Freedom, Reason, and Radicalization

“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” - Maximilien Robespierre

As the educated masses secure a collective holding on the fruits of man, previously exclusive to the Aristocracy, in the attempt to achieve equality we end up pushing for a larger disparity between the gifted man and the Third Estate. The sacrifices of greater men make one thing clear: the era of the rule of the divine is over. The works of Rousseau and Voltaire, coupled with the notable genius of Gutenberg, allowed us first to nationalize education, and then, with the digital age, to individualize it. We become more aware, rejecting the idea of the Divine, awakening to conscience, embracing Descartes’ analogies and rationalism; gone are the days where a leader can declare a holy crusade, for we kneel not to kings, but to our individuality.

And this did not emerge from nowhere. The Renaissance had already revived the culture of self-preservation and the centralization of the Human figure as the subject of the Universe. As Michelangelo linked God with Adam (Man) and Raphael’s _School of Athens_ displayed all the talent the Universe had produced, it inspired and paved the way for the Enlightenment, which embraced and displayed the perfection of the human self. The cultivation and harmony of knowledge triumphed as the spirit of the Age. European hegemony had surpassed the prior excellence previously demonstrated by Rome and Baghdad. We moved away from the feudal and tribal systems which defined the medieval period, and were forced into an awareness of our own mortality. The divine hand of judgement was rejected, the idea of God was refused, constant taxation and serfdom were refused, and the notion of being limited due to the nature of our birth was rejected. And so, as Brutus did, we ended the age of tyranny. In France, mankind slew the vultures of the First and Second Estate, and in the process removed religion and introduced the Cult of Reason. They understood that “Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being who watches over oppressed innocence… is altogether popular.”

And yet, although mankind is not capable of abandoning the idea of a god, as Voltaire says, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him”, we have at least started to take the necessary precautions to abandon superstition, to “Écrasez l’infâme!”. Modernity, coupled with the digital transformation of the Age, has allowed us to progress beyond measure, to attain the rank of “The Sovereign Individual”; and as the clay of life forever bends, the educated (The Constant Man) emerges superior.

It is here that the true product of the Enlightenment reveals itself. The Constant Man, who bows his fate to circumstance, makes use of every opportunity, unyielding to the worry of loss, who is not threatened by the uncertainty of life, acknowledging that neither the divine, fortune, nor a savior would elevate him above Sisyphus’s Mountain, is the result of the Enlightenment. He who rejects the superstitions of old, but not neglecting them, abandons his soul to Reason, engulfs himself in his melancholy, surrounds himself with the words of old and those notable, reinvents himself in alignment with the digital age, understands how the world fundamentally works, and so conquers the world.

But this libertarian view is not yet final. This Constant Man has emerged, but he has not conquered. He exists as the highest possibility of the modern age, but not yet as its dominant figure. For we are still surrounded by people tethered to distractions, who have completely isolated themselves from the pursuit of wisdom in order to chase a hedonistic lifestyle. The human is yet to govern himself; he is simply satisfied with the illusion of self-governance, molded into his beliefs by the Algorithms which envelop the world, led astray, governed by external factors, all centralized under a single system. Thus the tragedy of modernity becomes clear: we destroyed the throne, but not the instinct to kneel.

And so we are programmed never to be satisfied. We place ourselves in the endless loop of ambition, distracting ourselves from fully understanding ourselves; we compare, we sulk, and we are surrounded by a melancholic environment which plunges the Human into Dante’s Inferno, forever trapped, only realizing that time is ever fading and that the time of calling is soon approaching. We throw ourselves into a darker world, becoming more unhappy with our circumstance, and in an effort to blame all around us, we radicalize ourselves.

But what is Radicalization?

In a religious sense, we deem it to be the wrongful, literal interpretation of a text, taken to extremes that were not intended. But who are we to judge the meaning of books written by “a power much more knowledgeable than us”? We claim to understand the word of divinity, yet forget that we are unable to fully understand those of Da Vinci, of Newton. Radicalization, in religion, is a weak defense to support our association with a backward idea: it abandons reason and intellect, and manipulates written words to fit through the stochasticity of life.

But outside religion, in our beliefs and in society, radicalization simply means deviation from the norm. Those who try (as Virgil and Dante) to escape the inferno, are shamed, insulted, and deemed “radicalized.” Hopes and dreams remain forever unattained, forgotten in a sense that “The memory of most men, is an abandoned cemetery, where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.” And when one dares to think beyond the average man, beyond the consensus, beyond the ritual stupidity of the herd, he is no longer seen as elevated, but unstable.

As Larry Ellison said: “And when you start telling people that all the experts are wrong, at first they call you arrogant and then they say you’re crazy. So remember this: When people start telling you that you’re crazy, you just might be on to the most important innovation in your life. Of course, the other possibility is you’re crazy.”

And this is precisely the tension of the modern world: the line between madness and vision has been ceded to the crowd. The very same age which claims to celebrate individuality has become terrified of genuine deviation. The same society which declares itself liberated is offended by those who would actually think freely. Thus radicalization is not merely a descent into fanaticism; it is also the label placed upon those who resist intellectual conformity. One is condemned either for surrendering too fully to dogma, or for escaping it too completely.

For this reason, it is absolutely imperative that politics and religion are not unified. In an idealistic world, an incorruptible leader who embodies himself in his faith is not a strength, but a vulnerability; he is taken advantage of, becoming an obstacle to the prosperity of a nation. As Tsar Alexander and his Holy Alliance demonstrated, the fusion of faith and political order undermines of the rule of law, the rule of reason, and opens instead the rule of interpretation. And once interpretation becomes sovereign, radicalization ensues.

This is the essence of the barrier religion creates when it ceases to be personal and becomes civilizational doctrine: it divides the uneducated from those who cultivate the garden of reason. Although I do not believe in a world void of religion, I fear its overreliance. Religion should be self-imposed, privatized, inward; major corporations, figures, or movements should not be built on those doctrines. We must tend to our garden, cultivate our moral code ourselves, for those who grasp a single holy book as their sole guiding philosophy will remain forever constrained by the weight of their chains to the Earth. It is a juxtaposition: those who want to be elevated remain forever tethered to the lowest ground imaginable.

And yet the irony is clear. It is not religion itself which condemns man, but his surrender to it. For what if religion remained where it belongs - in the soul, not in the State? What if man never surrendered his capacity to reason alongside belief, but instead refined belief through science and reason, as the Baghdadis did centuries ago? Then perhaps religion would no longer be a cage, but a companion; no longer a shackle, but a symbol.

Instead, what tethers us to past policies and principles is our refusal to liberalize, to adapt, to individualize. We bind ourselves to the brute forces of old, to tribes bound only by marriage, to traditions which refuse to separate the child from the adult, and in doing so we neglect the important questions, the dangerous questions, the questions which could elevate us to the highest cliffs of knowledge. I recall asking my teacher about the origin of God. I was silenced, rebuked for my disrespect, and quietly avoided; at seven years old, I learned to avoid questions that could not be answered.

The old order understood this danger long before we did. Metternich saw clearly that once the masses were educated and awakened, the foundations of the ancien régime would tremble. He belonged to that class of men who feared not ignorance, but illumination, because an instructed people no longer accepts hierarchy as fate. And Castlereagh, that great architect of post-Napoleonic order, helped preserve Europe from revolutionary chaos only to collapse beneath the burden of the age himself, dying by suicide in 1822. There is something tragic in that symmetry: one man feared the consequences of awakening the masses, while another helped construct the order meant to contain them, only to be consumed by the very strain of preserving it.

And because religion presents itself as eternal, all-encompassing, and untouched by time, it becomes especially dangerous once it enters politics. What claims immortality also claims immunity from correction. Yet history has already exposed the fragility of every creed when raised into public law: Religions fractured and splintered under the pressure of interpretation, reform, and power. Martin Luther made that plain enough. No religion, then, is perfect enough to govern an entire civilization without consequence, nor stable enough to bear the full weight of law, progress, and human difference.

Religion is supposed to be understood, evaluated, and wrestled with but never singled out and adhered to fully.