Chris Hedges: Our Mania for Hope Is a Curse

[CrawlingChaos]

27. He did not mean what you're implying

He was clearly NOT making any sort of statement about God or religion or supernatural anything.

Let's flesh out this comment with a bit more context in Hedges actual words:

"Wisdom connects us with forces that cannot be measured empirically and that are outside the confines of the rational world. To be wise is to pay homage to beauty, truth, grief, the brevity of life, our own mortality, love and the absurdity and mystery of existence. It is, in short, to honor the sacred. Those who remain trapped in the dogmas perpetuated by technology and knowledge, who believe in the inevitability of human progress, are idiot savants.

...

Artists and philosophers, who expose the mercurial undercurrents of the subconscious, allow us to face an unvarnished truth. Works of art and philosophy informed by the intuitive, unarticulated meanderings of the human psyche transcend those constructed by the plodding conscious mind. The freeing potency of visceral memories does not arrive through the intellect. These memories are impervious to rational control. And they alone lead to wisdom."

Beauty, love, art .... these are facets of the human condition that exist outside the boundaries of knowledge and rational pursuit. You really think "social science" has analyzed and demystified these areas? That is laughable, and it is hubris on an epic scale.

What is really dangerous is utopian thinking.