258 Overview, the big questions of our Big Eras:

Enlightenment

My neighbor's religion is clearly wrong -- his god is a fraud! Or, if you prefer: he believes in God! Crazy!  His political opinions are going to destroy this great nation of ours. His sexual views are clearly perverted. Should I light him on fire? Keep him from talking on my campus? Build a wall?

Or: How can people with radically different conceptions of truth live together without killing each other?

Or: What is truth and how do we come to know it?

Romanticism

Are people inherently good or evil? Or If people are inherently good, why are there so many assholes creating so mayhem?

Or: "Man is born free but everywhere lives in chains" (Rousseau). How come so many of the good Enlightenment answers didn't work?

Also: If I weep at a beautiful sunset is it because I was taught to do so or because it's really freaking beautiful? Or both?

Also: Why am I kinky...and how does the answer prefigure modern psychology? Or: why is modern psychological theory so different from current psychological theory?

Modernism

Why does the world still suck? For reals.

Or: Oh, who cares? Hand me my cigarettes and that bottle of Jack Daniels….

But also: Marx: here's another pretty good answer to the question of why  "Man is born free but everywhere lives in chains."

But wait there's more: Freud. Always fun.

Existentialism

Ok, let’s make the world suck less…without going back to the way it was when we simply killed our stupid, crazy neighbors.

Or, How do I become moral in such a futile, brutal, existence?

Post Modernism

Hmmm…wait; maybe we can’t figure what truth is after all and maybe that's a good thing...?  Or not...?