by starroute » Thu Nov 10, 2005 12:27 pm
I'm a product of the 1960's, when it was fashionable to debunk the idea of progress, and nobody was more surprised than me when what started as merely a rap on the history of end-times thought turned into a ringing defense of the necessity of progress as a basis for positive social change.<br><br>But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea.<br><br>During the original heyday of Progress, in the late 19th century, it was tied to a fair number of unsavory correlates. One was the racist assumption that certain nations were more "advanced" than others and the use of this to justify colonialism. Another was a sort of shallow ameliorationism, the expectation that things would just keep getting better on their own, so it wasn't necessary to actually do anything. So it was probably a good thing for the old linear concept of progress to get knocked down for a time -- and we can only hope that a revised, systems theory-based version will be less arrogant and less deterministic.<br><br>When the 19th century faith in Progress began to fade, it was largely as the result of observing that people over the course of history hadn't visibly become any happier or wiser or even particularly nicer. Although the roots of that disillusionment go back at least to the 1890's (think H.G. Wells), World War I was what really drove it home. The loss of faith in Progress was what made possible the rise of fascism in the 1920's, since people were getting nervous about the sweeping changes brought about by modernism and were starting to think longingly of a past Golden Age, of traditional verities, of a more structured and predictable way of life.<br><br>That loss of faith was far more intense in Europe than in the United States, which held onto to a belief that even if *people* weren't getting any better, the quality of life was improving all the time. That more materialistic version of progress was the ruling creed of the 1950's and early 60's -- but even that's been knocked on its ass in the past few decades. This is the primary reason for the decline of the Democratic Party, which was organized around that belief.<br><br>A few days ago, I was tentatively suggesting that I saw "New Age" as something different from the hippie occultism of the 1960's and as having come on strong only around 1979, as part of the conservative counter-revolution that was being brought into play all across American society. I still think that's true, and that one of the defining characteristics of New Age thought is its belief in a "perenniel philosophy" which can never be added to or improved. In other words, it's anti-progress, whereas the hippie expectation (fueled in large part by LSD) was that the sort of esoteric understanding that had been exclusive to a tiny handful of the elect could be generalized to the entire population, and that this would have an enormous impact on society.<br><br>However, New Age thought may be only one side of it. If I were an evil mastermind who was trying to systematically beat down any faith in progress, there are certain things I would do:<br><br>- Continually lower incomes and standards of living so as to deprive people of any personal hope of a better future for themselves and their children.<br><br>- Either instigate or at the very least hype to the hills any epidemics, natural disasters, and other threats to public health and well-being so as to disabuse people of the notion that social progress is making them more comfortable or secure.<br><br>- Promote torture and other forms of extreme brutality so as to undercut any remnants of the old 19th century perception that society is advancing towards more civilized norms of behavior.<br><br>Are these things being done with conscious forethought? Beats me. I think it's just as possible that those who hate and fear progress because it threatens their dominance will instinctively do anything they can to prove to themselves and others that progress is an illusion. (Similarly, singling out the people who invented civilization to beat back to the stone age may be a useful by-product rather than a primary motivation.) But it doesn't matter, since the end result is the same.<br> <p></p><i></i>