New Humanism, The Second Age of Enlightenment

 I wrote this to friends recently:

I wonder, if we were to manage to reduce measurably the negative outcomes of our age, if the age of turnaround might come to be called, "The Second Age of Enlightenment." That would give more credit to the way we learned to think than to the consequent way we  learned to live. I'm an it-is-a-lifestyle-problem guy myself, but I am uncomfortable with how much anti-intellectualism seems to have permeated all sides of the debate (if debate is possible between anti-intellectuals).

March 7 2011: David Brooks delves more deeply.
I encourage you to read it: [Click}   
What I had started to conceive of as "the Second Age of Enlightenment." Brooks' would call "The New Humanism"--better I believe.  He certainly describes it well, though I would add that a level-headed respect for science over pseudoscience will be part of it. After all, it is science (as Brooks explains) that is opening the pathways to the new humanism. No matter what we call the age envisioned, we should hasten out from our redoubts to welcome its arrival.