He's 40 now, and a happy evangelist for the sort of feel-good enlightenment once routinely expected of modern jazz, when its popular heroes included Mr. Golson, the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and the pianist Oscar Peterson.
Pietists emphasized Christian devotion and diligence as paths to the good life; Enlightenment thinkers focused on reason and clear thinking as the sensible way to happiness.
Dogs are run down as they do good deeds, enlightenment makes chimps suicidal and two hamsters go without dinner, praying for their owner's return.
As Mark Schorer, an American academic, observed: "The forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality".
If you can buy into the binary – enlightenment good, Islamic fundamentalism bad, rationalism good, faith in the supernatural dumb – you may feel some warmth generated by a flush of moral superiority.
The basic values of Tibetan Buddhism are "refrain from doing any evil and pursue everything that is virtuous," as well as the ideals of leniency, mercifulness, enlightenment, good conduct, living in mindfultness of the afterlife, and yearning for Buddha.
He kept muttering, "Curbside, curbside, curbside!" We were puzzled, so we stopped as he reached us and asked, "What do you mean, 'Curbside'?" He replied with disdain, "Don't you know when a gentleman escorts a lady, he should always position himself on the curb side of the street?" We thanked him monetarily for his good manners and enlightenment.
The function of local gods in Tibet can include "increasing the possibilities of good karma" although enlightenment is beyond the reaches of their powers (Tucci 1988).
Good and evil, delusion and enlightenment, Buddhahood and deviltry, are all "inherently entailed" in each and every event.
It seems not to have occurred to him, even at that moment of enlightenment, that good werewolf movies are nearly as rare as good ballet films, but the thought probably wouldn't have daunted him much.
The central question of the culture wars that have raged since the 1970s is not whether abortion is murder or gay marriage a civil right, but whether the Enlightenment was a good thing.
