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The thinkers of the Enlightenment didn't know that they were working in an age that later generations would call "the Enlightenment". Certain models that seemed to have worked forever suddenly stopped working, and a system that had automatic legitimacy lost its legitimacy...
So the minds of that era were exhorted to build new models for a new world, questioning everything and starting from first principles. Those minds did not always agree, but from their dialectics arose a new world (for better or worse), the world we inhabit today.
We stand at a similar juncture. "The system" has once again lost its automatic legitimacy - in fact, important elements of it have become positively dangerous, and we are now, collectively, exhorted to come up with alternatives and to imagine a new world.
A key difference is that the Enlightenment was a white European affair that took place in colonizing nations that built a deeply unequal world tailor-made for them. Today we have a global public sphere and global challenges. The voices that were missing then are not missing now.
Beneath all our divisive politics and culture wars, a new world is being imagined. Be heard. Your voice is important.
We stand at the end of a paradigm cycle. Paradigms break before they shift, but they do not shift on their own. It takes our work to create alternatives. Relying upon the previous paradigm's concepts and ideologies to try to get a read of the next paradigm will mostly fail.
Ideas are important, but ideological (or identitarian) pigeonholing is the exact wrong way to go about and will only get you stuck in a rut that will guarantee that you'll end up not really contributing to this new world.
When it comes to our future political visions this is not a time to put ideology first, it's a time to put values first. Speaking as a Muslim this also applies to our future spiritual visions - this isn't a time to put traditions first, it's a time to put values first.
If you have a platform of any size I exhort you to stop standing within a broken paradigm trying to hold it up. Step aside, it's going to fall despite your best efforts. Accept that, and start imagining and building a new world.
Remember: If you were a member of the royalty in the 16th century, you'd think it is very radical to say that the system needs to be replaced. Similarly if you still think today that the system "works" and that all that's needed is a few tweaks, it's your privilege talking.
