Specter of Reason

The more I look, the more I find evidence that TED is propaganda .  It uses factually misleading yet emotionally persuasive and motivational speeches to sell the idea that creative geniuses are changing the world for the better.  It sells itself as a conveyor of knowledge and as access to the world of the intellectual elite.  Here is how TED presents itself  (the bold is from their own Website): TED conferences bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less). On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. . . . Our mission: Spreading ideas. We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. So we're building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. It'...

I won't be blogging so much in the coming months, since the school year begins in little more than a fortnight. I'm starting with King Lear, and this marks my first pedagogical venture into Shakespearean territory. To prepare, I'm reading a number of canonical texts from the Early Modern period and which I ashamedly admit I have not before read, including Bacon, Montaigne, and Machiavelli. Today, I looked at Martin Luther's famous De Servo Arbitrio ("The Bondage of the Will"), an impassioned rejoinder to Desiderius Erasmus. (Roughly, Luther's position was that mankind is not free to choose good or evil, but is determined to do so by divine providence. Erasmus believed that the question of freewill was itself unnecessary.) Without analyzing the philosophical or theological issues, I just want to draw attention to Luther's rhetoric (in the first six sections of De Servo ), which is pretty extraordinary. It betrays a desire to not simply counter Era...