Yes, we’re going to
survey today about our civilizational progress.
We find the idea of progress in dubious shape, when we see it against a
host of nations, morals, and religions rising and falling. We find no change in
man’s nature during the past and present historic times; all sciences and
technological advances will have to be written off as merely new means of
achieving old ends—the acquisition of goods and riches, the pursuit of one sex
by the other, the overcoming of competition, the fighting of battles and wars.
We discover to our amazement now that science is neutral: it kills for us as
readily as it heals, and destroy for us more readily than it builds. How
meaningless the proud sayings of Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power”! Sometimes we feel that the people in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, who lived on mythology and art rather than
science and technology, might have been wiser than we are. We are repeatedly
enlarging our devises without improving our purposes.
Our progress in science
and technology has involved some tincture of evil with good. We have immensely
developed our means of banking, insurance, credit cards, and ATM machines to
facilitate our time and workings, but some of us use them to facilitate crimes
and corruption. The more we progress in medical science and technology, the
more we are facing with diseases and sufferings in addition to addiction of
drugs gradually going to alarming stage. We have multiplied a hundred times our
ability to learn and report the events of the day and the planet, but we envy
our ancestors whose peace was only gently disturbed by the news of their
village.
We find relief in our
emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic—a moral code
independent of religion—strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition,
sense of quarrel and sex from debasing our civilization into a more of greed,
crime, egoism and love of fighting? Have
we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national,
ideological, or racial hostilities? Are our manners better than before, or
worse? Have we given ourselves more
freedom than our intelligence can digest?
Or are we nearing such moral and social disorder that frightened parents
will run back to Churches, mosques and temples and beg them to discipline their
children, at whatever cost to intellectual liberty? Has all the progress of
philosophy been a mistake through its failure to recognize the role of myth in
the consolation and control of man? “For
in much wisdom is much grief; And he who increases kn384–322 BCowledge,
increases sorrow.” (Eccl.1:18).
Has there been any
progress at all in philosophy since Confucius (551 – 479 BCE), a Chinese philosopher, or in literature since Aristotle (384–322 BCE) a Greek philosopher and
scientist? Are we sure that our music, with its complex forms and
powerful orchestra, is more profound than the musicians and artists in the
Court of Akbar the Great (1542–
1605 CE), the Moghal Emperor of India. (see details in my Chap. Music
and Melodies). How does our contemporary architecture—bold, original, and
impressive as it is—compare with the temples of ancient Egypt or Greece; or our
sculpture with the statues of Chaperon and Hermes, or with those of Persepolis
or Parthenon? Are the contemporary paintings in America and Europe a vivid
symbol of our civilization’s relapse into confused and structureless decay?
We should first define
what progress means to us. If it means
increase in happiness its case is lost almost at first sight. It seems silly to
define progress in terms that would make the average child a higher, more advanced
product of life than the adult or the sage—for certainly the child is the
happiest of all men. Progress means
different to different cultures, countries and their people. The Eastern and
Western part of our globe will have a wide difference in theory and practices
of progress.
Is there a more
objective definition possible? We shall
here define progress as the increasing control of the environment by life. If
the present stage is in control of the environment, progress is real. We may
presume that at almost any time in history some nations were progressing and
some were declining, as Russia and China progress and England loses ground
today. We should not compare the work of one land and time with the best of all
the collected past. Our problem is whether an average man has increased his
ability to control the conditions of his life. Under the complex strains of
city life we sometimes take refuge in the supposed simplicity of the
pre-civilized ways; but in a study of surviving primitive tribes reveals their high rate of infantile mortality, their
short tenure of life, their lesser stamina and speed, their greater
susceptibility to disease.
We should not be
greatly disturbed by the probability that our civilization will die like any
other. Perhaps, it is desirable that
life should take fresh forms, that new civilization and centers should have
their turn. If education is the transmission of civilization, we are
unquestionably progressing. Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned
and earned by each generation anew, which becomes a part of their heritage.
The heritage that we
can now more fully transmit is richer than ever before. It is richer than that
of Greeks and Egyptians; richer than Italian Renaissance; richer than the
French Enlightenment. If progress is
real despite our whining, it is not because we are born any healthier, better,
or wiser than the past, but because we are born to a richer heritage, born in a
higher level of that pedestal which the accumulation of knowledge and art
raises as the ground and support of our being. The heritage rises, and man
rises in proportion as he receives it. If a man is fortunate he will gather up
as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his
children. And in his final breath he
will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our
nourishing mother and our lasting life.
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