The dominant ideology of the
relatively modern era, its ambient background, is that of Progress,
which could be described as the belief that the increased
understanding and harnessing of matter automatically leads to a
bettering of human life. That even though these immersions in matter
would be ‘pure’ and unimpeded by irrelevant ethical
concerns - which interruptions would be alien to these scientific
investigations - that life as a whole, including the ethical field,
would also somehow benefit as a matter of course from the increased
harnessing of matter. The manipulations of matter would be
intrinsically ‘good’in their effect, even though unencumbered by
concern with the good. As a consciously pronounced ideology, the
latter half of the nineteenth century was the apex of this doctrinal
optimism, while as an applied ideology it has of course gained
incrementally in the meantime, though as this consciously pronounced
ideology it has tended to fade into the background, its relatively
crude propaganda work done and now existing in the silent background, us having moved very much from theory to practice. Progress as a thought
moved beyond a position of conscious faith towards that of an
unspoken omnipresence. Materialism became effectively deified, in a sense a new paganism.
So all in all, optimistic rationalists of the nineteenth century believed man was progressing
towards a new Eden, hence the term Progress, that the pathways of
materialism would of themselves lead there, while man’s ethical
nature would also progress as a matter of inevitable course in the
wake of and in tandem with this scientific progress.
Things like medical advances and
improvements in methods of transport might seem to add irrefutable
weight to such notions of inevitable progress but, simultaneous to
these developments, scientists could place in the hands of the
political powers ever progressive militaristic tools, from sub-machine
guns to tanks, poison gases, biological and nuclear weapons, etc.,
and the scientists could do this with an easy conscience, without being
seen as might seem reasonable as instruments of applied evil, the
most useful servants to the power elites whose primary concerns tend not to be about disinterested increases in human knowledge but very interested increases in human power.
So why could the scientists go
unmolested by these obvious accusations? Because matter in whatever
form it is assembled must be good, since matter is unquestioningly
good, and so such scientific work is at worst neutral - but even that
is unfair, and instead the increasing understanding and harnessing of
matter in whatever direction must be positively good, even though as
said one could do one’s work without any considerations of the
good. It is inferentially claimed that somehow the good infallibly
introduces itself into the process of material investigation and
manipulation without man having to concern himself at all with
goodness. Goodness is intrinsic to matter and its manipulations, a
kind of reverse Gnosticism.
Unsettlingly however, in the twentieth
century this rational path to glory began to throw up some unexpected
phenomena, such as World War One, where in western Europe, the very
engine-room of modernity and Progress, instead of man’s rational
perfecting of himself as had been optimistically envisaged, with the
improved methods of transport obedient Western man was efficiently
delivered in his millions to the destinations of organized
slaughter, while the machine guns, poison gases, etc. did the
efficient slaughtering of modern man in these millions. The methods of transport naturally
themselves evolved into ever more efficient militaristic tools as
the immersion in matter progressed, from ships to planes, submarines,
etc.
So, particularly after the first
World War, this new god of progress with its supposed attendant
rationalizing development of man must have begun to appear to some a
slightly more dubious deity. One perhaps couldn’t, at least some
might have felt, just throw off the burden of one’s individuality and conscience and expect Progress
and its fruits to conveniently deliver up ever increasing measures of
goodness as a natural by-product.
Unfortunately the scope of this piece
has widened way beyond its initial intentions, but beyond the more
violent and dramatic fields of applied science and war, Aldous Huxley
in Brave New World had a look at where man in his uncritical
surrender to Progress and the manipulations of matter, including human matter, particularly in a future world of perfectly achieved social
stability.
An important and obvious point
made by Huxley was that these scientific manipulations are apt not to
be so disinterested at all. In the emerging world of mass-production,
in all its many forms, power would become ever more centrifugally
focused on the mass-producers, and inevitably these ruling elites
would direct the manipulations of matter in directions
beneficial to the consolidation and expansion of their power; from
the obvious militaristic fields to the fields of ‘public
entertainment’ particularly stressed by Huxley, where man’s
potentially free consciousness, a force correctly seen as inimical to
the continued power of the ruling elites, would be harnessed and
neutralised. By offering mass-man a saturation diet of inane
stress-relieving pleasures and false pictures of the world of
reality, man would be a creature of delusion, inhabiting the
simulated ‘reality’ served up to him; conditioned to love his own
servitude, a servitude he would be entirely unaware of. This would
be effected both consciously by the ruling elites but also by means
of the inner logic of progress.
H.G. Wells for one felt betrayed
and insulted by Huxley’s future vision, equating as it clearly did
with a disbelief in the deity of Progress to whom, or rather which,
Wells like the great majority bowed down - regardless of whether or not they
were conscious of the bowing down.
[ Months, perhaps even a year or
two later . . . I obviously got fed up with this essay that snowballed
beyond what I intended, and so never even got to the kernel of the
piece that got me writing in the first place. And the initial
kernel hopefully follows.]
. . . That the error in believing in
Inevitable Progress could be truthfully reduced to or described as a
semantic error; that the word 'progress' when used in the ideological
sense described above is simply being misused, and this misuse has
aided and encouraged man to bow down to the childish notion of
Inevitable Progress.
And so what is this misuse of the word
'progress'? Well, progress is a very simple notion and process: that
is, one begins from some point and progresses from there. The word
simply relates to movement. And so within the whole process of
Progress in the modern sense from, lets simplify, the Industrial
Revolution onwards, a process was set in motion along whose tracks
mankind has deigned to progress, i.e. to move; or as Webster's
Dictionary describes progress: forward movement in time or place. However,
so deeply ingrained has become the misuse of 'Progress' that
automatically once it is mentioned a kind of mental
lever is switched in the mind, and instead of progress simply
inferring to movement along a certain course, it is implied
that there is intrinsically involved an ever more unfolding utopia along the pathways of this
movement. The word has been completely distorted to signify that rather than simply movement in a certain direction, Progress also implies that this movement is to somewhere better than previously inhabited.
This is all far more important a point
than may superficially appear. So to help practically
illustrate the matter, someone might say “I am an ardent believer
in Progress,” meaning that this person believes in the reality of
the ever more unfolding Utopia as one continues along the path of Progress.
Or someone else, a little proud perhaps of their independent thought
and scepticism, might say, “I do not believe in Progress,” again
accepting that Progress implies unfolding Utopia, but in this case disbelieving in its attendant existence. But this is just as ridiculous and perhaps more so than the former believer in Progress. For progress in its true semantic sense of course exists; in the area of manipulation of matter in a myriad of ways we have progressed, we have gone along that path. This is indisputable. In some or many ways this has unfolded what we could say is a better world, with manifestations such as better hygiene, less disease, better means of transport. However just as easily we could say it has unleashed a worse world - Chernobyl, Auschwitz, biological warfare, technologically induced or utilised forms of mass-hypnotism, etc.
The error being made is to distort and falsify the word Progress from its true directional meaning to being inclusive of what we can broadly say is the ethical or idealistic dimension. That this error may be wholly unintentional or unconscious does not make it any less an error, and in the the relative recent history of man a very important one. It pretty obviously comes within the sphere of idolatry, and to an astonishing degree. The helpful manipulating of matter should obviously be a tool of great benefit to mankind but not some idea turned god to bow down to, and to which we should strangely surrender the burden of our selves in the broadest sense. It's not something that will just look after itself and produce truth and beauty to happy mankind!
