Light On Dark Water

Every philosophical school must eventually grow stale, and a hindrance rather than an aid to further thought (though if it has sufficient vitality it may recover). And if it has met with worldly success nothing is more to be expected than that this should happen precisely at the moment of its greatest triumph, when it is no longer the adventure of the gifted but the refuge of the conventional, and for the former no longer a school but a prison.

So it was with the naturalistic skepticism of the Enlightenment, which, in the early years of the century, took decisive (if still contested) command of society, but simultaneously became the unexamined faith of that herd of independent minds which had first been described some fifty years earlier.

–Gilbert Keith Orwell, S.J., An Introduction to the Study of the Twenty-First Century, Nairobi, 2348.

I posted this on Facebook a couple of days ago as a sort of oblique comment on the disturbing incident at Mozilla. If you have managed remain unaware of that situation: Mozilla is the company that produces the Firefox web browser, and the long-time employee, also one of the founders, who had just been appointed CEO, was immediately forced out because he had donated to a political campaign opposing same-sex marriage.

Naturally I want to say some pretty harsh things about that, but the voice that tells me "why bother?" commenting on such things prevailed, and I started thinking about the bigger picture, which led to the bit of future history above. Which, by the way, was a lot of fun to write. We may hear more from Fr. Orwell.

***

This is one of those things that seem to happen more and more often now, which are shocking and yet not at all surprising. Possibly the single most disheartening thing about it is not the malice of many of the s-s-m supporters, but this blog post by someone near the top at Mozilla (I'm not sure exactly what "executive chairwoman" means–of the board of directors, I guess). I would have had more respect for this statement if it had simply said "There is no room at Mozilla for people who oppose same-sex marriage." Instead, she handed us this lump of partially melted margarine. It's significant that insofar as there's any sense to be made of the statement, her only concern seems to be the feelings (the feelings, which are the voice of God when they come from the right people) of those who objected to Eich's appointment, her only regret that they had appointed him in the first place, and then not dumped him quickly enough. It's a measure of the insularity in which such people dwell that there seems almost no indication that objections from the other side even entered her field of vision.

Well, they have now. Mozilla has a page for user feedback, and this is what it looks like as of Sunday afternoon:

You will observe (if you are the sort who cares about web browsers) that this screen shot is from Internet Explorer. Like most people who use the web a lot, I abandoned IE years ago. But this is version 11, and it's really pretty decent. I've removed Firefox, and I let Mozilla know, and why. I don't know if there are enough people doing so to make them feel the loss; I hope so. This is a personal inconvenience, as I had just last week decided to make Firefox my main browser. (I'm under no illusions about Microsoft, by the way; I think it also officially supports same-sex marriage. But they haven't spit on those who disagree. Yet. There are other less well-known browsers out there which I'll be looking into.)

If you want to read more about the controversy, these three posts at Neo-neocon are good starting points–she has links to a number of other discussions and commentaries, many of which come from people who either support or don't object to gay marriage, but are disturbed by the attempt to declare those who disagree unacceptable to society. One of the most striking things about Mozilla and its supporters is their emphasis on the necessity of a recantation. Who'd have thought the Inquisition still had so much influence?