From a Face Book post by Thomas Eastmond. Thinking about this: (Note after unpacking thoughts: “TL/DR seems inadequate here. Start your own blog, guy.”) The Western liberal tradition, with its principles of tolerance and freedom of thought and conscience, is almost four centuries old. It first developed as, basically, “Thirty Years War insurance.”* The West didn’t invent tolerance (something new and revolutionary in human history, whose rule ever since we were roaming the prehistoric plains had been “whatever you do, don’t talk back to the alpha male/headman/king” or he’ll get mad and smack you with a club”) because a bunch of unusually decent and smart people sat down and decided to reinvent the world. It happened because the particular social, cultural, geographical (Jared Diamond isn’t *all* wrong) and technological circumstances of seventeenth-century Europe has gotten people recognizing that continuing with the old model posed a real risk of actual, not rhetorical civilizational
Science fiction, politics, cartoons, and whatever I want to talk about. With chickens!