Tag Archives: progress

And How about Progress?

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It seems just a few years have passed since the best-selling Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker published two extraordinarily optimistic works, The Better Angels of Our Nature; Why Violence Has Declined (2011) and Enlightenment Now (2018). As the author says, his intention was to show that humanity is marching towards, if not perfection, at any rate a greatly improved existence. Depending on the geographical location and the country in question, fewer wars and fewer people who lose their lives in them. Less crime and less violence.  Fewer perinatal deaths among women and infants. Greater control over nature. Better healthcare. Diseases that, once considered incurable, have since been eradicated or are on their way to being so. Growing life expectancy (some visionaries have claimed that the first immortals, people destined to live forever or at least to age 200, are already walking among us). Greatly expanded economic production which, along with developing technology, is pointing towards the eradication of poverty and a future in which everyone, if not rich, will at any rate have enough to eat. More democracy, more justice, more human rights. More and often better education; less superstition, more science. Less slavery, more mobility and more travel. More opportunities. An improved social order that is steadily making the lives of billions brighter, happier, more enjoyable.

Says Hegel—I take it for granted that anyone who reads this blog will know who he was, so no need to explain—that Minerva’s owl only spreads its wings at dusk. Meaning, the very fact that more and more people have come to believe in something—progress, say, or democracy, or socialism, or the widespread existence of a “rape culture”–is itself part cause, part outcome, of the collapse of that “something.” Why? Because history, unlike the natural world, moves neither in cycles nor in a straight line but in an unending process of action-reaction.  An idea–for Hegel, an idealist, it is always the idea that comes first–is born. It spreads. Spreading, it gives rise to opposition (as any idea necessarily does; no opposition, no idea). The two, the idea and the opposition to it, interact. They study each other, learn from each other, wrestle and merge. Until a new idea is born out of both its parents’ bodies, enabling the process to continue, All this takes place all the time, at every level, moving us ever forward towards what Hegel regards as the final goal. Meaning, a world in which a single idea—that of freedom—dominates and all contradictions are resolved.

To repeat, only a few years have passed since Pinker took up the cudgels for progress. In those years, what a reaction! Too many people on this crowded earth of us. Global warming causing sea levels to rise and glaciers to melt. Storms that alternate with droughts. Wherever we look, spreading pollution: on land, at sea, even in outer space. Restrictions on tourism, only recently declared to be the greatest industry on earth but now increasingly seen as a threat to the environment. In some places—not always the least-developed ones–life expectancy has begun to decline. Corona, counting its victims in the millions, remains a threat as some other emergent diseases may also do.

More money is being spent on the military than ever before. War, large scale war, has broken out in Europe and may be about to break out in East Asia as well (e.g. between China and Taiwan). Depression is spreading, as is the use of all kinds of dubious drugs supposed to combat it. A growing volume of seemingly random violence in which innocent people, schoolchildren included, are killed. Vast and growing socio-economic gaps between people, classes and countries. In many countries, democracy is turning questionable and authoritarianism is raising its ugly head. Even within that model of humanitarian perfection, the EU, some members are not immune.

To continue the list, the value of much non-professional higher education is being questioned. Contact between people belonging to different religions and cultures, rather than teaching toleration and mutual respect, often gives rise to more hatred and greater fanaticism. Police states using technological progress—the kind which, Edward Snowden tells us, he and so many others originally welcomed as an instrument of liberation—to spy on everyone all the time. The beginning of a reaction to wokeness that may very well put an end to whatever progress—if, indeed, it is progress–has been achieved in this direction and spread.

Two centuries after Schiller wrote, and Beethoven set to music, the idea that “all people are becoming brothers” there is even a movement, or at least the beginning of a movement, made up of scientists and scholars who believe that we are at a critical turning point. Meaning  that, following some two and a half centuries of visible and sustained progress, that progress has now peaked and is about to go into reverse.

Which view is correct? As several entries in this blog testify, when considering the future it is always useful to consult George Orwell. Here is what, shortly before his death in 1950, he had to say about the matter:

The world of [1984] is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly, and efficient — a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete — was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago.

Is this the direction in which we are moving?

Big Questions

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Skimming my way through Amazon.com, as I often do either in search of interesting books to read or simply to pass the time, I came across the following description of my former student, best-selling author/historian Yuval Harari. Here is what it said:

Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1976, Harari received his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2002, and is currently a lecturer at the Department of History, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He originally specialized in world history, medieval history and military history, and his current research focuses on macro-historical questions such as: What is the relationship between history and biology? What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals? Is there justice in history? Does history have a direction? Did people become happier as history unfolded? What ethical questions do science and technology raise in the 21st century?

I cannot claim to have researched these questions in any depth. Let alone sold books by the million as Harari did and does. As so often, though, I considered the questions interesting. Sufficiently so to try and provide my readers, and myself, with some off the cuff answers. The more so because, as a historian, in one way or another I’ve been thinking about them throughout my life. As, indeed, most people, though not historians, have probably done at some point or another.

Off the cuff my answers may indeed be. Still, if anyone has better ones I’d be very happy to see them. Not wishing to have my thoughts censored, not even by Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, I refuse to join the so-called social media. But my email is mvc.dvc@gmail.com.

A. What is the relationship between history and biology?

Q. There is no question but that many of our most basic qualities are biologically determined. Including the need to eat, drink, rest, sleep, and have sex; but for them, we could not exist. Including the quest, if not for happiness, which is both a modern idea and hard to define, then at any rate for avoiding pain and sorrow and having “a good time.” Including the desire for security, recognition and dominance. Including the desire to do what we consider good and right (this desire even Adolf Hitler, talking to a small and intimate circle, claimed to feel). Including the need to “make sense” of the world around us. And the desire for sex, of course.

The number of humans who have ever lived on this earth is estimated at 90-110 billion, of whom almost one tenth are alive today. With very few and very partial exceptions, all have experienced these needs and these desires. To this extent biology and history, meaning cultural change, are independent of each other.

But history, meaning social and cultural change, does affect the way these needs and these desires are experienced and expressed by people belonging to different cultures at different times. An ancient Chinese living, say, 3,000 years ago would instantly understand both what food is and why we stand in need of it. What he would not understand is why we in our modern Western society consider some foods (e.g seafood) fit for consumption and others (e.g. insects) not.

A. What is the essential difference between homo sapiens and other animals?

Q. Historically speaking, the answers to this question have varied very much. For the authors of the Old Testament, later followed by any number of adherents to the other two so-called Abrahamic Religions, it consisted of our belief in God as well as the ability to distinguish between good and evil; whoever could or would not do these things was considered in- or subhuman and deserved to be treated as such. For Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes and the thinkers of the Enlightenment it was our ability to use reason in order to both understand the world and achieve the goals we have set for ourselves. For Rabelais it was our ability to laugh; for Marx, our ability to create and sustain ourselves by means of work; for Nietzsche, out concern with beauty and with art in general; and for Johan Huizinga, our willingness to engage in play both for fun and on the way to exploring the world and creating something new.

This organ has the ability to make love and satisfy your partner. viagra generika 50mg How Fast usa cialis Does Kamagra Work Normally, Kamagra is effective with an hour of its consumption. Thus, the man is guaranteed strong erection until generic levitra professional the medication ingredients are present in the system. Because ultimately if you can sort it out cialis online discount http://greyandgrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Court-of-Appeals-Ruling-in-Shutter-NYLJ-1997.pdf don’t you think the direct consequence could be that you will get bigger and longer lasting erection. Each of these views have been elaborated in mountains of publications of every kind. Each one has also been questioned at some length. Never more so than over the last two decades or so. The primatologist Frans de Waal, widely acknowledged as the world’s greatest expert on bonobos, in his 2013 book The Bonobo and the Atheist even went so far as to argue that the members of this species show something like religiosity, however rudimentary it might be.

A. Is there justice in history?

Q. Without going into detail as to what justice may mean, let me say that I doubt it very much. However, this question reminds me of a story I once heard about Israel’s former Prime Minister, Menahem Begin (served, 1977-1983). This was not long after he had concluded a peace agreement with Egypt and, by way of recognition, received the Nobel Peace Prize.

The story, which was told by an ideological rival of his, went as follows. Back in the summer of 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of World War II, twenty-five year old Begin was in Warsaw attending a meeting of Betar, a right-wing and rather belligerent Jewish movement of which, in Poland, he was the chief. Doing so he got into an argument with his mentor Zeev Jabotinsky, the equally right-wing leader and ideologist of Betar, world-wide. Then and later Begin was a fiery orator who tended to be swept away by his own words. On this occasion he spoke about might governing the world, called on Jews to use might and even violence in order to counter it, etc., etc. Whereupon Jabotinsky took the floor and said, “The world is run by judges, not robbers. And if you, Mr. Begin, do not believe that is true, then go and drown yourself in the Vistula.”

To repeat, whether there is justice in history I do not know. However, I do know one thing: but for the belief that there is such justice we might indeed drown ourselves in the nearest river.

A. Did people become happier as history unfolded?

Q. Some people today, including Harari himself in at least one of his books, have argued that, far from people becoming happier as history unfolds, they have become less so. As by having to work harder, being subject to greater stress, losing the intimacy that only members of small societies can experience, watching the world around us being polluted and nature destroyed, etc. This is a modern version of the Pandora story; except that, instead of Pandora (literally, “all blessings”), people speak of civilization.

To me, much of this seems to be based on nothing but nostalgia. More to the point, there is no way this question can be answered with any degree of certainty. Public opinion surveys aimed at doing so only started being held over the last few decades, and even they are hardly reliable. So I’ll skip.

A. What ethical questions do science and technology raise in the 21st century?

Q. I doubt whether science and technology raise any new ethical questions at all. To mention a few only, people have always confronted the question how evil—however defined–should be dealt with. They have always been forced to deal with the gap between the desires of the individual and the dictates of society. They have always been forced to decide what, from an ethical point of view, means should or should not be used to attain what ends. They have always done their best to influence the minds of others by whatever means at their disposal. And they always had to decide whether, and at what point, the deformed, the handicapped, the sick, and the old should (or should not) be killed or left to die.

In the words of Ecclesiastics, nothing new under the sun.

Guest Article: In Defence of Colonialism

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by

R. Hallpike*

One of the certainties, not to say dogmas, of modern culture is that colonialism was very, very wicked. As a result, it requires grovelling apologies from all the nations that were guilty of it. Having observed it at first hand in Papua New Guinea and Ethiopia fifty years ago, this moralistic certainty strikes me as naive and ignorant. Why? I will now explain.

*

The situation of Man over the last five thousand years or so has increasingly been one of advanced civilisations, large, complex societies organized into centralized states at one extreme, and small, illiterate tribal societies with very primitive technologies at the other. In this ancient confrontation a frequent course of events was the domination or conquest of the tribal societies by the empires. Nineteenth- and twentieth century European colonialism was a special episode in this history because the contrasts between their scientific, technological, cultural and political development and that of the tribal societies they dominated was the most extreme of all time, The consequences were global.

Tribal societies are small-scale and inward-looking. Based largely on kinship and without political centralization, in them people mix mainly with those they know and strangers are rare. Technology is primitive, economies barely rise beyond the subsistence level, and violence endemic. Each tribe had its own religious rituals and speaks its own particular language which may only have a few hundreds or thousands users. Early states, however, in some cases developed into large, wealthy civilisations and empires, such as those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and the Graeco-Roman world, with much more advanced technology, arts, crafts, and architecture, writing, and professional armies. They were also the major centres of inventions that, especially through trade and navigation, spread widely throughout the world. At the other extreme sub-Saharan Africa, despite its size and diversity of cultures, contributed virtually nothing to world civilisation. No writing; no technological inventions; no significant architecture; a generally low level of craftsmanship; and no systems of political or religious thought.

This inequality between what I shall call imperial and tribal cultures became ever greater through developments in Europe. Meaning, the Renaissance and the development of navigation; the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century; the Enlightenment; and the growth of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout these centuries large areas of the world, such as Oceania and Australia, sub-Saharan Africa, and large parts of the Americas remained populated by small tribal societies. Often with high levels of internal and external violence (violence against women specifically included), low levels of technology, and subsistence economies. To be sure, here and there some particularly powerful tribe succeeded in developing into what, for lack of a better term, I shall call a proto-state. However, they too remained at an illiterate and primitive level of culture.

A number of European nations had been trading with Africa and other areas such as the East Indies for centuries: the Portuguese, for example, had reached the coast of West Africa by 1485. But as the nineteenth century proceeded they began colonising these backward areas of the world and, as they did so, imposing a series of revolutionary changes on them. If only because power is always abused, the process involved considerable brutality, oppression and exploitation; but that was part of the price indigenous societies had to pay. The Romans too were brutal, but their rule in Britain resulted in the longest period of peace that country would enjoy until the Tudors.

Come the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The colonisers, having taken over, amalgamated numbers of tribes into larger national units. Complete with centralised government, administrative systems, codes of laws, judicial systems to settle disputes, police and armed forces to maintain order and put down communal violence, and schools to teach literacy and one of the world languages such as English or French. They also introduced currency to facilitate trade and payment of taxes; developed the economy and cash crops; abolished inhuman practices such as slavery, cannibalism, infanticide, and human sacrifice; introduced hospitals and medical services; and built roads, railways, and telecommunications, water projects, irrigation, and sanitation. Not least, missionaries spread one of the world religions, usually Christianity which, like English or French, allowed people to begin sharing a common culture above and beyond that of their limited tribal world.

These revolutionary developments could never have been produced from within the indigenous tribal societies. Instead, they had to be forcibly imposed by outsiders. The motives of the colonisers varied. Some no doubt loved power; others went out to the colonies to become rich; and still others did what they did because they thought they were doing good. But the motivations of the colonisers were irrelevant. Historically speaking, all that counted was the effect in pushing civilisation and causing it to spread.
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Starting at least as far back as Rousseau, there has long been a tradition that idolises “the noble savage,” If only he had been left alone, so the thinking goes, he would have been much happier. Having lived in tribal societies I know that this a fantasy of the intelligentsia. People who would not survive a week if they had to live in these societies as they used to be in pre-colonial days; surrounded by violence, sickness, famine and starvation, the fear of witches and evil spirits, and grinding physical hardship which their primitive technology could not mitigate.

Modern propaganda also sugests that the propensity to enslave defenceless peoples is engrained in the psyche of Westerners. In fact slavery is one of the oldest and most widespread of human institutions. It was normal in much of the Islamic world. Also, and especially, in Africa, where powerful kingdoms such as Dahomey, Ashanti, Benin and Ghana of West Africa earned huge profits by rounding up and selling the European slave-traders what they needed. In East Africa the Arabs and the Ethiopians had been enslaving black Africans since before the time of Christ. In Saudi Arabia, slavery was only abolished in 1962. Especially in the Americas and the Caribbean during the 17th and 18th centuries, slavery and colonialism went together. Not so in the 19th when the movement for the abolition of slavery meant that Britain, and eventually other Western nations, used colonial rule as a means of abolishing it.

But there is a further consequence of colonialism which is seldom appreciated. It was only when tribal societies were combined into modern nation states, with law and order, literacy and schooling, and the ability to speak one of the world languages with access to modern communications and technology, that they could finally take their place in the global community of nations and make themselves known to the rest of the world. International aid schemes and health projects in particular would have been quite impossible in societies still at the tribal level of development.

*

To sum up,it was colonialism which laid the essential foundations of the modern world of independent nations. The latter could never have come into existence without that prior stage of colonial nation-building. That this revolutionary process involved considerable hardship and cruelty no one doubts. However, that is in the nature of revolutions; in the end, colonialism vastly improved the lives of its subjects. Its demise which started in 1945, was also the first time in history when powerful colonial empires voluntarily gave freedom and independence to their imperial subjects. Often. As it turned out, before they were ready to enjoy it and, as a result, relapsed into anarchy or despotism.

 

* C. R. Hallpike is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. He studied anthropology at Oxford and conducted extensive fieldwork in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. He has published many books, including The Foundations of Primitive Thought and Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains, and regards political correctness as the greatest danger in our time to academic research and freedom of thought generally.