Do you believe that we are "progressing"?

[sweetheart]

We have been sold since a public-school brainwashing that things are getting "better and better" as in racism and such, yet the facts of life do not coincide with this rosy picture. Certainly the AWOL presidency has been nothing but REgression, or perhaps Agression, but certainly NOT PROgression.

Since we are evolving nowhere, does it not concern you that we are perceived to be going somewhere by the establishment?

To the economists, we must grow quarter on quarter or we are going nowhere.

To the religious folks, we must be reducing humankind's suffering by its sheer mass of numbers or we are not taking care of our own.

To the regular bloke on the street, has anything really changed in the past 100 years besides medical vaccinations that has changed anything.

If, as it appears, that we are NOT progressing day on day, year on year... then what is it that we as individuals and "us" as a western culture are really up to?

Consider the response carefully, as this weak myth ties all western modernism together in its odd way... and if our modernism is less advanced than the culture of the american indians 2000 years ago, as it does indeed appear, what idealistic spine will replace progressivism as a basis for western society? stupidism?

[starroute]

1. The progress is not really on the individual level

Society has gotten far more complex. People's range of experience and contacts has gotten wider. The world is gradually becoming unified.

A hundred years ago, people in the town where I now live would consider it a major event if they got to the county seat a couple of times a year. And they might never have been as far as the nearest big city. (Philadelphia, now an hour away by car)

A hundred years ago, most people grew up in the same little town where they were born, married the girl/boy next door, and followed in their parents' footsteps. They did not expect to travel, to earn their living in unprecedented ways, or to marry someone from a significantly different background.

A hundred years ago, people's knowledge of foreign countries was mainly derived from books and newspapers. They might, at best, have seen strange animals in a zoo or circus, perhaps had the opportunity to explore the exhibits at a world's fair, or watched the earliest flickering one-reel movies. But, by and large, foreign creatures and people seemed strange and alien to them -- best kept behind bars or at a safe distance. They were frightened of things they did not know.

Are we better off for having a wider range of experience and living in a more interconnected world? Not necessarily. We probably aren't happier. (Although people back then may not have been happier either. It appears that living in a 19th century small town could be an unimaginably claustrophobic experience, expecially if you didn't fit in.)

But something really has changed. We aren't just spinning our wheels. You might say that the world-mind is coming together and becoming aware of itself, and that is an enormous difference. We don't know yet where it will all lead, but it seems to be what we're here for -- at any rate, we don't have much choice. We're best off if we just relax and try to enjoy it.

[jafap]

8. speaking of myths

100 years ago was 1903, and you are trying to say that people were not mobile then? Maybe according to Ford commercials. In reality I have ancestors that moved from Pennsylvania to Indiana in 1835 and then to Wisconsin in 1861. Some of his children went very far in fighting the civil war. Some of my ancestors were crossing the Atlantic almost 400 years ago. In 1890 my great grandfather, a swiss native, married a girl whose father was born in central Germany.

People moved around then too. In fact, they had more freedom in that regard because they could actually move to the frontier and every small town was not exactly the same as every other small town. 100 years ago my ancestors knew how to build their own houses and grow their own food. They were not like their university educated descendent who has to beg for someone to please give him some busywork so he can get a paycheck.

One thing that has progressed though is air conditioning, even for those at the bottom (except in our cars). Without that today and tonight would be very miserable. The internet is also way cool, and I see that happening in the last ten years, but I am not a proponent of the "technology is getting better" school. I am more of a Luddite. I have read that people in Asia are getting cancer assembling our hard-drives. I also think that people are getting worse - the same way mice would as they get more and more crowded in an aquarium. We do not have the space, nor the social connections that we did 100 years ago.

[F.Gordon]

2. Nothing changes, eh?

Couldn't agree more. We are not becoming more civilized, we are regressing.......

Jus' finished reading a book written in 1838 about how the actors in this new popular Theatre thingee were destroying social morals and the foundations of religion. Change the wording a bit and you could imagine you were reading a present day Matt Sewer Sludge commentary on Hollywood. Nothing changes

After the first terrorist attack on US soil almost 90 years ago we rounded up 1000's of immigrants and a young J. Edgar Hoover got his first taste of how easy it was to manipulate the public through fear and deception. Nothing changes.

We do live longer these days, but maybe that isn't even that good of a thing......

This discussion would require some alcoholic beverages and a few hours to discuss in detail, but my short reply; Modern Western Culture isn't about advancing as a society....as a people, it's about advancing through technology. Most of us are still the stupid, fucking, racist, biased MFers we were 100 years ago. Nothing changes.

Stupidism? Works for me.

Edit? cause' I can't write for shit.....

[Mal]

3. "Only going forward...'cause we can't find reverse"

While there's some improvements that I wouldn't want us to lose (cultural, civil rights), a lot of other stuff is getting worse, and I'm not so sure we're net gaining.

[JasonBerry]

4. I think so...

Depends on how far back you want to go, but since 1964, race relations have slowly become better (IMO) - really more since the 80's. That was the one issue you mentioned:

"better and better" as in racism..."

There's just no question. I have a friend who is a manager at a retail store and he says that he's heard older managers of the chain say that they used to "think twice" before hiring blacks. Now, he says, they were talking like it was an embarrassment and he finds it hard to believe things were really once like that. There's still discrimination - bit it's NOTHING like it used to be. Again, in MY opinion. But actually, observation pretty much proves this true. Certainly not backward.

[maggrwaggr]

5. true progress scares a lot of people

Every "progressive" movement has scared people, usually those in power who have a vested interest in the status quo.

Think of labor unions. Think of giving women the vote. Think of slavery.

I think we've come a long way in 100 years in spite of what others here may say. We don't have child labor, we have environmental laws, we have a 40 hour work week -- you can make a BIG list of improvements.

Yet the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The worst part of human nature will always be with us.

Fear is the enemy. The opposite of love is not hate, but fear.

Fear of progress and fear of change is what binds the conservatives together.

These people DO want to set the clock back, especially the Christian fundamentalists. It's no understatement that they're medeival. They have to simply be fought, because they cannot be won over. They're literally scared of witches and demons infecting us all.

My fundie stepmom believes that JK Rowling is actually spreading demons throughout the world through the Harry Potter books. That she's an agent of Satan.

Now THAT's scary.

[redeye]

6. Abuot the 40 hour week...

...we've been having one since about 1900. Is it acceptable that we're working the same amount of hours - sometimes even more - than we did 100 years ago?

Apart from that, we are making progress, but it's pretty slow. Women's and minorities' positions are getting better, even though we're far from full equality. India and China's standards of living are soaring but they're still way behind the first world. There's a technological boom, recession or no recession.

On the other hand, government is becoming less and less responsive to the people. We're still using the same old 18th century model, even those of us who're living in coutnries with relatively new constitutions. The fledgling EU constitution has no initiative and referendum provisions, or anything remotely close to specialized legislatures. In that respect we're regressing because rising populations and shrinking attention spans ensure that the government is separated mroe and more from the people.

Environmentally, there's light at the end of the tunnel, but that light is still far away. The hole in the ozone is closing, but global warming is still here. Birth rates are slowly falling - in fact, we're now just after the inflection point on the curve relating time and population - but even so our population will, IIRC, burst 9 billion about 2050.

[jafap]

9. progress, there's no stopping it

That "fear of change" mantra is one that I hate. It pretends that there are no different ideas of progress - there is only "change" (my plan) and "opposition to change" (all other plans). So there is no argument against the forward stampede? Home-comers are all just afraid of change and progress?

"On the one side I see people who think they can cope with our threefold crisis by the methods current, only more so: I call them people of the forward stampede. On the other side, there are people in search of a new life-style, who seek to return to certain basic truths about man and his world: I call them home-comers." E.F. Schumacher "Small is Beautiful" p 155

So we become like lemmings paddling towards the point of know return because we are told it is "inevitable" (because it is the winds of change and we are merely sailors) which it certainly becomes if everyone keeps paddling.

[holyworrier]

7. Defects of an Open Society

by Paul Treanor

1.
An open society is not neutral to innovation. Innovation must be argued for, but existing structures continue even if no-one argues for them. An open society can only overcome this objection, if first there is a dissolution of all existing structures, a global 'restart'. Even then it does not follow, that there should be a single new society - the logical error of contractarian liberalism.

2.
In an open society, innovation is exposed to the maximum possible opposition. Everyone can participate in opposition to innovation: there is no institutional structure, to protect innovation from this openness.

3.
Open societies tend to singularity: if there are two open societies, they will logically open their borders, and ultimately fuse.

4.
In an open society only one possible current state can exist: the outcome of the processes in the open society. No alternatives or plurality are possible. The supporters of an open society claim that process legitimises its outcome, but there is no logical basis for this claim.

5.
An open society has a centering effect, an inherent defect of all liberal societies. Ideas are exposed to pressure, and the most extreme ideas are exposed to the most pressure: they tend to disappear over time. The extremism is judged by pre-existing norms: an open society on a Christian base will become more Christian. In other words, there is not only centering, but it centres on existing tradition and values, and not on innovation.

6.
An open society is inherently repressive toward enemies of the open society. The views of right-wing liberals indicate, that in a perfect open society most political activity would be forbidden as subversive. The Latin American military dictatorships of the 1970's were a classic example of the belief that extreme repression is necessary, to 'guarantee freedom'.

7.
An open society destroys moral autonomy. The current state of an open society, at any given time, is the result of complex processes involving every member. In a perfect open society, individual action can never produce individual results: the results may even be contrary to the intentions. In either case, moral action is impossible. In existing liberal societies there is often explicit opposition to moral attitudes. Employers demand that employees are 'flexible', loyal to the employer, and 'customer-friendly' rather than ethical. In this way, the preferences of employer and customer are substituted for the moral judgment of the employee. In turn the employer as entrepreneur is 'market-oriented' rather than ethical.

8.
The open society recognises no objection of conscience - and as the items above show, there are good reasons for conscientious objections.

9.
There is no procedure to leave the open society. This is also an inherent defect of contractarian 'hypothetical assembly' models such as that of John Rawls, or more explicitly Bruce Ackerman.

10.
Because of the lack of neutrality, the centering effects, and the inclusivity, an open society tends to act as a filter against innovation. Openness does not simply cause innovation: the case of high-speed rail transport in the US is a good example. Here, despite the stereotype, the advanced technology is European, and the technological conservatives are US-Americans. European manufacturers of high speed trains are free to sell them in the US, and the US itself is an open society. Innovation did not follow, as advocates of the open society would claim. None of the proposed projects has got started, most have met opposition: Americans prefer to stay in their cars. Innovation is not a contagious virus.

11.
An open society certainly tends to reject innovations which do not intensify or extend the open society itself. The perfect (hypothetical) example is the construction of a second Internet, fully segregated and incompatible with existing network technology. Although a new and separate Internet is an innovation, it contradicts the principle of interactive openness, and an open society could not tolerate it.

12.
Liberal democratic open societies create hierarchy, and amplify it. The cause is a combination of a competitive labour market with a selective educational system. Put simply: the richer the parents, the better the educational achievement of their children, and the better the education, the higher the income in the following generation. Of course there are exceptions, but unless the exceptions form the majority, this 'malsystem' will amplify structural inequalities in each succeeding generation. This is probably the best-researched social effect of liberal societies: there is overwhelming evidence that they limit social mobility. So far as I know no research in Western Europe, has ever shown above-average educational achievements, for those with below-average incomes or status. Yet that is by definition necessary, to allow social mobility through education.

13.
Due to this combination of inequality, hierarchy and centering effects, liberal-democratic open societies are dominated by stable elites. These elites often correspond to the pre-existing high-status groups, in terms of gender, age, ethnic group, language and class. In European nation states, economy, law, parliament and government are dominated by middle-class and upper-class male members of the dominant ethnic-linguistic group. Where there are religious and cultural divides, this elite is predominantly from the dominant religious and/or cultural group. Like all stable elites, these national elites are arrogant and oppressive.

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[stunted evolution]

10. Well now that all depends...

This is one of those lovely questions that you could spend hours discussing, or wrap up in a sentence or two depending on what you're willing to call "progress". There can't be any denying progress in some areas: health, longevity, quality of life, etc... but there's something very appropriate about your question being placed in these forums it occured to me.

Progress (in the sense I believe you mean it) is played out every day in our politics without us really giving it much thought. Liberals have a tendency to be far more "progressive" in their ideas and vision of the future. Conservatives, on the other hand, resist the change. They are more inclined to want the status quo, or even more ideally, the status quo of a hundred years ago. Liberals often press for more inclusion, for more diversity of thought and acceptance of non-mainstream ideas, whereas conservatives think we are moving away from a better time and better ideals; that our quest for inclusivity and diversity is counter to the muted society that they hold as their ideal.

In short, looking at society's politics is a rather good way, it would seem, to judge HOW we are progressing. Whether the change is actually progress, depends on which side of the fence you are looking from.