The_Enlightenment

The enlightenment The enlightenment was a time of change. People started to believe in science, not just in god. People understood that they could change the outcome of things, and that they had more power than they thought earlier. The poor people also got a chance to get out of poverty because people started to believe that they were not being punished from god. In the Enlightenment people started to believe that god did not control the world. They still thought he had created it, but they thought that they could control the outcome of their own life themselves. The poor people saw that they could change their life if they worked hard enough, because god did not punish them for something they had done. They could get out of the poverty if the society accepted it, and the society started to accept that poor people also had some rights. We see this clearly in “a modest proposal” where Jonathan Swift suggests in an ironic way that they should start to eat poor peoples children to get enough food. He did that to show that the society looked at the poor people differently than the rich people. Nobody would have suggested to eat a rich person's child. This text was an eyeopener to the people. When people began to doubt that god controlled everything in the world, they started to look for reasons to all the things happening all around them. Science became “a replacement for god.” We can see that in Joseph Wright of Derbys picture “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” where a lot of people are watching an experiment. The fact that a picture of an experiment is considered art also show how the world started to accept science, and started to rely on it instead of god. The science made a lot of people understand that your position in society had nothing to do with god, but with what family you were born in. The poor people were put into the situation they were in, and had very little chance of getting an education and a good job. The writers and painters chose to show the poor side of the society, so also the rich people had to admit that it was a problem. Many of the poor people became alcoholics, because that was a way to get away from all their problems for a little while. In the picture “gin lane” William Hogarth show this side of society. He shows how the poor people are unable to take care of themselves and their children because of the gin. This picture was printed in 1751 for the first time, and that was at the same time of the Gin Act, which regulated the gin market. The enlightenment also believed that everybody had the same possibilities. When they thought that god did not have anything to do with your everyday life, they started thinking that everybody are born the same, and if they had the same education a poor and a rich persons could do the same things. That is what Daniel Defoe is telling about in Robinson Crusoe. He explains how the native people on the island have “the same Reason, the same Affection, the same Sentiments of Kindness and Obligation, the same Passion and Resentments of wrongs” as the people in England. This story could also have been put in the street of London with a poor man and a rich man, where they still have the same fundamental feelings of right and wrong. Before the enlightenment the people thought that everything that happened, happened because god wanted it to happen, and they could not do anything to change it. In the enlightenment people started to take control of their own lives. They understood that what they did was all that mattered. There was no god there to blame, only yourself and other people. Benjamin Franklin wanted to have moral perfection, and to get it he wrote The Art of Virtue. In this essay he writes about how he can have moral perfection, not how he could please god. He does it to try to be as perfect as he can to please him self. The enlightenment changed the minds of a whole world. It made it possible to change things yourself, and not just wait for god to do something. The poor people got a chance to change their lives, because everybody else stopped believing that they had brought it all on themselves. They started to understand that it was because they were born into it.