arguably atheistic screed Age of Reason (which, today, is a bargain on Amazon at 99 cents for the Kindle edition). Paine was completely unrestrained in his Christianity-bashing fervor.

In Part II, Chapter I (The Old Testament), Paine wrote:

People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?

Actually, in my view, Paines fraught beliefs are part of a continuing 21st-century infatuation with religion, at least his quasi-Deist philosophy that viewed God as uncaring Nature writ large, not the deity of the Bible who care about and attended to everyone very, very personally. But, still, an invisible divine.

If you read Age of Reason, it is indistinguishable from atheism a no-holds-barred, full-throated trashing of Christian theism and its foundational holy books, except that Paint incongruously also brieflypurports to believe in God. Somewhat.

So, Paine, like many religious skeptics and quasi believers then and now, just couldnt bring himself, publicly or privately, to reject the existence of some kind of divine power. He could comfort himself in the ageless dodge that Nature is so astonishingly complex and majestic it is incomprehensible that it wasnt created by some supreme power beyond objective human confirmation.

After reading Age, I challenge anyone to explain how anyone can still convincingly believe in God who, as Paine does in the book, intellectually demolish every single element of Christianity, sacred or otherwise. Im sure he was not alone his day and age, and this assumption of divine actuality remains deeply embedded in the human family today, if still permanently unverifiable.

Considering that reason, the heart of the Enlightenment, objectively showed the intellectual unverifiability of supernatural claims, one would have thought the movements principles would have logically led to an even more secular future than the Enlightenment promoted at the time.

But, no. Most of the billions of global representatives of our Homo sapiens (man the wise) species are still in absolute thrall to unseen, unsubstantiated, unverified deities.

Yet, happily, pessimism doesnt reign among modern secularists, who are still tilting at what have so far generally proven to be windmills.

The Enlightenment is still winning is the confident-sounding headline in a June 17 post in the Freedom from Religion Foundations blog on the Patheos hub. Author James A. Haught in the piece asserts that the Enlightenment launched the long-running conflict still driving much of politics in the West. He claims that the movement over centuries has won many battles against conservative, reactionary forces against its ideals, including succeeding, for example, in getting evolution taught in American schools.

However, evolution is only partially and often unenthusiastically taught in some American schools today, so the victory is only partial. Lots of Americans, a majority perhaps, still see evolution as a challenge to their belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, and continue to fight its insertion in school curricula tooth and nail (and by subterfuge), as they have for long decades since the Scopes Monkey Trial (if not before).

On and on, through recurring cultural battles, progressive principles that began in the Enlightenment have prevailed, Haught opines.

Perhaps, but history also teaches us that all of that can be lost in a heartbeat if a cataclysm such as war or plague descends on humankind, and people rush back to faith for comfort and hope, as Americans did after the Revolutionary War.

So, lets not take a victory lap just yet, while keeping up the good fight.

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Religious faithful still ignore the Enlightenment. Thanks, Tom Paine. - Patheos

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July 3rd, 2020 at 5:47 pm

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COVID-19: UN highlights Buddhas message of solidarity and service in belated Vesak commemoration – Republic World – Republic World

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Lord Buddha's message of solidarity and service to others is more important than ever, UN chief Antonio Guterres has said, affirming that only through global cooperation can the nations deal with the economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Secretary Generals remarks came during a belated commemoration of the International Day of Vesak. The commemoration of this years Vesak Day, which marks the birth, enlightenment and passing of Lord Buddha, was postponed from May due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Buddhas teachings can also help remind nations and people of the unity that is needed to meet the COVID-19 challenge, he said on Thursday.

Citing a sutra, "Because all living beings are subject to illness, I am ill, as well", Guterres said this timeless message of solidarity and service to others is more important than ever.

"It is only by combining our energies and expertise that we can address the tremendous fragilities in our world today. Only through international cooperation will we ease the economic and social consequences of the crisis, which are pervasive, but place particular burden on the world's most vulnerable people and countries, he said.

The UN chief said that it is only by strengthening bonds across society that "we will recover better and build a healthier, more inclusive, sustainable, resilient and equitable world.

Indias Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti said during the virtual commemoration by Sri Lanka and Thailand that the COVID-19 pandemic had brought untold suffering into peoples lives.

We now, more than anytime else, should remember the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, which teach us to bring the cycle of Dukka or Suffering to an end. As the Buddha said No one saves us but ourselves, he said.

Tirumurti highlighted he importance of embracing the Buddhist values of compassion, service to humanity, peace and non-violence, equality and equanimity and the middle-way practised for 2,600 years.

These values, one way or another, find or should find resonance in the Charter and work of the United Nations in a world where forces dividing us are numerous. As the Buddha said 'In the sky, there is no distinction of East and West', he said.

Tirumurti also recalled that he had overseen the making and gifting by India of the replica of the Buddha of Sarnath to Sri Lanka, assisting in erecting the replica of the 1st century Torana Gate of the Sanchi Stupa in Malaysia and in Indias renovation of priceless Buddhist heritage sites in many parts of the world.

Guterres underscored that the sense of shared fate and collective compassion is both the spirit of the Buddha and the animating force of the Charter of the United Nations, which just marked its own 75th birthday.

President of the General Assembly Tijjani Muhammad-Bande said the COVID-19 pandemic was putting the world under enormous strain and affecting everyones life.

"We are facing a global health crisis unlike any other in the 75-year history of the United Nations and it affects all of us. In times of great anxiety, faith can be a significant source of comfort and community resilience, he said, adding that the Buddhist teachings and guided practices, such as give, even if you have a little, can be a balm for those grappling with the pandemic today.

Muhammad-Bande said this years Vesak Day commemoration reminded all to uphold the values of kindness, compassion and empathy.

May this commemoration serves as occasion to remind ourselves of the importance of tolerance, mutual respect and understanding - that are enshrined in the Buddhist teachings, he said.

Vesak, the Day of the Full Moon in the month of May, is the most sacred day to millions of Buddhists around the world. It was on the Day of Vesak two and a half millennia ago, in the year 623 B.C., that the Buddha was born. It was also on the Day of Vesak that the Buddha attained enlightenment and passed away in his 80th year.

In 1999, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in which it recognised the International Day to acknowledge the contribution that Buddhism, one of the oldest religions in the world, has made for over two and a half millennia and continues to make to the spirituality of humanity.

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July 3rd, 2020 at 5:47 pm

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Petition calling on Edinburgh University to rename a building named after David Hume attracts over 1000 signatures – East Lothian News

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David Hume Tower is one of Edinburgh University's most prominent building

A petition calling for Edinburgh University to drop the name of renowned Enlightenment philosopher David Hume from one its most prominent buildings due to his racist beliefs has attracted more than 1000 signatures.

The move comes as universities across the UK and USA have begun to rename campus buildings honouring historical figures who held racist views.

The petition, created by student Elizabeth Lund, is calling for the famous philosopher and Edinburgh University alumnus name to be removed because it is a very simple step that might help create an anti-racist culture at the university.

The petition suggests that the 14-storey building which bears Humes name should instead be named after Julius Nyerere, the first President of independent Tanzania who is also a graduate of Edinburgh University.

David Hume was a Scottish enlightenment philosopher, economist, historian and essayist, famous for his work on human nature and morality.

He is widely recognised as one of the UKs most accomplished philosophers and has been called The Father of the Enlightenment, however he also has a long history of spreading racist views.

In 1754, Hume wrote in an essay: I am apt to suspect the Ne***es to be naturally inferior to the whites.

Ms Lunds petition, which is being hosted on the website change.org, has so far amassed 1,252 signatures.

The petition reads: David Hume wrote racist epithets not worth repeating here. Naming the most prevalent building on campus after Hume sends a very clear message to black, indigenous and people of colour students at Edinburgh that we are willing to overlook this racism for the sake of alumni glory.

We should, however, not boast about the racist alumni of Edinburgh, especially given the institutions long history of involvement in the field of eugenics. The university should be taking great steps to provide further support and resources to BIPOC on campus. This is a very simple step that might help create an anti-racist culture at the university.

A spokeswoman for the BlackED Movement said: As a Black student at Edinburgh University, it is hard to feel a sense of belonging. The fact that the University still does not have any disciplinary or report measures against racism to protect their BAME students reinforces the sentiment of alienation.

However, with the Black Lives Matter movement, students are gaining strength in their voices to demand changes long due. One of them is renaming David Hume Tower.

There is a danger for the University to continue commemorating a single story about David Hume, disregarding his racist views of Black students. Glorifying Humes bigotry supports white supremacy and the idea that scientific racism was widely used to justify slavery and colonisation. In fact, scholars like Hume helped to justify through eugenics.

The major counterargument to this change was that there is the erasure of Humes achievements in history. The same way we do not need buildings and statues named after Hitler in Berlin to learn about him shows that this is not erasure of history. There are still books and the internet for that. People can still use his theories but the tower should be renamed.

We hope that people will understand the non-overt disrespect, offence, and racism that Black students have to go through at the University of Edinburgh.

A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: The University takes issues around acknowledging its past very seriously. We are working with our students, staff and members of the community to thoughtfully explore how we address these matters. As this process continues, we will continue to encourage dialogue to ensure we are fit for purpose in the 21st century.

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Petition calling on Edinburgh University to rename a building named after David Hume attracts over 1000 signatures - East Lothian News

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Groundhog Day TV Show in the Works, Says Stephen Tobolowsky – Collider.com

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InGroundhog Day, which just might beBill Murrays best movie, jaded weatherman Phil Connors is stuck in a time loop in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on Groundhog Day until he can become a better, more enlightened person and turn his life around by finally moving it forward. Now, it sounds like that idea is about to loop back again on all of us, proving once and for all humanity hasnt quite reached the level of enlightenment it needs to yet. According to actor/national treasure Stephen Tobolowsky on the Production Meeting Podcast, aGroundhog DayTV series is in the works.

Tobolowsky didnt reveal any plot, story, or structure details (hey, weve proven time loops work in TV onRussian Doll, why cant they work here too?), but the man who iconically played Needlenose Ned Ryerson in the original film charmingly spilled the beans on how casually he himself found out about the project.

Image via Columbia Pictures

Theres talk about a Groundhog Day series in the works. One of the producers I was working on The Goldbergs or Schooled, one of those shows over on the Sony lot, and one of them saw me and goes, Oh, Stephen! Stephen! Were working on a Groundhog Day TV show. Could you be Ned for the TV show? I go, Sure. Yeah. No problem But its Ned thirty years later. What has his life become?

I am not going to lie: The idea of a Tobolowsky/Ned-centered take where he comes to terms with his identity post-Phil encounter tickles me to no end. Plus: We would actually get to find out which of Phils many groundhog days stuck as the main continuity, as that would be where this shows timeline would kick off (I imagine). Beyond his work in the aforementionedThe GoldbergsandSchooled, Tobolowsky is kicking ass in his regularly occurring showOne Day at a Time, and I would love to see him get more and more leading TV work. Final question for yall: Whats the over-under on Murray ever appearing?

For more onGroundhog Dayand Murray, here are my favoriteSNLstar film vehicles.

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Groundhog Day TV Show in the Works, Says Stephen Tobolowsky - Collider.com

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July 3rd, 2020 at 5:47 pm

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Cancelling history: Red Guards and philistines are running riot across the Western world – The Times of India Blog

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Western societies seem bent on committing suicide. The best lack all conviction, wrote WB Yeats, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. With no moral core to hold them together, societies are falling apart. The cancel culture virus originated in the US, is already firmly implanted in the UK and strains have been found in Australia. Its highly infectious, has no known vaccine or cure and is extremely lethal to the careers of actors, athletes, authors, celebrities, comedians, commentators, editors, journalists and professors. In the drive to cancel history, statues of perceived racists and slave traders Mahatma Gandhi (in Ghana, Washington, London), Winston Churchill, Cecil Rhodes and even sons of slave traders are toppled and vandalised. But Rhodes scholars are reluctant to renounce their scholarship and the role of Africans and Arabs in the slave trade seems curiously neglected. Literary, childrens, movie and TV classics are given the chop.

Like its close chronological cousin the Wuhan virus, initially its main targets were the elderly with mental comorbidities, but now its also infecting the young. The main carriers of the virus are, in the words of Free Speech Union founder Toby Young, offence archaeologists: people who trawl through past pronouncements hunting any objectionable phrase and mobilise an online posse that swarms into action to shame cowering victims and have them fired. Truth is secondary to narrative, facts to feelings and biology to ideology. Innocent kids subjected to massive amounts of harassment because theyve been incorrectly identified are just roadkill on the moral highway of vicious teenage bullies.Theres been a fierce backlash to a Washington Post story about warmed over vindictive behaviour bytwo women of colour, whose 54-year-old Caucasian target was fired from her job.

During my college years in Kolkata, I fell in love with the beauty, solitude and serenity of Victoria Memorial. Should that symbol of the Raj be destroyed? In an article for the International Herald Tribune, I condemned Talibans destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. A comparable act of vandalism would be to destroy the Taj Mahal. Taliban are owed an apology. Far from atavistic, they were decades ahead of their time in cancelling history. Universities were once bastions of critical inquiry. Operating behind impregnable ramparts of intellectual freedom, they interrogated every kernel of religious dogma. Todays campuses are hotbeds of enforced right-think. In the name of tolerance and enlightenment they promote bigoted intolerance. Offensive speech is literally violence, but literal violence is speech by other means. David Shor, a data analyst for the Democratic Party, was fired for retweeting a scholarlypaper that non-violent protests are more politically effective.

Like the reign of terror after the French Revolution, mobs are caught in a vicious purity death spiral. Indifferent to context, rejecting human fallibility with the possibility of contrition and redemption in favour of ritualistic confessions and self-abasement as during Chinas Cultural Revolution, policed by wrong-think lynch mobs as the current avatars of the Red Guards: thats a vision of dystopia.The philistines want to cancel history, art, literature and humour. We can be certain that some words and acts of the presently ascendant self-righteous will cause deep moral offence to future generations. Perhaps they should cancel themselves instantly. If nuance is banished because it can become a booby-trapped offence tomorrow, most people will be frightened off from entering the public arena for the contest of ideas on difficult societal challenges.

The Western world has entered a perfect social justice storm with a heady brew of every form of real and confected identity grievance. If you believe all lives matter, there is only one race, the human race, women deserve to be safe in women-only spaces, climate alarmism needs fact-checking: Out! People not personally responsible for past injustice must take the knee but those personally responsible for current violence and looting are celebrated as heroes. The blood-dimmed tide is indeed being loosed upon the world.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Cancelling history: Red Guards and philistines are running riot across the Western world - The Times of India Blog

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Lets Finish the American Revolution – The New York Times

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As baffling as it is to find statues of traitors, slaveholders and killers of Union soldiers ensconced in many a prominent square, consider the historical discordance of Custer County, S.D.

The hard beauty of the Black Hills, sacred land to Native Americans, overshadows the county, the main town and the state park, all named for George Armstrong Custer. The hard history was shaped by the slayer of those native people. Custers willful trespass into territory promised by treaty to the Sioux set the stage for the last violent encounters between New World and Old.

Just under 20 miles from Custer is Mount Rushmore, which President Trump plans to visit this Fourth of July weekend. A mere seven miles from Custer is the Native American Rushmore a still unfinished carving of the Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse, 641 feet long and 563 feet high.

Here is the American paradox in a grid of stark geology.

No country can last long without a shared narrative. You wonder, on an Independence Day when the mood of the country is more angry and fearful than its been in a long time, if this nation can ever have such a thing again.

I think we can. But to make that happen, it will take an imaginative projection of the best instincts of those four imperfect men whose visages are chiseled into stone, as well as the Sioux warrior honored just down the road.

Before we get to them, lets talk about him. Trump wants a fireworks display in the pine forest around Rushmore in the middle of fire season. There will be no required social distancing for the crowd. And the worlds most powerful narcissist will be projecting his dream to have his face carved next to those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

There you have it everything that is so awful about him in one appearance, putting the lives of American citizens and a national landmark at risk to protect his eggshell ego.

But what about them? Rushmore was created by Gutzon Borglum, a confidant of leaders of the revitalized 20th-century Ku Klux Klan. Before Borglum took his jackhammers to the Black Hills, he had started work on the largest shrine to white supremacy in the world the bas-relief sculpture of Confederate leaders in Stone Mountain, Ga.

Still, few people think of Borglum when they gaze up at the four presidents. Instead, the visitor is prompted to think of what those men did for a fragile democracy.

Most revolutions dont end well. From the kindling of the Enlightenment, France was consumed by a wildfire of fratricide and state-sanctioned beheadings in the late 18th century. Russias 1917 revolt eventually led to an epic of mass murder rivaled by Hitlers Holocaust. And the Irish finally threw off centuries of British rule only to plunge into a bloody civil war in the 1920s over the terms of that independence.

The American Revolution, birthed in part by the looting of British merchant ships in Boston Harbor, was the exception, until our own Civil War over the Original Sin that had been ignored in the founding documents. The protests of 2020 are a legacy of rage dating to 1619.

Each of the Rushmore presidents furthered the ennobling sentiments of men who tried to fashion a democracy from a revolution. Some may never forgive Washington for his slave ownership. But among the nine presidents who owned slaves, only Washington freed them all in his final will.

He also kept the United States from becoming a monarchy when the Trumpians of the day wanted to make him king.

Jefferson was a slaveholding racist who wrote all men are created equal in the Declaration of Independence. The words outlive, and outshine, the man.

Lincoln needs no defense, except to say that those who want to destroy his statues now should read Frederick Douglasss nuanced take. Lincoln fought the anti-immigrant Know-Nothings, the Trumpians of his day, and ensured that the radical truths of Jefferson would apply to four million formerly enslaved people.

Teddy Roosevelt was no friend of the continents original inhabitants. But he evolved. His Rough Riders were multiracial warriors. And as the 20th centurys most influential progressive president, he invited Booker T. Washington to dine with him, the first time any president had broken bread with a Black man at the White House. This, at a time when it was difficult for a Black man to get a meal in a restaurant.

Each of them pushed the revolution closer to an ideal of true equality. And Roosevelt was the first to add universal health care among the truths we hold self-evident.

You can honor the work they started, and desperately needs to be finished, by ignoring Trumps ahistoric histrionics this weekend and watching Hamilton, which is streaming to many parts of the world starting Friday. This founder was an orphan, son of a whore, Washingtons better half, and in the person of Lin-Manuel Miranda, hes a face of the American tomorrow.

At the core of the musical is the founding reimagined, re-mythologized, rough-edged. A mess of contradictions, like this nation on its 244th birthday.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Timothy Egan (@nytegan) is a contributing opinion writer who covers the environment, the American West and politics. He is a winner of the National Book Award and the author, most recently, of A Pilgrimage to Eternity.

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Lets Finish the American Revolution - The New York Times

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