There's been a lot of upsetting news on lately (as always, I suppose), but of especial immediacy are the EU election results, which have showed, in brief, an alarming rise in anti-Europe, ultra-conservative parties as a proportion of the representatives. The word "neo-Nazi" is cropping up with truly distressing frequency. We can only hope that people will come to their senses before too much bad comes of all this.*
But it's always moments like this which make me wonder why some people are so often insistent on viewing the course of history as one of "progress".** I'm not saying there can't be improvements over time: the enfranchisement of women, the abolition of (official) racial discrimination--these were great recent moments of progress. But we are always so close to being able to do this, because absolutely nothing guarantees that a future generation won't just muck it up again.
Let's look at a few angles here. Gay rights: a very strong movement at the moment, in the States and elsewhere. Great! But while I do think/hope we're reaching a tipping point in the US, it wouldn't take that much at the federal level to cause some real setbacks (2016, what will you bring?). Even when one judge might overturn a ban, it immediately gets challenged, and in some cases successfully reinstated (at least temporarily). Sure, that's all part of the juridical process we have; but it's emblematic of the ease with which anti-progressive change can occur. While it seems that successive generations are becoming more liberal, and the weight of precedent is always a good thing to have on your side, the laws are always the function of a prevailing mood in time and can be made to change in whatever direction that mood is facing.
OK, I'm not really a modern political scientist or anything, so let's turn back to historical problems with "progress". Women in society, for example. This is an extremely uneven process. They were effectively excluded from public life during the Roman Empire (a generally unfair place), but saw an increasing flexibility (if of a secondary standing) during the Middle Ages. The laws got progressively (hah!) more restrictive as the Renaissance came on, a lot of the turbulence of the final years of the medieval period having caused greater codification along gendered lines. But culturally/socially, the Enlightenment was quite a relatively-female friendly period (we're looking always at the elites here, since pretty much everyone else, men or women, simply did not function on the same way--but of course rights at the village level etc. were of significant importance too. This is, however, less germane to our current issue). Then the Victorians happened, and that was a distinctly conservative period compared to the previous century. Women were far more circumscribed, legally and socially, than they had been before the French Revolution.*** Moreover, as men gained in public rights, women were left further and further behind. That's not progress.
Technology? By definition, this one tends to have more of a progressive slope, since it requires previous knowledge of scientific principles to grow upon. This knowledge has been building up steadily for quite a long while. But it's not so simple, either: in fact, thinking of technological progress is the error that leads terrifying numbers of people to assume the Romans came after the Vikings. The Romans had baths, didn't they? And built big domes and shiny buildings while the Vikings just lived in huts! They were so progressive! ...That's nonsense, of course: the Romans were what they were, and (as always) it was great if you were, say, one of the well-to-do citizens using the baths instead of the slave scraping their sweat off with a strigil. But that's not really the issue. The fact is that the Romans had baths because they thought baths were important. The Vikings built amazing sea-faring ships that far outdid anything the Romans produced on the tranquil Mediterranean, and they sailed across the entire Atlantic because that was what was important to them. "Technology" isn't one thing, and so we can't really just give it one historical trajectory. Also, more of it doesn't necessarily mean "better": are you really going to tell me that the ability to play Angry Birds wherever I want is useful?****
And of course, all of this is just the Western-centric view. To say that there has been global "progress" can't even begin to cope with the scale of the problems we are still facing, nor can it adequately express how history works. You can't even tell me that the European colonies of Asia or Africa were progress over what had come before just because they were later; and it is equal arrogance to assume that our own societies are only moving towards the better. We are (i.e. there are people who are) perfectly ready to return, it seems, to a fractured Europe where wars can still happen between the neighbouring countries (did no one pay attention to the last two hundred years of history?!) instead of working together in a civil manner. At least, that's what seems to have gone on yesterday. We will always be hanging at the edge of a cliff, and the idea of "progress" makes us complacent and forget what can happen.
Pessimist? Maybe. But I think it's more an accurate assessment of how people have always tended to work. Please, society! I would love to be shown wrong.
*For the record, voting for bad people just because you're not thoroughly chuffed with the not-bad people is a crappy tactic.
**The opposite prevalent attitude, nostalgia, can be equally annoying and will, I'm sure, get its own rant at some point! Wait until I've had a lousy day at the museum.
***I think this is causal, but don't have time to investigate. Anyone want to do a hypothetical history study?
****Actually, I bet that's out of date already. What are we playing today?
PS. I'm embarrassed, France. I can usually be patriotic towards you in a way I can't towards the US, because I am shielded from the crazies you harbor. But now you're making that very difficult. Please get your reality out of my idealism!
PPS. Interestingly, progress has not always been seen as a good thing: for instance, in the Middle Ages, it tended to mean "new taxes", and no one liked that. But that's a topic for another time; just wanted to point that out.
I am transposing a Facebook comment here, and my response, since I feel it's an important issue to clarify.
ReplyDelete"Well indeed, the idea that 'progress' goes is an uninterrupted ascent that can never be reversed is demonstrable erroneous. Unfortunately, the example of women's status doesn't actually work, for Britain at any rate. In the 'enlightenment' period, although some high-ranking women did hold salons, the situation of married women in particular was oppressive. Married women could not own property - in Blackstone's facetious summary of the law 'My wife and I are one, and I am he'. Additionally, mothers were not legally parents of their children. It was the Victorians who changed that. By 1901, married women not only had control of their own property, but were legally parents of their children, and additionally women in general had gained access to higher education and the medical profession, and were able to vote in municipal elections on the same terms as men. Thee was still plenty to be done, but they'd come a long way since 1837."
I tend to have a better knowledge of France than of Britain, so I admit I'm speaking more from that perspective. In Britain, I do know that the legal issues are complicated--for instance, the right to own property as an unmarried woman was of great significance and did, in the eighteenth century, allow at least certain wealthy women to vote, which was then specifically ruled out by 19th-century law. The interactions between law and reality were, moreover, always ambiguous (of great frustration to the historian!) In France, much of elite intellectual culture was overseen by women in the 18th century, and I'm not sure it went entirely _away_ in the 19th, but the feelings were somewhat muted; and certainly the violence of the late 18th century in France did contribute to a backlash in English society with regards to permissiveness in general.