The Rational Optimist

"In one fifty-year period, between 1100 and 1150, three great nations shut down innovation, enterprise and freedom all at once. In Baghdad, the religious teacher Al-Ghazali almost single-handedly destroyed the tradition of rational inquiry in the Arab world and led a return to mysticism intolerant of new thinking. In Peking, Su-Sung's astronomical clock, the 'cosmic engine', probably the most sophisticated mechanical device ever built at that date, was destroyed by a politician suspicious of novelty and (t)reason, setting the tone for the retreat to autarky and tradition that would be China's fate for centuries to come. In Paris, St. Bernard of Clairvaux persecuted the scholar Peter Abelard, criticized the rational renaissance centered on the University of Paris and supported the disastrous fanaticism of the second crusade. Fortunately, the flames of free thought and reason and catallaxy were kept burning - in Italy and North Africa, especially. But imagine if they had not been. Imagine if the entire world had turned its back on the catallaxy then. Imagine if the globalized world of the twenty-first century allows a globalized retreat from reason. It is a worrying thought." - Matt Ridley The Rational Optimist     

The above is from near the end of Ridley's book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (which I highly recommend). Ridley follows the above with a listing of some of the things which are obstacles to progress today (some of which have gotten worse since the book was published in 2011). But despite these obstacles Ridley remains optimistic about the future and so am I.

But being optimistic doesn't mean remaining silent to those who insist on putting up or maintaining these obstacles to freedom and progress. Remember that.