Are We Progressing?

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.

- O -