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The Applause of Fools: How Erasmus Predicted Every Century After His Own

In 1509, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, writing from the restless perch of Thomas More’s London house, composed The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium) in the span of roughly a week. The book was a satirical grenade lobbed at the Church, at the academy, at every strutting peacock of European intellectual life who mistook plumage for substance. Among its many surgical observations, one line has outlived them all with terrifying accuracy: “The less talent they have, the more pride, vanity, and arrogance they have. All these fools, however, find other fools to applaud them.”

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Things We Have Lost

Today we live in perpetual moments of melancholia that now define our modern lives. We do not live in a state of regret, but we live with an ongoing consciousness of things we have lost. How do we handle the recognition that, over the last four years, so many precious things have been forever stolen from us?

We have lost our sense of sanctuary. There are no safe places. We cannot find protection in schools, mosques, churches, or even with each other. We have lost our right to privacy.

We walk the streets and we are watched. We enter public buildings and we are required to provide ID just to remain in the building.

We surveil our neighbors. People different from us — in color and tone and financial stature — are our silent enemies and are ripe for the reporting. We have lost our joy to depravity.

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