Steven Pinker jokes that the irony of progressives is that they deny progress. It's a sharp observation, but I wouldn't call it an irony. It's the point. If there is progress, they are out of a job. While I think that many people go in for progressive ideas and advocacy because they believe in the cause and want to help, there is a secondary motive of being a progressive. Some of that is seeking the appearance, yet I think the desire for identity is stronger for most of them. This secondary motive grows over time. It has been true for decades that young people go into journalism because they "want to make a difference." A difference about what? While many can give some answer if pressed, these are usually a bit vague and unsatisfactory.
The artist/photographer Angel Eduardo was uncomfortable and even a bit appalled to be at a gathering of young filmmakers, and every one of them wanted to "be woke as f***" making films to create political change.
The standard idea is that the election of Barack Obama activated all the white racists to come out and found things like the Tea Party to resist change. What if that's projection? What if it is the various leftist radicals that got activated, increasingly working to prevent change and convince us that there has been no change? Progress has to be denied or redefined or both - or they are gradually going to be out a job. Worse, their status and importance will diminish consistently while this is happening. So many traditional things are being dismissed as merely socially constructed. What if that is primarily true about new ideas being put forth to replace them instead? Every age has its biases and we need to account for that when studying history. Yet how if it our own age that is the most biased, the most socially constructed?
I suppose I should find it in my heart to shed a tear for the progressive who reaches his goal, or the avant-garde artist when the rest of the community joins him and he has nothing to be avant.
ReplyDelete"Social construction" is a social construction, and yes, we live in the most constructed mental environment that has ever existed on a mass scale. Elites (and all modern Americans are an elite in some senses) often mistake their self-flattering constructions for reality,
ReplyDeleteand the encounters with the latter usually hurt.
Cousin Eddie
I know somebody with the slogan 'The moral arc of the universe isn't going to bend itself,' a paraphrase of the MLK quote "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I think if you really pushed you could get a lot of liberals to express profound disappointment with Obama, especially to the degree that he begat Trump. It's not mainstream but I've been seeing flashes of it here and there if you read comments in the right places.
ReplyDeleteMLK was entitled to the view that the universe has a moral arc, being a preacher as well as an activist. What's striking is finding Communists who believe it. It's embedded in Marx because it was embedded in Hegel, and Marx was applying Hegel's method to economics and politics; but Hegel too was expecting it to bend us back to God. There's no reason to think there is any sort of morality in the universe if you dispose of that; and if there isn't, moral progress can only be an illusion. The past only looks like it was 'evolving' toward us; in fact, it was just changing into what we are now, and will change into something else later.
ReplyDeleteConservatives tend to make the opposite error, that of establishing a point in history as The High Point. Change being universal, of course then all of subsequent history looks like a decay from the one true moment (rather than progress towards our current moment, which 'arc' we project hopefully into the future).
It's not just American or Western conservatives, either; Islamists tend to think of the period of Muhammad and his Companions as the High Point that we should strive to restore as much as we can. They end up with the same error.
Assistant Village Idiot: Steven Pinker jokes that the irony of progressives is that they deny progress.
ReplyDeleteIt works as a joke because it describes some progressives; however, the majority of progressives certainly do recognize historical progress.
We won't speak to "various leftist radicals" except to note that various rightist reactionaries certainly did "come out" after the election of Obama.
Grim: The past only looks like it was 'evolving' toward us; in fact, it was just changing into what we are now, and will change into something else later.
Once upon a time, the Church decided matters of religion, women couldn't vote, slavery and peasantry were endemic, and aristocracy controlled the levers of power.
Society has become more egalitarian, democratic, less violent, and more just since the Renaissance.
Once upon a time, the Church decided matters of religion, women couldn't vote, slavery and peasantry were endemic, and aristocracy controlled the levers of power. Society has become more egalitarian, democratic, less violent, and more just since the Renaissance.
ReplyDeleteThank you for embodying exactly what I was describing.
You can show objectively that the world is 'more egalitarian, democratic, less violent' according to various measures; I've read those arguments in the past. What you can't show objectively is that the world is (thereby) "more just." That's just your opinion, or judgment. It equates to "the world looks more like I think it ought to than it used to do."
That privileges the current observer (yourself) as the arbiter of justice. Yet the current observer won't be around forever; and the world of the future may look a lot less like you'd prefer than it does currently.
Nor would this objectively be 'less just.' Consider a possible future: almost all of the world has demographics below replacement level, except sub-Saharan Africa which is well above them. Now this part of Africa is also one of the most religious parts of the world: Islam flourishes there, but so also does a traditional form of Catholicism, and so too Evangelical churches. Since the future belongs to those who show up for it, it may well be that "society" will become more traditionally religious, less egalitarian, and potentially not at all democratic. Yet this would not seem unjust to the people who subscribe to those traditional faiths, which have deeply-argued and rooted ideas about justice that advocate for their preferred alternative.
The idea that society has progressed to us (or you), and that this is a kind of arc of improvement, that is merely an illusion. If that possible future eventuates, it will seem the same way to them: "Society has become less egalitarian, less democratic, and more just thanks to the collapse of those heretical Western European ideas that threatened to dominate humanity for so long."
I don't doubt such people would also invoke the moral arc of the universe, and even God, as an explanation for how they were saved from the corruption of a seemingly-powerful West. "Who is like the Beast, and who can make war with him?" It might well seem that divine providence stepped in and swept away all that regression from the religious ideal.
To any atheist Westerners still around, the world may look a lot worse. But that, too, is just an opinion; and if there isn't really a God out to serve as a genuine moral ground, different human opinions are all there are.
Grim: What you can't show objectively is that the world is (thereby) "more just."
ReplyDeleteFreedom of conscience, universal suffrage, relative equality before the law, and reduced chance of the vagaries of violent death are all reasonable measures of justice. While not universal, these phenomena are far more widespread than they were a half millennium ago.
In any case, your claim was that there was no general direction to social evolution, but that is not correct, at least as far as the last few centuries have seen.
...no general direction to social evolution...
ReplyDeleteHeh. Far from saying that you can't impute a direction, I was saying that people regularly do so in error. Indeed, it was the regularity of people insisting on doing so that is the philosophical error I was describing. Your arc is not real, though; there's no arc that will continue when you're gone, guided by the universe in some mystical way. It's going to change into something different, something that is likely very far away from what you believe it should do.
That was true for your predecessors, too. Kant was a huge believer that history was going to lead us to his vision; he described it in great detail in the Metaphysics of Morals in terms of both what just societies would look like and what laws were necessary products of reason. He'd be perfectly horrified with where you are now, though many progressives see themselves as his descendants (and even call themselves Kantians).
Now the religious believe that God is guiding the universe towards final justice too, but they then don't have to be much bothered that it sometimes goes hard the other way (which, as is more visible to them because of their longer timeline, it often has). There's an account in prophecy of how things will get very bad indeed before a final miraculous end will bring some kind of restoration about. Not all of the religious views about this are happy endings, though.
Freedom of conscience, universal suffrage, relative equality before the law, and reduced chance of the vagaries of violent death are all reasonable measures of justice.
How would you know they are 'reasonable measures' if you can't say what you are measuring?
If you could give an objective account of justice -- as you can for how much democracy there is or isn't in the world, say -- then you could establish measuring sticks. One doesn't have to agree about whether democracy is good or bad to be able to agree on whether there is more or less of it.
As long as the nature of justice itself remains debatable, with several philosophical schools, Islamic, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, and many other competing alternative views of it, it's impossible to say objectively what would be a good yardstick. Your list are merely things that you like, things which seem just in your opinion. You're entitled to your opinion, but others are also, and they don't agree with you about this basic question. Nor, therefore, even as to whether the world is growing more or less just since the Renaissance or at the present time; nor, either, what it would mean for it to grow 'more just' in the future.
Grim: Your arc is not real, though
ReplyDeleteOf course it's real. The social changes we described occurred over centuries and have been deep and broad-based.
Grim: there's no arc that will continue when you're gone, guided by the universe in some mystical way.
We didn't make that claim, only that there has been a direction to social evolution over the last few centuries (just as biological evolution can have a direction when under selection). We can extend this further back into human history, such as the invention of codified laws several millennia ago.
Grim: How would you know they are 'reasonable measures' if you can't say what you are measuring?
People who claim there is a direction to the moral universe have a specific definition of justice in mind. There's a reason Lady Justice is depicted as a blind person holding scales. You seem to be arguing by ambiguity.
Don’t worry Z, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m just allowing you to demonstrate the blindness to the illusion. I know that you really believe what you’re saying, and that it’s deeply important to you. It’s a kindness, in a way, that you can’t see the alternative.
ReplyDeleteGrim: you can’t see the alternative.
ReplyDeleteWe are quite aware that justice is not an objective quality. Nonetheless, most people share an understanding of its meaning, so this allows for rational discussion of whether ending chattel slavery was just.