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Dans la nuit du 4 août 1789, l’Assemblée nationale française vota l’abolition des « privilèges » du clergé et de la noblesse. Toute la difficulté, dans les semaines, mois et années qui suivirent, fut de définir la liste exacte de ces « privilèges », et par là même d’établir la frontière entre les droits qui devaient être purement et simplement abolis, sans aucune compensation, et ceux qui étaient au contraire considérés comme légitimes et pouvaient être perpétués, ou bien faire l’objet d’une compensation ou d’un rachat, quitte à les reformuler dans la langue politico-juridique nouvelle.
Capital Et Idéologie
Thomas Piketty
The fruits of science are not just high-tech pharmaceuticals such as vaccines, antibiotics, antiretrovirals, and deworming pills. They also comprise ideas—ideas that may be cheap to implement and obvious in retrospect, but which save millions of lives. Examples include boiling, filtering, or adding bleach to water; washing hands; giving iodine supplements to pregnant women; breast-feeding and cuddling infants; defecating in latrines rather than in fields, streets, and waterways; protecting sleeping children with insecticide-impregnated bed nets; and treating diarrhea with a solution of salt and sugar in clean water. Conversely, progress can be reversed by bad ideas, such as the conspiracy theory spread by the Taliban and Boko Haram that vaccines sterilize Muslim girls, or the one spread by affluent American activists that vaccines cause autism.
Enlightenment Now
Steven Pinker
DEEP TIME
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the creation of Twitter than to the creation of the Great Pyramid. The T. Rex lived closer in time to us than to the Stegosaurus. These facts (and evolution) are counterintuitive, since our puny minds cannot grasp the vastness of time.
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