The Philosophical Optimist

Or, Just Kill Me Now “Trust, but verify.”—Ronald Reagan, 40 th President of the United States Because: “People are morons”—Phil Connors, Groundhog Day             Nobody knew how to turn a phrase like Gilbert Keith Chesterton.   The man is endlessly quotable.   Unfortunately—at least for someone trying to find a specific quote—he was also vastly prolific.   And so that’s how I found myself recently forced to use the internet in an attempt to at least narrow down my search for a quote I knew I had read in one of Chesterton’s many writings.             At first, it seemed, all was well.   I punched in the basic quote, as well as I could remember it—which was quite well—and up popped several sources telling me where to find the quote.   Among the sources I found was a presentation of the quote on Facebook and one on Goodreads.   The...

Truth and knowledge are the opposites of fashion, and so challenge its dominance of our hearts and minds—hence the universal truth, recognized by all prophets and their children, that truth and knowledge are almost always out of fashion, while ignorance and delusion never go out of style.   Fashion appeals to the intellectually lazy and the impatiently pragmatic, because dismissing an idea as old-fashioned or passé is much easier than refuting it (sartorial repudiation being much easier than logical refutation), and making a concept appear fashionable is far easier than proving it.