Why the World is on Fire: The Unfulfilled Promises of Enlightenment and Modernity
Pay what you want - from £1 to £50- open ticket.
You sense it, but do not know why.
You look out, and everything seems different.
Not good different.
Bad different.
You're sat thinking to yourself: what on earth happened?
Perhaps you were born in the 80s and think back to the music, films, and the sense of peace.
Perhaps you're a 90s child, remembering the early internet, TV shows, and long school holidays.
Perhaps you're young, and wonder if the world was always this messed up.
Either way, you share the same burning question:
Why is the world on fire?
It’s easy to feel dis-empowered, but there is a reason for it.
The systems that have allowed this to happen were not accidents. They were built, layer by layer, through ideas that promised liberation yet delivered control.
From the Enlightenment’s worship of reason, to modernity’s obsession with progress, to capitalism’s relentless demand for growth—each age replaced one form of meaning with another, until meaning itself was hollowed out.
We were told this was freedom. We were told this was civilization. But what if these very ideals are the reason everything feels so wrong?
This 90-minute seminar unpacks how the grand narratives of rationality, progress, and modern life shaped the inner and outer crises of our age. Together we will explore:
How Enlightenment thought separated man from spirit.
How modernity industrialized life and commodified the soul.
How technology, capitalism, and secularism fused into a system that now consumes everything—including our attention, our values, and our hope.
By the end, you will see that the chaos around us is not random. It has roots, logic, and history.
And only by understanding them can we begin to imagine a different world.
See you there.