I recommend Peter Schwarz’s talk on anti-reason forces in our modern civilisation, particularly for its discussion of how multiculturalism is incompatible with progress.
Note, British readers, that when Schwarz talks of multiculturalism he isn’t referring to the obviously beneficial practice of people from different backgrounds living and working together, he is talking about the idea that one culture can’t be judged as better or worse than another.
Schwarz argues that every time we make any sort of progress in industry, science, distribution, art, etc. we need not only the resources, methods and processes to achieve it – but the knowledge that the state of the world after the change will be better than the state of the world before the change; that one state of living is preferable to another.
Of course this begs the question: what if another culture has an entirely different standard of the good? Here lies the meat of the argument: if we reject the supremacy of reason, we have no other tool but mysticism, and are bound to repeat the dark ages.
Definitely worth watching.