A Modest Proposal to Permanently Eliminate All Injustices, Disharmonies and Material Scarcities from Human Society

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Michael James
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A Modest Proposal to Permanently Eliminate All Injustices, Disharmonies and Material Scarcities from Human Society

Post by Michael James »

[Note: This is a Juvenalian satire, very loosely based on a famous 18th century satire written by Jonathan Swift. I wrote it during various periods of pandemic-related lockdown earlier this year, as a means of keeping my mind preoccupied during long stretches of mostly solitary downtime. It was at the point where I either did this writing project or I took up drinking.

My satire, written while under the influence of extreme cabin fever, is an attack on the idea of progress. I view progress to be a form of secular monotheism (pardon the oxymoron). During the Enlightenment, I think providence became progress, Christian creedal belief became political ideology, and God became humanity - a monolithic, collective agent, that is to say, purposefully moving through history to a state of earthly salvation. What I wrote attempts to satirize the problems inherent with trying to interpret the world through a progressive lens.

I was planning on fixing up my satirical essay and seeing if I can get it published somewhere online when an opportune moment presented itself. But while re-reading it earlier today for the first time in several months, I'm not so sure that is a good idea. Perhaps I should've become a boozehound instead. In any event, my time is very limited now that I'm back working full-time, so a major overhaul of it would be difficult for me to accomplish.

I've decided to post my satire here to see if any kind soul(s) can give me their input on it. Does it have any potential? Any constructive feedback, whether positive or negative, will be greatly appreciated by me.

By: John W. Fanttasi

We are living in unsettled, woebegone times. Taking full advantage of our present condition of discord and confusion, it has become fashionable in certain intellectual circles to attack Enlightenment values. Chief among the Enlightenment values currently undergoing an assault is the idea of progress. Yet progress, here defined as the science of human emancipation, is not just any old Enlightenment value but rather the supreme, unifying one. Progress, in other words, is nothing less than the linear vital force running throughout all of history, imparting to humankind an awareness of its unique emancipative destiny. Indeed, the very idea of progress is intrinsic to a modern mindset. To attack progress is therefore akin to attacking modernity itself.

Fortunately the belief that we are experiencing an epistemological crisis because the idea of progress is either obsolete or illusory is baseless. Really this is a tired, old canard, predictably resurrected by atavistic elements, such as incorrigibly religious types or amoral opportunists, who exploit periodic episodes of turbulence in the reign of reason that has been bequeathed by the Enlightenment in order to win support for their reactionary, self-serving agendas. Granted some of the more clever enemies of enlightened thought will make a good point here or there against progress, however only on a superficial level. On closer inspection, their ideas, inherently hostile to the general improvement and happiness of humankind, quickly fall apart under impartial, fact-based rational analysis.

Any person who denies the logical pattern of meaning that runs through the whole of human history is either a moron or, at best, an idiot savant. Nothing can stop humanity’s long, heroic trek from the dark valley of ignorance, tribalism and superstition to the sun-soaked uplands of progressive rationalism. Humankind, by way of its conquest of nature, will ultimately surmount all roadblocks placed in its way to the mountaintop.

The half-baked, myopic ideas of progress deniers and sceptics of Enlightenment thought will not be explored in this essay, since it would be a counterproductive waste of time to give any attention to the folly of fools. Yet the persistent survival of intellectual currents in opposition to progress raises an important question. Why do such archaic, backward-looking beliefs continue to survive in the modern age? Furthermore, given the enormous advances in practical knowledge with regards to ethics, technology, scientific discovery and the like since the advent of the Enlightenment, as well as the unprecedented levels of human flourishing that has resulted from it, why have the numerous progressivisms not yet converged into a single, coherent master narrative of progress that explains everything for all time? For instance, is the economic system underpinning globalization to be capitalistic or communistic, a hybrid of these two systems, or some other economic system not yet implemented? Every clear-eyed progressive must honestly grapple with these questions until the final answer is found.

And this brings me to the earth-shaking reason why I’ve written this essay. I have some good news for you. I have discovered the true and only way to be modern. Consequently I know the means by which humankind will achieve escape velocity from the recurrent maelstroms of history that have marred its past since time immemorial. Once the world is remade in accordance with the universal principles that comprise my momentous discovery, humankind will thereafter be released from the heavy shackles of tyranny and wrongthink that has hitherto blighted its earthly existence.

But of course all praise to progress, not myself. I’m merely a humble instrument of history’s will. That I have seen the farthest of anyone is no doubt due to the fact that I stand on the shoulders of a long line of progressive visionaries, whose earlier investigations of social phenomena long ago confirmed that humankind’s career on Earth is not an accident going nowhere in particular, but instead a process of human betterment and human liberation. My triumph is their triumph, in other words, which in turn is the triumph of all of humanity.

I must confess that my uncovering of the purpose behind human existence is very recent. Hence I have not yet had time to write a weighty tome outlining, in painstaking detail, my correct views on everything under the Sun. But I promise you I’ve already started to work on this. So relax and rejoice!

This essay is only an appetizer on what I have to communicate as opposed to the main dish. The supreme significance of my breakthrough, along with the troubled times we currently find ourselves in, has compelled me to give a foretaste of the gloriousness that is in store for us. I hope you can understand the rationale for my hastiness. If what I’ve written is somewhat rambling and disjointed, I apologize in advance. But please appreciate that I’d be remiss if I didn’t give at least a rough outline of the greatest insight of all time to the general public without delay. What if something were to happen to me before I finished my in-depth treatise on the truth? It would set humankind back for who knows how long? It is of the utmost importance, then, that people be made aware of the logical destination history is advancing towards right now.

But before I knock your socks off with my big reveal, I think it is necessary to provide you with a quick overview of the development of the idea of progress, from its origins to its apotheosis. In fact, I’m the perfect person to do this since I can do it with complete neutrality. As soon as the general public catches wind that I’ve discovered the most important breakthrough ever, I know it will trigger a political firestorm of unequalled magnitude, with the upshot being the endgame for all other ways of interpreting the world. Once my fellow progressives come to terms with what I’ve wrought, being the dispassionate, objective lovers of reason that they are, they’ll immediately disassociate themselves from their earlier self-evidently false presuppositions and come join the rest of the human race aboard the Right Side of History Express. How could it be otherwise?

Being myself unburdened of any ideological axe to grind, I will impartially review humankind’s long journey to the very pinnacle of reason, pointing out some seminal advances and regresses along the way. The end-result of this undertaking will be to put vividly into perspective the awesomeness of humankind’s achievement at ascending over all obstacles, whether natural or man-made, found along its way to securing a state of enduring freedom.

Something else needs to be examined first, however, before I briefly go over the origins and growth of the idea of progress. This is an investigation into the five indispensable components of progress. All progressivisms contain these five components; they are the litmus test of progressive legitimacy.

Given the supremacy of scientific rationalism at sorting out truths from fictions, each one of these five components are in harmony with the most up-to-date scientific principles. Indeed, they collectively comprise what is known as the Grand Experiment, which is the investigational means by which an authoritative philosophical answer to humanity’s proper place in an intricate and well-ordered cosmos is to be ascertained. Because the science of human emancipation, i.e. progress, is the emperor of all sciences, the opinions of progressives on normative and epistemological questions, along with their views on the physical functioning of the universe, are inherently superior to all other viewpoints. Only disagreements between progressives on matters that fall under the purview of the five components of progress are valid areas of contention when analyzing the workings of reality.

The first component of progress is universalism. Universalism means that the axioms found in science, logic and ethics are universally valid. For example, the equation 2 + 2 = 4 is true not just here in the United States of America, but everywhere.

Another important aspect of universalism is the concept of globalization. With the discovery of all the inhabited places on Earth and their placement on a single world map sometime in the nineteenth century, a new, truly global age was inaugurated. For the first time in history, it was theoretically possible to connect the entire populace of the world through networks of trade, travel and communications. Yet this was not the end of globalization, but merely its beginning.

A world divided by hard, national borders, leading to restrictive trade and migration practices, is a world generating too much friction for it to function properly. Anachronistic territorial empires and mercantilist blocs are therefore certain to evolve into a single, frictionless empire of reason. The comparative advantages of globalism and logical thinking over parochialism and selfish vested interests will see to it that custom houses and border patrols cease to exist in reason’s globe-spanning imperium. A new dawn heralding perpetual peace will arise, furthermore, as the death knell of imperial rivalries between the great powers is finally heard throughout the world as humankind unites behind one economic system, one morality, and one organizing principle to govern itself. This is the logic of globalization, which in turn is the logic of progress.

Humanism is the second component of progress. Humanist views stress the value, dignity and overall decency of human beings. They assert that all humans share common needs and aspirations. Humanists are resolutely egalitarian, upholding equality as the most important element of any ethical system.

In order to ably manage societal issues, humanists maintain that people should rely solely on rational methods of problem solving instead of consulting with the works of ancient sages or prophets of divine revelation. As opposed to the unchanging moral laws of monotheism, humanist ethics adapt to new discoveries in the various fields of scientific inquiry. Humanists strongly encourage people to seek truth and beauty through science and learn to find solace this way rather than with religion. Indeed, the best society is a fully secular one, as far as humanists are concerned.

Believing humankind to be the measure of all things, humanists have been accused of trying to disenchant the world by rearranging it according to a cold, heartless and mechanistic rationalism. But nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the humanist tradition, along with the concept of ethical progress that underpins it, are synonymous with pure, unadulterated love. Humanists are animated with philanthropic enthusiasm, seeking to promote the welfare of others and to put a stop to needless human suffering.

The real perpetrators guilty of trying to reorder the world into a harsh system of regimented cruelty, hatred and fear are not humanists but monotheists, who have tried incessantly throughout the ages to convert the gullible to the bigotries and deceits of a non-existent god. Humanists, not the delusional disciples of Moses, Jesus or Muhammad, are the only true friends humanity has, or ever will have.

The third component of progress is materialism. Materialism is the idea that, when you come down to it, only matter matters. That is to say, matter is the fundamental building block of nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are the product of material interactions.

With the onset of the scientific revolution in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, an attempt to understand the regular, immutable laws governing natural phenomena was commenced through the accumulation and systematic organization of information obtained from the sense-organs. Although scientific rationalism had antecedents stretching all the way back to classical antiquity, the scientific revolution’s novel development of a scientific method led to an unsurpassed flood of monumental scientific discoveries, such as evolutionary theory and the theory of general relativity, that continues on to this day.

Not coincidentally, the scientific revolution was contemporaneous with the Enlightenment. As scientists analyzed natural phenomena in order to increase the knowledge base of natural philosophy – i.e. the three core material sciences of physics, chemistry and biology plus their innumerable subdisciplines – Enlightenment philosophers, focusing their gaze on the social phenomena found in human society, created the social sciences. The most consequential disciplines to emerge from the social sciences are economics and sociology. Enlightenment philosophers came to the conclusion that utility is the ultimate criterion of all actions and theories. As a result, nature, both its laws and its materials, was to be placed at the ready command of humans, with the aim of making their lives more comfortable, happy and long-lasting. It was determined, in short, that the purpose of matter is to be of benefit to humankind.

Materialism is a fusion of the material and social sciences. Yet there is a hierarchy in this union. Because the material sciences focus on natural laws and systems, they occupy the bottom level of the hierarchy. Material scientists unfortunately have a tendency to miss the forest for the trees, given that they direct almost all of their analytic energies to non-human phenomena. Above the material sciences are the social sciences, which concentrate on investigating economic and socio-political relationships. These are obviously topics much more useful to humankind’s attainment of convenience, justice and pleasure. Due to their generally superior utility, the theories of the social sciences are granted primacy over those found in the material sciences.

At the very top of the hierarchy of materialism is a progressive intelligentsia that, being deeply in tune with the true nature of things, takes on the role of impartial judge. With regards to a scientific theory, they ask a single, pertinent question: does it aid or hinder the causes of human emancipation and human betterment? If yes, the theory is embraced; if no, it is either ignored or replaced with a theory that is more congenial to progress.

For example, take the theory of evolution by natural selection. This biological doctrine asserts that the evolutionary process has neither a design nor a preset goal built into it. Simply stated, life-forms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring, thereby allowing their genes to gradually win out over other, less well-adapted genes within a particular species. Accordingly, all life-forms are the product of a long sequence of random interactions between genes and environment that stretch back deep into mists of the primordial past.

And yet this is plainly preposterous when applied to Homo sapiens, who are categorically different from other animals. Sure, humans do many things that other animals do, like procreate, nurture their young, and extract sustenance from the environment in which they live. However humans, given their capacities for abstract, rational thinking, have long ago risen above allowing their psyches to be domineered by instinct and caprice – or at least those who have received a proper education have. Do non-human animals write and perform symphonies, invent microprocessors, or enact international covenants abolishing slavery and torture? I think not. All living organisms evolve, but only humans do so in a direction of improvement. Who knows, as humans learn more about the their own genome and the ins and outs of genetic engineering, perhaps in the not-too-distant future they will consciously modify the genetic code of the human race to the point that it gets perfected?

Failing to comprehend the fact of human supremacy because they hold fast to a doctrine of natural selection that refuses to exempt humans from a process of aimless genetic drift, evolutionists must be intellectually marginalized by a progressive intelligentsia before their theory of biological life begins to do real harm to human aspirations of universal uplift. With it having become fashionable in physics to view the expansion of the universe in a non-linear, non-goal-oriented framework, maybe it is already too late to limit the damage. Only by refracting materialism through a prism of progress can matter be made to bend to the unbounded, emancipatory will of the human mind. Oh well, at least chemistry is still uncorrupted by doctrines of purposelessness.

Some sceptics point to the existence of thermodynamic limits as a refutation of the concept of material progress, since it implies that there are insurmountable physical limits to economic expansion. These people tend to see industrialization, which hitherto has been largely fossil fuel-powered, as a one-off, with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. But this poses no threat to a materialist outlook built on a foundation of progress. In the final analysis, we don’t fill our gas tanks with gasoline or illuminate our homes with electricity generated (primarily) from fossil fuels, uranium and hydropower. Instead, it is ultimately human ingenuity – a truly inexhaustible resource – that fuels our vehicles and keeps our lights on, along with powering all our other motors and electric gadgets that collectively comprise modernity.

Material progress guarantees that nature will be subdued by an endless succession of technological innovations, with the end-result being that each human on earth will eventually become an all-powerful lord of creation, in spite of the fact that basic physics – the first law of thermodynamics in particular – precludes this outcome. One has to look no further than to economics textbooks to find scientific verification of this reality, since they wisely omit any mention of the laws of thermodynamics, along with many other faulty theories found in the material sciences. (In fact, they don’t mention material science theories at all.) Economics is the science of wealth creation, so no profession is better equipped to answer the question whether limits to growth exist. Moreover, the dominant school of economic thought today, neoclassical economics, has meticulously incorporated mathematical equations into its theories. Since mathematics is the language of science, this places neoclassical economics on a rock-solid scientific foundation. Surely, then, when it comes to questions about material progress – or, for that matter, anything else that falls within the scope of economics, which is pretty much everything – neoclassical economists know what they’re talking about.

Even if there are no techno-fixes that will allow humankind to establish a physically limitless future, this doesn’t disprove material progress. For instance, maybe the growth-based global economy will at some point seamlessly transition to a zero growth, steady-state global economy permanently perpetuated by state-of-the-art renewable energy technologies? Or maybe one of the many, many different sects of revolutionary anarchism will end up being proven the real deal, instituting, in the aftermath of a worldwide anarchist revolution, a completely transformed global community that is stateless and hyper-egalitarian, low-tech and in complete harmony with nature? Fatalistic fears about decay and ecological collapse are unwarranted. Progress, when correctly applied to society, is a prophylactic against entropy. Apocalyptic, fear-mongering environmentalists need to stop worrying and learn to love progress.

Teleology is the fourth component of progress. Teleology is defined as the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose or goal it exists to fulfil. For example, the purpose of a heart is to pump oxygen-rich blood to the organs and extremities of a living organism.

The teleological purpose of humankind, as a collective, rational agent moving through history, is to bring about a revolution from revolution. In other words, humankind’s inbuilt mission is to permanently overturn the cyclical ups and downs that have convulsed and blemished the human past. This will occur when the human race boldly enters into the final chapter of its history, which is the universally felicitous and liberating endpoint that all human development is ineluctably moving towards. No longer content to be a victim of injustice and dearth, humankind, by employing the most cutting edge ideas and techniques of progressive rationalism, will escape history by taking conscious control of its destiny.

But how the human race is to finally accomplish its emancipative mission, mandated by the will of history, remains an open question. For instance, is it to be done in a spontaneous, bottom-up manner that underscores personal liberty, like laissez-faire capitalism, anarchism, and (properly understood) Marxism; or in a technocratic, top-down manner that uses scientific expertise to manage history by means of an internationally interconnected bureaucratic Leviathan, which is the logical endpoint of political ideologies like positivism, social democracy, and welfare state liberalism? Moreover, is it to be done in a gradualist way through the enactment of rational reforms (aka meliorism), or in a revolutionary way through a root-and-branch upending of the status quo in order to create a purified new order exorcised of all past errors in logic? Obviously the answer to these questions, along with many others, will be provided in the course of time. But it is an incontrovertible fact that the universe is prejudiced with regard to the preservation of progress. Bringing about this critical turning point in human affairs, from a condition of remorselessly tragic revolutions to an everlasting new arrangement of linear liberation, is simply a matter of figuring out the proper means of implementing progress throughout society.

Postmodernism, an influential, modish ideology that claims that there is no objective truth but only subjective experiences that are neither universal nor absolute, is a dangerous intellectual trend antithetical to teleology (and progress, as well as just ordinary common sense). But fortunately human history is not an episode of Seinfeld – i.e. a chronicle of much ado about nothing – as postmodernists would have it. For instance, who in their right mind would volunteer to be persecuted, tortured or murdered? Furthermore, can it really be said that the 78 °C boiling point of ethanol is culturally contingent as opposed to universally true? In their hasty flight from reason, postmodernists have surrendered their intellects to faddish nonsense. A postmodern society is necessarily a post-competent one.

The last of the five components of progress is fanaticism. Unlike faith-based religions, such as Christianity, which have traditions that tolerate doubt, progress is knowing-based. Because faith is inimical to reason, it is detrimental to the whole enterprise of human advance. To be sure, had monotheists given their faith a more thoroughgoing questioning, they would have long ago come to the conclusion that the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient god is ludicrous. Thus the places in the world where monotheism has managed to succeed would have been spared much sorrow and mischief. Although a tiresome relic of ignorance and superstition, monotheism continues to stubbornly persist in the world today, especially in the Islamic world and the Global South.

Progress is not a belief but a fact. To quote the late twentieth century prime minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, who was herself quoting Herbert Spencer, the founder of Social Darwinism: “There is no alternative”. That is to say, progress, and the political agenda of freedom that is embedded inside it, is impervious to being debunked and cannot be improved upon. Progressives are, by their very nature, fanatics for the truth, because they know that only the truth shall set humanity free. And the truth is progress, the pivotal breakthrough in human intellectual development, because why would any sane person want to live in a condition of unfreedom?

Progress works best when directed by strident, self-righteous leaders who are permeated with moral and intellectual certainty. Fanatical, doctrinaire conviction is the speediest way, and hence, in the long run, the most humane way that the innumerable progressivisms can be narrowed down through a process of trial and error, in the laboratory writ large called human society, into a single progressive vision that embodies universal truth. Progressives who are fence sitters when it comes to siding with a particular progressive ideology, or that even harbour doubts about the correctness of progress, should remind themselves that it is impossible to be half pregnant. Progress is an either/or proposition; it either exists or it doesn’t. People who waver in their confidence in the existence of progress need to leave the doubting to, say, Christians – who clearly need all the doubting they can get a hold of – and unreservedly commit to a progressive worldview.

Due to the dire condition the world finds itself in today, this is no time to go wobbly, for the stakes have never been higher. Nothing less than the final liberation of humankind, which is now under attack from a resurgence of unreason and revisionism, hangs in the balance. Fanaticism, in combination with progressive rationalism, is the surest and quickest method of saving both ourselves and posterity from otherwise certain catastrophe.

And this concludes my summary of the five indispensible components of progress. Now it is time for a quick run-through of the history of progress. Once that is finished, I will launch into my big reveal, which is nothing short of the riddle of history solved.

It all begins in ancient Greece. With the rise of Greek rationalism, humans started to contemplate their true place within the material world. The far-sightedness and fecundity of the Greek philosophical achievement is astonishing. Atomism was invented by Leucippus and Democritus. The first recordings of evolutionary theory were made by Empedocles. In the religious cult founded by Pythagoras, it was claimed that “everything is number,” which established the crucial link between mathematics and science. Finally, Plato and Aristotle, in their purpose-filled accounts of nature, were to popularize teleology. The Romans, due to their understandable high regard for Greek learning, spread it over their vast Mediterranean empire and beyond. In this crucible of rationalism, it was only a matter of time before an embryonic idea of progress was forged.

And then an unmitigated catastrophe of epic proportions befell humankind. Several decades after a certain babe was born in a certain manger (to a virgin mother – ha!), a new religion, with up till then unique universalistic pretensions, came on the scene. A splinter group of Jews, no longer content to keep their imaginary god to themselves, decided to wholeheartedly follow the teachings of a charismatic and ascetic wandering Jewish preacher named Jesus. Through lots of twists and turns that I won’t needlessly bore you with here, this poor Jesus guy was turned into “the anointed one” – i.e. the “Christ,” from Greek Khristos; the future world saviour found in Jewish apocalyptic prophecy.

The disciples of Jesus Christ formed a new religion, Christianity, which is essentially Judaism geared towards gentiles (circumcisions not necessary!). The existence of a single, universal god is of course rubbish, like all other forms of religious belief and practice, but at least Judaism limited the damage to a covenant between god and a particular people found in a particular land (ancient Israel). Now, thanks to Christianity, god had gone global, with priests preying on the credulity of the uneducated masses in a tireless effort to convert one and all to the one true faith.

But then the darkness darkened even further. A few centuries after the rise of Christianity, a new universalistic monotheism, Islam, burst onto the world stage out of the desolate deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Christianity is deeply implicated in Islam’s development, because Jesus is seen as the penultimate prophet to Muhammad, the latter being the creator of Islam and, from the Muslim perspective, the final messenger of god’s word. Also, Jesus is mentioned in the Quran, directly and indirectly, far more often than Muhammad is. As a newly formed Islam entered into a battle of the books with Christianity – the Quran versus the Bible – and as a global contest to win over the allegiance of the human race to a single, monolithic faith took shape, the dream of reason was rapidly being transformed into a seemingly endless nightmare of obscurantism and fabrication.

However there was one beneficial consequence from the two universalistic monotheisms growing influence on Eurasia and northern Africa during the Middle Ages. By interpreting the world in terms of a providential divine plan that will culminate in a redemptive climax for believers selected by god for salvation, both Christianity and Islam worked wonders for the popularization of teleology. But even this salutary feature of Christianity and Islam was negated by the wholesale corruption of the teleological views of Plato and Aristotle into apologetics for Christian and Islamic theology. Instead of being put in the service of a this-worldly emancipation of humankind, the teleology of Greek rationalism was hijacked by priests and religious scholars in order to bolster the ethereal edifice of their other-worldly metaphysical speculations. Hence it was deemed that salvation is for the pious in a heavenly world to come, not the temporal here and now. This was a pseudo-intellectual seedbed that would forever preclude progress from germinating. Dark times indeed.

But then, against all odds, a glimmer of hope shined through the seemingly impenetrable darkness of monotheistic delusion. With the arrival of the Renaissance in the half of Europe dominated by Latin Christianity, the very fountainhead of progress, the landmark Greek and Latin philosophical works of classical antiquity, were reinterpreted without the dead hand of Christian theology distorting their message. As its learned men of letters reacquainted themselves with reason, Europe experienced a rebirth. Pointless medieval scholarly pursuits, such as pondering the mysteries of the Trinity or the miracle of transubstantiation, yielded to an eminently useful Renaissance humanism. Similarly, an unproductive head-in-the-clouds metaphysics was being steadily supplanted by the dynamism of a feet-on-the-ground materialism. The discovery of the idea of progress was just around the corner.

Sadly, the rescue of rationalism from the clutches of a reason-stifling Christianity proved to be short-lived. The liberating potential of the Renaissance was stamped out by a couple centuries of gruesome, atavistic religious war fought between Catholics and Protestants. Because one person’s orthodoxy is bound to be another person’s heresy, sectarian conflict is an inevitable outcome of a society built on a foundation of monotheism. Critical thinking in such a society, moreover, is always going to be sacrificed on the altar of creedal belief. The upshot of the Protestant Reformation was that Christendom – i.e. the monopoly the Catholic Church maintained on Christianity in Western Europe – was destroyed.

But to humankind’s good fortune, the extreme violence and persecution unleashed by the war between the Christianities that engulfed much of the European continent for two centuries sparked an intellectual backlash against religious dogmatism. The best and the brightest minds in post-Reformation Europe reawakened to the possibility, first hinted at during the Renaissance, of a benighted European society being reordered in the image of reason. In this heady historical moment, new vistas of possibility were opening up, as the vast, untapped potential of the human intellect became the focus of study. The curtains were finally flung wide open, and a cascade of light poured down to illuminate the European landscape. This was the age of the Enlightenment.

At long last, the idea of progress was coming into view. In the seventeenth century a new definition of progress, as an advance to an improved state or condition, was added to its older definition as a forward movement to a destination. Yet the actual word “progress” was seldom, if ever, utilized by the earliest Enlightenment philosophers. Instead, they used (routinely capitalized) words, like Nature and Reason, Illumination and Humanity to express its essence in their writings. Although progress as a concept was underdeveloped, having not yet attained its definitive, modern meaning, it was quickly on its way to doing so. Yet two more essential developments regarding progress were necessary before humankind could enter the homestretch in its exodus from the tyranny of faith-based irrationality.

The first development crucial to the finalization of progress was republicanism. At the outset of the Enlightenment, many of its leading thinkers placed their hopes for the enactment of wide-ranging societal reforms in enlightened absolute monarchs. Yet this went against the newly emergent zeitgeist of historical optimism, and for that reason it soon fell out of favour. Monarchy is a system of government in which a tiny minority are born to rule and the vast majority are born to be ruled. All people in a monarchy are subjects of the crown, with both ascending and descending obligations to fulfil according to their inherited station in life. Changes in social status in a monarchical society, either upwards or downwards, occur rarely.

Republics, on the other hand, are egalitarian and meritocratic. In a republic, power is dispersed to either a narrow or broad segment of its citizens, who in turn exercise popular sovereignty through either the ballot box or a disinterested understanding of the general will of the people. A progressive worldview finds stasis and – at a minimum – inequality due to heredity objectionable, and therefore backs republicanism. Central to both progress and republicanism is the principle that, provided that they are properly educated, the voice of the people is identical to the voice of reason. A progressive republic runs on people power, which provides a nonstop wellspring of creativity. Whether a republican polity is based on individual liberty or state authority is beside the point. At bottom, and irrespective of whether they admit it, all progressives are righteous republican revolutionaries. History can only arrive at its final emancipatory stage when the world is either a federation of ideologically identical republics or just one giant republic.

The invention of ideology was the second development needed for the idea of progress to be completed. Ideology is the science of ideas. Prior to the appearance of ideology, progress was a vague, sanguine doctrine which encouraged the idealism of reformers and would-be revolutionaries, but it could not coherently and systematically guide them in their improving endeavours. Just like the scientific interrogation of the material world by Newton and Descartes had yielded unalterable physical laws, Enlightenment thinkers attempted to do the same with the regular and immutable laws governing the socio-political world. Their empirical investigations pioneered an abstract, organized and mechanical view of society. Progressive ideology, in other words, had taken root in Europe and its overseas settler colonies. Enlightened freethinkers, who had championed logic and scientific inquiry, became newly minted freedom-thinkers – political ideologues, that is to say, committed to re-engineering society according to the dictates of reason and justice.

On the god front, belief in Christianity waned as Enlightenment values became more commonplace, even if only among the educated elite at first. Faith in a providential god became outmoded once progressive ideology was available as a rational alternative.

Lending a hand in the triumph of science-based ideology over god-based creedal belief were the proto-progressivisms of freemasonry and deism. Although both freemasonry and deism upheld the existence of a supreme being, their god didn’t intervene in human affairs. This gave humans full authority to solve problems using nothing but their critical faculties, unmolested by archaic considerations of Christian orthodoxy, such as the unsparingly pessimistic Augustinian doctrine of original sin. History is guided by a benevolent prime mover, but human reason alone is its arbiter. Both freemasonry and deism, when all indirect references to god are dropped, closely resemble a progressive outlook, albeit an immature one.

Because Christian creedal indoctrination was ubiquitous for so many centuries across Europe, and thus had deeply disfigured the European psyche, early Enlightenment thinkers can be forgiven for being slow to jettison the god habit. But mounting scientific knowledge is the antidote to every manifestation of religious infantilism and magical thinking, including a belief in god. When looked at objectively, history is inescapably on the side of atheism.

The combination of revolutionary republicanism with progressive ideology is the locomotive of world history. Prior to their merger, philosophers had only interpreted society in different ways. Their world mission in an enlightened modern age, however, would be to direct the growing dominion of reason into globally transformative ideologies that would eliminate the old-time scourges of civilization, such as imperialism and material scarcity, intolerance and human bondage. Henceforth abstruse political theories focusing on the subject matter of worldwide human liberation, emanating from the salons and coffeehouses, libraries and universities of Western Europe and its far-flung settler communities, would periodically come to dominate entire societies.

Simultaneous with the nineteenth century technological breakthroughs in communications (the telegraph) and transportation (locomotives and steamships) sparked by the earliest phase of the industrial revolution, Western Europe experienced an eruption of intellectual innovation so far without equal in the annals of rational thought, culminating with the first batch of progressive “isms”. The most influential of these were positivism and liberalism, Social Darwinism and Marxism, Fabianism (non-revolutionary socialism) and anarchism. As the ideologically trailblazing nineteenth century passed the torch of liberty and the scales of justice on to the following centuries, several other progressive “isms” were developed, like libertarianism, neoconservatism and Wokeism, but these were all derived from nineteenth century Western European ideology. Also, they typically originated in the United States of America as opposed to Western Europe, the former having become the new hotbed of progressive ideological thought.

With the proliferation of progressive ideologies, humankind approached the finish line in its long march to freedom. It was now simply a matter of figuring out which progressive ideology is the correct one. This would be accomplished through the Grand Experiment, with its continuous winnowing of the sound ideological wheat from the fallacious ideological chaff. This process would go on silently in the background of human events until only a single progressive ideology remained standing. Thereafter history would come to a triumphant end.

The discovery of the idea of progress is due exclusively to the genius of Western Europeans and their globally scattered kinfolk. Simply put, the West is best. This is not to say that the people of the West are inherently more intelligent than other peoples. The Western mind, after all, had once been enraptured by the greatest fraud ever perpetrated against the human race, namely Christianity. But as soon as the philosophers of the Enlightenment shook off the menace of orthodox Christian faith, they did something remarkable. They refused to become resigned to the seemingly cyclical nature of human events and instead developed an unshakable historical optimism, with reason as its guiding light. This consequently led to the rise of progressive ideologies. This is the reason why today we speak of Marxism and Benthamism (aka utilitarianism), but not of, say, Chang-ism or Singh-ism.

To be sure, there is Maoism. But of course that’s a variant of Marxism, which originated entirely within the milieu of nineteenth century Western Europe. Chairman Mao understood that China’s continued domination by its non-teleological Confucian and Taoist traditions would forever bar it from joining modernity. Only a radical makeover of Chinese civilization on the progressive principles of the West, in this particular case a peasant-friendly version of Marxism, would suffice. And if one looks at China today, can this be faulted? What are the tens of millions of Chinese who died during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in comparison with the liberation of humanity in the eons to come? Granted Maoism (or Marxism in general) may end up not being the last word in the ideological struggle for worldwide human emancipation. Nevertheless, it was of historical necessity that China moved beyond the utterly worthless customs and rituals of its pre-Westernizing past.

How China remade itself so that it was compatible with the modern age is illustrative of the dilemmas faced by all other modernizing non-Western societies. The simple truth is that, other than the insights of ancient Greek philosophy, all ideas prior to the Enlightenment are of no particular merit to the human race. Sure, civilizations outside the West periodically invented new technologies. But their scholars, unlike their Enlightenment counterparts, failed to see the big picture and connect the advances made in the useful arts into a coherent ideology of expanding human freedom.

Ever since the Enlightenment, the peoples of the West have been selflessly disseminating the boundless promise of progress to the four corners of the earth. They have succeeded at this undertaking, since today the Grand Experiment is inexorably in the driver’s seat of world affairs. Thus to entertain any doubts that the progressive vision may never come to fruition is to irresponsibly flirt with breaking the heart of humanity. Defeatism is antithetical to progress. No self-respecting progressive will ever contemplate surrender. If humankind has to be destroyed in order to be saved, it will be a price worth paying.

There is one major oversight in the list of progressive “isms” that, because of its extremely controversial nature, I’ve thus far avoided mentioning. In good conscience, I can do so no further. The omission is National Socialism. Although this will undoubtedly be counterintuitive to just about everyone, National Socialism was a legitimate progressive Enlightenment ideology that aimed to achieve nothing less than the liberation of humankind.

Nazi Germany was the first fully-fledged racial state in history, having been constructed from the most cutting edge discoveries made in racial science. The invention of race as a meaningful distinction between humans, on par with, say, religion and ethnicity, can be traced back no further than the Enlightenment. Prior to this period, it had been presumed that racial differences were a result of climate, and therefore not particularly noteworthy. As the West moved from triumph to triumph in its initial phases of modernization, it was noticed by some that a growing gap was opening up in terms of the wealth and power of white skinned peoples over peoples with darker skin hues. Perhaps there was a racial basis as to why non-whites were such laggards in terms of achieving progress in comparison with whites? From this a priori deduction, scientific racism was born. Through the development of groundbreaking new branches of scientific inquiry, like craniology, racial scientists concluded that, generally speaking, whites are more intelligent, better cultured, more dynamic and more morally upright than non-whites. In consequence, white supremacy became a well-established variant of progress by the early nineteenth century.

National Socialist ideology interpreted history as an amoral, zero-sum struggle between different races over access to living space. There was an overarching hierarchy, however, with regard to the various races. At the top of the racial pecking order were Aryans, who were all the peoples of non-Slavic, white European origin that were neither severely physically disabled nor mentally challenged. Below Aryans was the rest of the human race, which National Socialist ideology deemed to be subhuman and, therefore, unfit for life.

However within the diverse categories of subhuman peoples, there was an arch-subhuman group that posed an existential threat to Aryans. Namely, these were the Jews. Through their alleged control of both international capitalism and international communism, the Jews had set out to undermine the racial superiority of Aryans via methods like cosmopolitanism and miscegenation. As a result, the world was quickly closing in on the master race. Either Aryans destroyed the “International Jewish Conspiracy” organized against them, or the ostensibly highly cultured and civilized Aryan racial stock would irreversibly be contaminated by impurities from racial intermixing. In that event, all progress that had hitherto been made by the West would be undone.

After a succession of speedy victories in wars of aggression, Adolf Hitler, the supreme guardian of all things Aryan, pivoted Nazi Germany’s war machine eastwards onto the ultimate prize, the Soviet Union. The capture of the Soviet Union’s vast raw materials would guarantee that the Aryan armaments industry would become invincible on the Eurasian landmass. It would also secure material plenty for Aryans in a postwar Greater Germany, putting a Volkswagen in every driveway.

Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union was a merciless war of extermination, enslavement and ethnic cleansing. But Hitler bit off more than he could chew, and the war started to go badly for Nazi Germany not long after the initial attack. Meanwhile, the predominately Aryan countries of Britain and the United States of America – the leaderships of both, Hitler was convinced, were being manipulated by anti-Aryan Jewish conspirators – continued to fight against German expansionism in an uneasy alliance with the Soviet Union as opposed to joining in a crusade with Nazi Germany for Aryanism. When all was said and done, scientific racism had set off a worldwide conflagration that led to the deaths of 70-85 million people in approximately six years, including the industrialized mass murder of 6 million Jews.

So how can an ideology that led to the premeditated murder of countless millions of human beings have anything to do with progress, which values human life above all else? From the National Socialist perspective, racial science had conclusively determined that non-Aryans were not fully human. Rather, they had far more in common with bacilli or vermin than with Homo sapiens. And do we today mourn the destruction of disease-causing bacterium or pests in our efforts to enhance overall public health? Certainly not. Indeed, we call these efforts progress. The National Socialist Revolution was centred on the idea of limiting the definition of humankind to just Aryans, while either eradicating or permanently condemning to slavery all non-Aryans. It was as simple as that.

But doesn’t National Socialism’s antiquated obsession with ethno-nationalism undermine its legitimacy as a movement for worldwide human liberation? Although it is true that Hitler seemed to only have designs on conquering territories within Europe, especially to the east of Germany, the findings of the scientific racism he fanatically adhered to are universally valid. Theoretically, had Nazi Germany won the war, a Greater Germany would have continued to push its frontiers outward until all subhuman threats to Aryans had been neutralized. In the end, the world would have become one giant National Socialist republic. Thus it is no contradiction in terms to speak of international National Socialism.

The Nazi regime wasn’t an aberration from the general trend of progress, but instead a continuation of it by means radically different from what had been previously tried. The ideology of (inter)National Socialism meets all the criteria necessary for it to be classified as a type of progressive political project. But today Hitler and his Nazi henchmen are the personification of absolute evil. This is unavoidable given that the racial ideology of the Nazi regime consigned most of the human race to either death or eternal enslavement. But the fact remains that the intellectual origins of (inter)National Socialism are to be found in the Enlightenment.

Nobody said the Grand Experiment wasn’t going to get a little messy every now and then. Despite periodic setbacks, however, the freedom and happiness of an infinitely vast posterity commands us to carry on with the supreme task of remodelling the world according to the blueprints of progressive rationalism. Lessons from failed experiments push progress forward.

Having undergone something of an ordeal in the years 1914 to 1945, an exhausted and bankrupt Western Europe passed the baton of world leadership to its offshoot civilization, the United States of America.

The American Republic, which incidentally is my home and native land, is the world’s first Enlightenment state. Consequently Americans are the first people to become true citizens of the world, because the cause of America is the cause of humankind. The leaders of the American Revolution forswore the Old World custom of establishing a state on religion or ethno-nationalism. Instead, America is based on something that, at the time, was of world-shattering significance: an ideology. The name of the ideology that the American Republic was founded on is republicanism.

In the context of eighteenth century North America, republicanism meant more than simply a society cleansed of kings and queens, established churches and hereditary aristocrats. It was a consistent, well-reasoned ideology that promoted minimalist government as the cure to the virtue destroying patronage networks of the Old World. The best government is that which governs least. Hence a rustic agrarianism, which would safeguard the sacrosanct republican principles of individual autonomy and private property, was preferred over banks, urbanization, and manufacturing above a cottage industry level. Furthermore, in place of professional standing armies that incessantly drain a central government’s coffers, as was occurring in the fiscal-military states found throughout a sanguinary Europe at that time, local, semi-professional militias were favoured as both the first and last line of defence against foreign aggressors. A virtuous, highly decentralized republic would be administered by a genteel, learned and non-hereditary elite.

But this version of republicanism is fatally flawed as an ideology. Its advocacy of a simple, agrarian lifestyle for all its citizens, save for a tiny governing elite, is based on an inflexibly pessimistic, and therefore anti-progressive, interpretation of how civilization operates. As republicanism has it, once all the land had been settled by yeoman farmers, a growing number of discontented landless labourers would eventually band together and overthrow modest republican rule. The Old World vice of over-civilization would then begin afresh in the New World. This process of societal decay was believed to be an inescapable law of history; it could be postponed but not abolished.

Entirely lacking a concept of progress, the ideology of republicanism that the American Republic was created on made the country an incomplete Enlightenment project. If the United States of America was to break free of the cycles of rise and fall that had doomed all past civilizations, the American people were going to have to finish the job that their revolutionary leaders had started in 1776. This meant that they needed to upgrade gloomy, fatalistic republicanism with an upbeat progressive ideology. Only by doing this could Americans make it possible both for themselves and for the rest of the world to successfully traverse history’s ark to the promised land of limits-defying rationalism.

The American Revolution proved to be contagious, infecting first its erstwhile ally, France, in 1789. Then came republican revolutions in Haiti (1791), the countries of Latin America (starting in 1808), Greece (1821) and, finally, the aborted attempts at republicanism across Europe in 1848. American radicals, the most illustrious of these being Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, understood that the American Revolution had only been a start, not a consummation. The American revolutionary example had demonstrated to all peoples in all lands that they had the power, like their American compatriots, to begin the world anew. Because no less than the liberty of the whole earth was at stake, it was crucial that the American Republic be transformed into the headquarters of world revolution.
Michael James
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Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:35 pm

Re: A Modest Proposal to Permanently Eliminate All Injustices, Disharmonies and Material Scarcities from Human Society

Post by Michael James »

Unfortunately, all attempts at getting the American government to embark on a career of aiding and abetting freedom fighters the world over failed in the early decades of the American Republic. As the French Revolution supposedly slipped into despotism during the Reign of Terror in 1793-94, it put a damper on revolutionary enthusiasm, which the more reactionary factions of the American elite exploited to bolster their own cynical ends. George Washington, in his Farewell Address in 1796, urged his fellow Americans to maintain a state of neutrality with all the countries of the world. Alliances should only be short-term, entered into during an emergency, and exited once the emergency had passed. The distinguished statesman (and soon to be U.S. president) John Quincy Adams, in a notorious address to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1821, declared that although the American Republic wishes liberty to flourish in all nations, it doesn’t go abroad in search of tyrannies to overthrow. President-elect Abraham Lincoln, in an address to the New Jersey Statehouse in 1861, stated that Americans are god’s almost chosen people. The god nonsense notwithstanding, this is just a clever way of saying that Americans are not god’s chosen people – i.e. that Americans don’t possess an exceptional role in history that requires them to instruct the world on how to properly be free.

In the nineteenth century, the American Republic had succumbed to insularity and timidity. In terms of foreign policy, the American government was quick to give diplomatic recognition to new republics, with it usually being the first government to do so; however it refused to provide them with either American troops or war materiel when counterrevolutionaries fought back. In consequence, revolutionary republican governments were almost always unsuccessful in the nineteenth century, as they ended up either falling to reactionary monarchists or becoming dictatorships.

In terms of economic policy, a sub-optimal, economically inefficient wall of tariffs was erected by the newly-constituted Republican Party during the American Civil War, which remained in effect throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. This protectionist outrage against free trade – a cardinal tenet of economic rationalism – needlessly hindered the development of industrial capitalism in America.

Seemingly content on becoming a world unto itself, an isolated and self-satisfied American Republic turned its back on its earth-shaking revolutionary past. The historically unique calling of the American people, which is to transform the United States of America into the United World of America, was placed on hold, perhaps indefinitely.

Just when all seemed lost to an endless slumber, though, the spirit of 1776 was reawakened in a flash when America intervened on the side of republican revolutionaries in Cuba who were fighting for their independence from the Spanish Empire. So began the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Spanish Empire was soon routed, with not only Cuba, but also Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines becoming American possessions. But what was a victorious America to do with them? Should they be set on a pathway to becoming new states in the union? Should they be transformed into American colonies? Should they be granted full independence? The Republicans, who were responsible for the intervention and its immediate aftermath, found themselves in a jam. Neither for the first time nor the last, it would take a Democrat, in this case President Woodrow Wilson, to show Republicans the right way forward when it came to America and its relationship with the outside world.

When the American Republic, led by President Wilson, finally decided to intervene in the First World War in 1917, it did so not to uphold narrow-minded national interests, but rather to defend the most estimable and far-sighted interest in existence. To be precise, this was the interest of humankind, which desired independence from power hungry imperialists and democracy. The aim of American entry into the war was to turn the senseless slaughter of millions into a war to end all wars. Once the Allies had won the war against the Central Powers, a postwar settlement would make it possible for democracy and openness to thrive everywhere. In so doing, a war of similar magnitude would become impossible in the future, because no free peoples would ever attack fellow free peoples. The Americans, being wholly uninterested in the age-old spoils of conquest, would midwife something new under the Sun – a lasting peace where humanity, as opposed to territorial empires, was made the victor.

But alas, the Wilsonian moment soon passed, leaving all expectations for global emancipation in the lurch. Both the British and French empires, despite being heavily weighed down with war debts owed to their American ally, proceeded to gobble up Central Power territories in Africa, the Middle East and East Asia. Meanwhile the Republicans blocked American admission into the League of Nations, the collective security organization that was created to preserve world peace. As a result, predatory great powers – Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan – would soon be on the march again, returning the world to a state of general conflagration even deadlier and more destructive than what had preceded it.

Following Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, the Republicans retook both the White House and Congress. With the restoration of Republicans to power, irrational protectionism and defeatist isolationism received a new lease on life. A series of Neutrality Acts were passed in order to prevent any future American government from militarily intervening in Europe, thereby reaffirming the regionalist grand strategy of the Monroe Doctrine which had been violated for the first time with American entry into the First World War. It would take another two Democrats, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, to finally set the (non-communist) world right. This was achieved after the American Republic had gained economic and military pre-eminence in the wake of the Second World War. The resulting Pax Americana has continued to benevolently dominate the global geopolitical landscape ever since.

With regards to progressive ideology in America, at around the turn of the twentieth century the Democratic Party underwent a metamorphosis. Out went the obsolete ideology of republicanism. The Democrats were no longer the “Party of No,” rejecting almost all legislation made at the federal level of government. In other words, they stopped their prior steadfast and wrongheaded resistance to the interests of big government and big business. In a new, rapidly urbanizing and industrializing age, the Democratic Party would cease being dominated by the interests of anti-tariff small farmers by also incorporating the interests of urban labourers into the Democratic fold. And as America progressed, the interests of urban labourers, along with their intellectual benefactors, generally won out over the interests of small farmers. The age of liberal reform had arrived.

As the Democrats gradually embraced progressive liberalism over regressive republicanism, a new progressive ideology crystallized. This is called Americanism, which is basically just liberalism with American characteristics. Americanism combines liberal internationalism with domestic reformism; albeit its reformist drive is flexible enough to incorporate both pro-government and anti-government solutions to problems encountered from the modernization of postwar America. Like neoclassical economics, Americanism allows for both a Left (Keynesianism, regulation and collective responsibility) and a Right (market liberalism, deregulation and individual liberty) and is therefore self-correcting. Hence it can reliably be trusted to guide, ad infinitum, the onward and upward trajectory of the American people and, by extension, the global populace as well. Modern Americans are free to choose whatever kind of political ideology they want, so long as it is liberalism.

Americanism, which is the stealth ideology of the American establishment, is inherently hostile towards both social democracy (sorry Bernie Sanders) and economic nationalism (sorry Donald Trump). The American elite have long since notified the nations of the world, irrespective of whether they wish American-style freedom well or ill, that the American people are prepared to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe in their concerted effort to secure the survival and success of Americanism everywhere on the face of the earth.

The emergence of stagflation in the 1970s marked the demise of New Deal liberalism. With the U.S.-led Bretton Woods international monetary order also falling apart that decade, Americanism was on the ropes. Fortunately the Republicans, by abandoning old habits for a sleek, ultramodern New Right (minus the idiotic Christian Right faction of course), had come to the rescue.

The iconic hero of the New Right, Ronald Reagan, led the shift from New Deal liberalism to neoliberal globalism in his two-term presidency in the 1980s. President Reagan knew that there wasn’t anything wrong with the idea of progress itself. The thought that America was entering into an age of limits, as many worrywarts at the time were forecasting, was a false one. Instead, the problem was with the way progress had been put into practice in the postwar period. The malfunctioning of American society in the 1970s was due to errors in the exercise of enlightened reason. Laissez-faire capitalism and supply-side economics were the correctives to all that ailed the listless American ship of state. President Reagan, in his effort to “Make America Great Again” (his 1980 presidential campaign slogan), astutely understood that modern, progressive America has no need for prudence and humility.

Significantly (and perhaps singularly) for a Republican, Ronald Reagan’s favourite quote was from Tom Paine: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again”. Having been an ardent New Dealer in his youth and early adult years, he quoted in his speeches the utterances of Franklin Roosevelt more than any other historical figure during his presidency. In his televised Farewell Address, President Reagan famously called America “a shining city upon a hill” – a phrase first used in U.S. politics by President Kennedy (and originating from the seventeenth century Puritan John Winthrop), however the adjective “shining” was added by Reagan himself. Further on in the speech, he stated that America would forever remain a beacon of hope to the world so long as it maintained a domestic policy of free trade and open borders. President Reagan, unlike a certain orange-tinged political figure in contemporary American politics, understood that what the American people needed was not “America First” but freedom first, because America is the world and the world is America.

Through President Reagan’s sure-footed leadership, Republicans had finally been made to see the light of reason. Provided that Reaganism remained their doctrine of choice, Republicans could be trusted with power by Democrats. And with the era of big government being officially over in a transformational “Age of Reagan,” the Democrats had to find a kinder, gentler type of neoliberal globalism in order to remain politically competitive against Republicans. In short, Americanism had been rejuvenated.

A further sign of how far Republicans had moved over to the right side of history post-Reagan was in the way the Bush administration dealt with the appalling 9/11 terrorist attacks. All nineteen hijackers were ethnically Arab (mostly Saudi nationals) and fanatics for a fundamentalist strain of Sunni Islam, which put the American Republic on a collision course with the backward-looking Islamic world, along with the predominantly tyrannical regimes that governed Muslim societies. Accordingly, Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded, plus countless drone strikes and covert operations were done in other Muslim countries in name of the Global War on Terror. Justifying these interventions, President Bush, in his Second Inaugural Address, committed America to a policy of seeking and supporting “the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in [the] world”. Kudos must be given to the Bush administration for ingeniously combining Americanism with Jacobinism, something that had not yet been attempted. This was a huge breakthrough in American foreign policy, as it had never before been so boldly expressed that global democratization was the raison d’être of American strategic plans. If only innovators working within the unfathomably vast U.S. military-industrial complex could figure out a way to insert “liberal humanism” into a bullet, the democratization process could be expedited by having the U.S. military wander around the benighted places of the earth, shooting into their peoples the one and only mindset of freedom.

Shrewdly, the succeeding two-term Obama administration more or less mirrored, in terms of policy, the two-term Bush administration. For example, the latter invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, while the former militarily intervened in Syria and Libya; the latter handed out zero indictments against the financial industry following the subprime mortgage fiasco, while the former chose to do the same; the latter doubled the U.S. national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion, while the former doubled the U.S. national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. But then, inexplicably, the American people rebelled against progress by electing Donald Trump, an economic nationalist and an outspoken critic of both foreign interventionism and illegal immigration, to the presidency in 2016. As a consequence, the Republican Party relapsed into being a crime against humanity. But even many conservatives at the time, although morons they otherwise undoubtedly are, agreed with progressives on Trump’s unfitness for the Oval Office. How could such a needless and stupid tragedy occur in this day and age?

Fortunately, despite all of President Trump’s sounds and furies, his single four-year term was largely uneventful and did not significantly change things. What damage that had been done was quietly mitigated by bureaucrats working from behind the scenes. With the election of Joseph Biden, a Democrat, in the 2020 presidential election, America officially returned to its post-WWII greatness. Maybe if Americans rebranded their country from the United States of America to “Globalization,” it would prevent another embarrassment of this sort from happening again? Becoming the president and commander-in-chief of Globalization, future American presidents would constantly be reminded that their sworn objective is the Americanization of all of humanity, not just the Americanization of Americans.

With the passing of, first, the Age of Roosevelt and then the Age of Reagan, it is clear that Americanism needs to be revamped in order for these troubled times to be put behind us. Unfortunately President Biden will not be the one to accomplish this urgent task, because he is too old and too deficient in new ideas. The accolades and gratitude that will be heaped upon whoever can create, under the rubric of Americanism, a new age labelled with his or her surname will be enormous. A bust of his or her head will join the busts of the earlier heroes of Americanism – Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan – on the, as of yet non-existent, new Mount Rushmore of progressivism. In fact, as an added incentive, Americans should make a pledge to remodel the old Mount Rushmore with the three aforementioned twentieth century leaders plus whoever ends up revitalizing America’s freedom agenda for the twenty-first century. Perhaps former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who once stated that “what is good for America is good for the world,” could be that person? A pithier summarization of Americanism cannot possibly be made. Pompeo knows progress – hey, sounds like a catchy presidential campaign slogan to me.

An encouraging development in recent times with respect to the evolution of progressive ideas in America has been the appearance of Wokeism. Just when you thought American universities were completely moribund, being fixated on politically inert drivel like postmodernism, they’ve constructed and unleashed a whole new progressive ideology that is today making tremendous headway in both public and private sector institutions. People who are “woke” interpret the world using a simple, morally strident and socially disruptive oppressor-oppressed dichotomy. This is the model that Marxists and National Socialists used to great effect in the twentieth century, although Wokeism is closer to the latter than the former because it focuses on identities rather than class.

The more things on this list that apply to you, the more you are an oppressor according to Wokeism: cisgendered (your gender identification matches your birth sex), heterosexual, male, white, a practicing Jew or Christian. Wokeism is more or less a complete inversion of National Socialism, except devout Jews are detested by both ideologies. (From a woke standpoint, religious Jews are patriarchal, homophobic and the beneficiaries of white privilege.) In the brave new world of Wokeism, the oppressors are to be de-privileged with public shaming, discrimination and cancellation, while the oppressed shall reap the benefits from the downfall of their former tormentors. As societal consciousness of the woke identitarian trinity – race, gender and sexuality – mounts, it is certain to trigger a backlash from unrepentant oppressors who refuse to accept how despicable and advantaged they are. Moreover, in a country with a long history of racial issues – indeed, many of the universities that Wokeism arose in were once world leaders in the study of scientific racism – the woke movement is a gigantic gift to white supremacist groups.

In any event, three cheers for the Enlightenment: racism is back! It is once again socially acceptable to be openly prejudiced against groups of people based on their physical appearance.

Over the past several years, a couple of geopolitical challengers to the global Pax Americana – Russia and China – have surfaced. In the case of Russia, its intransigence against American power is entirely due to sour grapes. Formerly, when Russia was the foremost republic within the Soviet Union, it was part of a marvelously rational and atheistic progressive ideology – Marxism-Leninism – that competed with Americanism on the world stage for the emancipation of humankind. But then, in the 1980s, the ineptitude of the Soviet Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, caused Soviet communism to enter the dustbin of history. Because of Russia’s earlier inability to get progress to work either at home or abroad, it is today, under President Putin, determined to make sure progress works nowhere, having become the global symbol of a resurgent autocratic and chauvinistic version of nationalism.

Just to spite the irksome Russians, Americans should replace Americanism with Marxism-Leninism. Guided by the boundless competence and energy of progress-minded Americans, a worldwide workers’ paradise would be created within a New York minute were it tried. But this would be pointless. Given the fact that Russia refuses to do progressivism anymore, it is of no real danger to any country but itself.

And then there is the People’s Republic of China, which, like the modern United States of America, is a progressive Enlightenment state. It therefore poses a legitimate threat to the American-led global order. Under President Xi, communist China has been hectically setting the groundwork for an imperium on parts of Eurasia and Africa that at some point will break away from the international system headquartered in Washington and Wall Street. This Chinese-led informal empire in the making is called the Belt and Road Initiative. Russia and Iran are loosely allied to China’s geopolitical plans. Regrettably, unlike earlier times when Chairman Mao was in power, China doesn’t seem hell-bent on spreading communism with its ascending influence in the world. Nevertheless, the next best thing to a world dominated by one progressive ideology is it being divided by two. A new life-and-death struggle over the correct way to be free should therefore be welcomed. Americanism vs. Communism, Round 2: Marx Strikes Back. But this raises a pertinent question. How did America’s industrial base end up being off-shored to communist China, its soon-to-be geopolitical adversary? Wasn’t the first cold war about defeating international communism?

But the future of humankind belongs to neither Americanism nor communism. It doesn’t belong to any other progressive ideology presently known, either.

The time has finally arrived for my big reveal. The name of the progressive ideology to end all progressive ideologies is Adonism. Adonism is named after Adonis, who in Greek mythology was a mortal young man with luscious locks of hair who became the quintessence of youthful male beauty. I selected Adonis to personify the culminating ideology of progressivism, because it turns out that male pattern baldness is the condition that has thus far held back the liberation of humankind from the tumults and injustices of history. The underlying dynamic propelling the historical process forward is not a struggle between races or classes, as some earlier progressive rationalists had thought, but rather a struggle between the well-haired and the hairless. Hitherto fortune has favoured the bald. This is on the cusp of forever changing, however, as the eternal truth of Adonism now makes its debut.

At first blush the idea that humankind is being covertly subjugated by brainless bald men may seem ridiculous to you. Intuitively, however, you know this is true. For instance, it is of no coincidence that villains are disproportionately portrayed by follicly-challenged men in books and film. Likewise, it is plainly visible for all to see that baldies are baddies at the highest levels of business and politics. Thus no sensible person would deny the manifest evil of Lord Voldemort, Jeff Bezos and the late Mahatma Gandhi. Indeed, only a person in a false state of consciousness would do that.

Giving rock-solid rationalistic support to our deeply ingrained prejudices against the balds and the balding is a new scientific theory: analytic alopecian socio-materialism. While it admittedly doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, this final theory of everything deduces that as men lose their hair their critical faculties depart them as well. They then try to compensate for their growing witlessness by domineering others with wrongthink, which in turn continually frustrates humankind from fully carrying out its triumphal expedition from the primordial ooze to the celestial stars. Only by weeding out men with hair loss issues from society, through measures like castration, internment and genetic engineering, will the human race finally be able to enjoy its long overdue freedom. Patriarchy and homophobia, racism and imperialism, and countless other deleterious corruptions of liberty-loving logic will then vanish from the world for good.

The universal emancipatory symbol of Adonism is a comb overlain with a blow dryer. All women and non-baldheaded men shall officially address each other as combrade (pronounced: kowm-rad) followed by his or her last name. For example, I’m combrade Fanttasi.

Like Marxism and National Socialism before it, Adonism is a radical revolutionary movement. Only by overturning all existing social structures can humankind finally put an end to evil. A democratic civil society, in which people agree to disagree on important issues of the day, and in which the civil liberties of all participants in political debate are protected regardless of whether what they have to say is right or wrong, is a hindrance to the establishment of a world remade on the principles of true justice and true freedom. Legislative bodies are mere distractions from were real power is concentrated. A shadowy group of baldies, along with a tiny coterie of unscrupulous hair-traitor opportunists, collectively pull the strings on world events from behind the curtains. Thus only an internationally organized vanguard of professional female and well-haired male revolutionaries can, once and for all, put a stop to this worldwide conspiracy of oppression. To be sure, some innocent people will inevitably lose their lives in the revolutionary mayhem that follows, which is lamentable. But extremism in the pursuit of progress is no vice. The glorious end the revolution serves will justify the means used to achieve it.

Humankind has entered its darkest and most decisive hour. The postwar Pax Americana, which in truth is a neo-Pax Britannica, is teetering on the brink of dissolution. The leaders of Britain – aka “perfidious Albion” – have been at the forefront of counterrevolutionary actions throughout the world since the eighteenth century, which is the time when they sold their nation’s soul to the dark forces of international baldry in exchange for global imperial primacy. Ever since the eighteenth century, the British elite have been confounding the politics of foreign governments with knavish tricks. Wherever major transformative republican revolutions have occurred – for example, America in 1776, France in 1789, Russia in 1917, and Germany in 1933 – a reactionary monarchical Britain has always been on the opposing side, cynically trying to halt all human advancement in order to make sure that the pile of gold in its vaults kept on getting higher.

In the midst of the Second World War, the infamous cherub of chicanery, Winston Churchill, spearheaded the clandestine takeover of the American Republic by British elites. This in turn meant that America came under the influence of international baldry. The leaders of the bankrupt British Empire cleverly relocated it to the opposite side of the North Atlantic, making the much more advantageously positioned American Republic the new epicentre of a worldwide looting operation. Cunningly, the British elite made sure the postwar American Empire was only an informal empire, based on global pre-eminence in commerce and in naval power, and not a formal empire of overseas colonies, since they knew that that was a non-starter with the American people. Being good republicans, Americans view themselves as liberators, not subjugators. Through the machinations of Churchill, most notably in his 1946 “Iron Curtain Speech” in Fulton, Missouri, the great wartime republican ally of America, the Soviet Union, was transformed into its greatest foe. Thus, thanks to the treachery of a British-bald axis of iniquity, the Cold War had begun.

Speaking of the Soviet Union, its founder, Vladimir Lenin, was in reality a secret agent of ultra-reactionary German Junkers. Lenin, a man as devious as his pate was hairless, was the ringleader of a desperate plot to get Russia out of the First World War to the Central Powers’ advantage. But Lenin was incapacitated by a series of strokes before he could return Russia to tsarist rule. He died from a brain haemorrhage in 1924. The earnest Georgian communist, Joseph Stalin, haphazardly stumbled into being the new Soviet leader. Stalin, no doubt helped by his thick Georgian mane, actually made Soviet communism work. By the end of the Second World War, he had adroitly guided the Soviet Union to superpower status. But after Stalin’s death, a couple of bungling baldies inadvertently destroyed the Soviet experiment. First came the blundering of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who stupidly de-Stalinized the Soviet Union. A couple decades later, Soviet Premier Gorbachev, through his wrongheaded glasnost and perestroika reforms, completed the wrecking job. Soviet communism was kaput by the end of 1991.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, and with no clear geopolitical peer competitor(s) on the horizon, the victorious American Empire – which is to say, the neo-British Empire – had the entire world as its oyster. It was time to pilfer the planet as it had never been pilfered before. But the British elite, along with their useful idiots in the American establishment, uncharacteristically mishandled the situation.

The number one rule when operating a globe-spanning informal empire is that international capitalism must be kept solvent. If banks start lending too much money into existence, financial bubbles will result. In consequence, asset prices will become detached from fundamentals, like profits and affordability, and shoot into the stratosphere in a mania of debt-fuelled speculation. Financial markets will subsequently degenerate into a giant Ponzi scheme. And this is exactly what happened.

The economic boom from the 1980s onward wasn’t due to a rediscovery of markets, as the champions of neoliberal globalism have claimed, but instead due to a rediscovery of leverage. Masterminding this overly-financialized house of cards was a hairless duo of monetary mavens, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, whose back-to-back reigns as head of the Federal Reserve lasted from 1987 to 2014. Both of these men refused to monitor surging private debt levels – let alone combat them – as they both believed that it would be irrational for businesses and households to take on more debt than they could ever payback, and therefore such a thing would never occur. The British elite as well as their co-opted conspirators within the American elite, having finally awakened from their complacency at the damage the wages of baldness had yet again inflicted upon the world, tried to fix the problem by selecting a woman, Janet Yellen, to head the Federal Reserve following Bernanke. But it was too late.

Through measures like quantitative easing, zero and negative interest rates, bank bailouts, the legalization of accounting fraud, and massive fiscal stimulus initiatives, the monetary and political authorities around the world have tried to rectify the economic devastation wrought by a hyper-expansion in private debt levels. The proverbial kitchen sink has been thrown. These remedial actions have failed, however. Instead of solving anything, they have merely kicked the can down the road a little further, delaying the day of reckoning. In addition, their side effects feed rising socio-political discontent, such as intergenerational tensions due to artificially inflated asset prices causing an ever-widening wealth gap to develop between asset poor young adults and asset rich older generations. The only question remaining on this matter is whether Great Depression 2.0 will be deflationary or hyperinflationary. Either way, a worldwide rendezvous with discontinuity looms in the near future.

Self-destructive finance capitalism, along with all the extend-and-pretend shenanigans that have been employed to keep the banking system afloat, is really starting to have a ruinous impact on the American body politic. The election of Donald Trump to the presidency, plus the comb-over catastrophe on the top of his cranium that vainly tries to camouflage baldness, has made the unravelling apparent for all to see. Immediately after surviving his second impeachment, Trump, no longer the U.S. president, released a statement saying that he and his team were preparing “a vision for a bright, radiant, and limitless American future”. This is something only a person with an increasingly threadbare thatch could say. Being devoid of a universalistic progressive ideology, like the perfectly logical Reaganism he displaced in the Republican Party, Trump stands zero chance of fulfilling his promise to the American people. Trumpism, in brief, amounts to nothing more than a personality cult.

Trump’s successor, President Biden, has an even worse comb-over than his forerunner, since his glabrous dome is clearly visible when looked at from any direction other than face-to-face. Biden also has a compulsion for hair sniffing, a sure sign of advanced mindlessness. The powers that be have skilfully placed a woman, Kamala Harris, as his vice president. She is set to take over should President Biden falter before the next presidential election. But again this will prove to be too little too late. The morbid age America has slipped into, thanks to the blight of baldness being allowed to run riot at the highest levels of power, is irreversible. Contagion from the internal stability of the American Republic falling apart is sure to spread throughout the world. Chaos is coming.

With the demise of the American (i.e. neo-British) Empire, the Grand Experiment will finally be brought to a close, because the logic of Adonism is irresistible. Worldwide revolution will be the order of the day. International baldry, and its 10,000-year obstruction of the progress of civilization, will at long last receive its comeuppance. Thereafter humankind will be forever free.

But Adonism is not only about emancipating humankind from the cognitive malfunctioning caused by male pattern baldness. It is also about freeing the world from market imperfections. The post-revolutionary global economic system is to be based on a pristine version of laissez-faire capitalism (I’m an American after all). It is an unassailable truth that the free commercial intercourse of all the peoples of the world, unfettered by government policies, is to the greatest advantage of everyone. Adonism will convert the “Efficient Market Hypothesis” into an efficient market fact.

With respect to economic science, a key innovation of Adonism stems from the recognition that the present financial system based on an internationally interconnected cartel of banks, due to its monopoly on the money creation process via the magic of fractional reserve banking, is disastrously inefficient. Given that human nature is based on rational utility maximization, why allow banks, which supposedly function as intermediaries between depositors and credit-seekers, decide who qualifies for a loan and for how much, in terms of a credit limit, each loan is going to be for? In a world ruled by Adonism, all men, women and children will be able to originate their own interest-free loans at will, since the rational, autonomous individual knows best how much capital he or she needs at any given moment. Capital allocation will therefore become 100 percent efficient. The soundness of this theory is demonstrated in the following equation:

x= ((R2-D2) + (C-3PO)) / (T-1000)

In a salute to its having kicked off the age of republican revolutions, mission control for Adonism will be headquartered in Washington D.C., although now it will be renamed Wilson W.C. (World Capital). The need for a centre to govern from is only a transitional phase of the world revolution, though. Eventually all government will cease to exist as the functions of the public sphere will be completely absorbed by the private sphere. But before that can happen, government will be necessary to administer a couple of crucial tasks.

The first of these is the coordination of capitalist commissars, who will be sent all over the globe in order to instruct world-citizens on the finer points of Adonism post-revolution. Because in the immediate aftermath of the revolution people will be getting their first taste of freedom, out of ignorance or confusion they may at times fail to fully maximize their utility. The capitalist commissars will help them cope with the sudden, disorienting changeover from their old condition of abject slavery to their new condition of absolute liberty.

The second task that an evanescent central authority will have to administer is a global network of Enlightenment Camps. Enemies of the people, who for whatever reason stubbornly resist their liberation from history by clinging on to old thoughts and old behaviours, will be interned in these places.

In an Enlightenment Camp, inmates will be required to attend a Rationality Forum every day, were they will be publicly encouraged to disavow their old ways and to wholeheartedly embrace the irrefutable logic of freedom. Should it be determined by overseers that an inmate has sincerely renounced his or her previous anti-social thought patterns, he or she will be promptly released. When not participating in a Rationality Forum, and when not sleeping or eating, inmates will be re-educated through arduous labour.

But the administration of capitalist commissars and Enlightenment Camps will be transitory. Once that process has been wrapped up, which should not take longer than the year 10 AA (Anno Adonis), a happy ending for all of humankind will commence, as all injustices, inconveniences and inequalities (excluding disparities in wealth, which are necessary to incentivize material progress) will fade away forevermore.

Adonism, like other radical revolutionary ideologies before it, has a particular affinity for young adults and their natural rebelliousness. Today’s younger generations have every reason to be in an insurrectionary mood, for a large chasm in wealth and opportunity has arisen between them and older generations, in developed countries especially. Thanks to the artificial puffery of financial assets by central banks in their futile effort to paper over the economic devastation caused from the erroneous belief that debt is wealth, people in the later stages of life, who naturally own more property free and clear than younger generations, have been showered in unearned riches. Those in their early adult years, in contrast, are condemned to being chumps, having to ruinously overpay for the major purchases that are requisite to attaining a successful, modern lifestyle, like education and housing. This creates a situation of no country for young men (and young women).

But the spendthrift ways of the older generations has entered the final frontier of financial irresponsibility. Skyrocketing public debt levels, increasingly used to fill the gap in economic growth from an overly-indebted, and therefore flagging, private sector, is truly the endgame to this whole charade. Sooner rather than later, a debt-laden government of an economy too large to bailout is going to experience a bond market dislocation, because all debts come due eventually. A disorderly default will result. Thus a cascade of counterparty risks, in particular from the $700 trillion to $1.2 quadrillion over-the-counter derivatives market, will suddenly go unsettled, setting off the mother of all global economic meltdowns.

It is time for the silent generations – Gen Xers, millennials and Gen Zeds (or Zees) – to be silent no more. OK boomer, other than the countercultural high point of pioneering the post-adolescent temper tantrum, you’ve spent your mature adult years conforming to “the Man” and mastering the art of complacency. Hence, after a promising start, you’ve proven yourselves to be not made of the right stuff by becoming accessories to a kleptocratic plutocracy. The silent generations must now abandon any enthusiasm they currently have for Wokeism and postmodernism, which are hand-me-down ideologies from the boomer generation (who happen to make up the lion’s share of senior faculty positions at universities), and give their full allegiance to Adonism. Seize the moment and become the vanguard of the final, dross-clearing worldwide revolution. Having the benefit of well-haired youth, all you have to lose is your chains. Let the greedheads and international baldry tremble at the sight of a sudden overthrow of all existing social conditions. The occasion is ripe for the great reset, as even global elites now acknowledge its inevitability. So what are you waiting for? Combrades of the world, unite!

Before I conclude this essay, a recap of the main precepts of progress is given below. It is done in a question and answer format so simple that even a child can understand it.

What is the purpose of human existence?

To achieve progress.

What is progress?

The linear vital force running throughout all of history and protecting humankind, when properly implemented in society, from harm.

How does progress shield humankind from harm?

By liberating humankind from injustice and disharmony, material insecurity and suffering.

How does humankind liberate itself?

By making use of reason and applied science.

How many types of progress are legitimate?

Only one, which is incorporated into a single, universal ideology.

What is ideology?

A systematic doctrine of logic that combines ideas, ethics and practical knowledge.

What is the upshot of progress?

The eternal bliss of humankind on earth, as it realizes its final state of unity and understanding.

Are there any other goals worthy of pursuing besides progress?

Progress rules alone.

In conclusion, progress, the leading idea to come out of the Enlightenment, is humankind’s indispensible idea. Any notion that progress is a myth and that therefore a tragic (or tragicomic) sense of history needs to be returned to is, like my (Italian?) surname, a fantasy.
trokanmariel
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Re: A Modest Proposal to Permanently Eliminate All Injustices, Disharmonies and Material Scarcities from Human Society

Post by trokanmariel »

Thank you very much, for the essay. I waited and waited, as a I read parts of it, for an idea about pragmatism. A pragmatic idea, could be projection. So when people go on ITV's Lorraine in the morning, or when people go on movie sets in Hollywood, or when people go to work in a supermarket in Japan, they project your kind of essay.

Another word for it is fusion. To fuse the different elements of thought together.

At the moment, I'm meditating, waiting for yet another idea.

The usual cliche, is violence, when people talk about socialism in the real world; or, more specifically, condescension. The answer is that socialism is the answer, thus, it is the problem; because of the arrangements of information, any attempt to talk about socialism will invoke condescension, and therefore the true revolution means to not refer to socialism, but to instead just project the labour in all ways.

Your essay is labour. No Time To Die is labour. No Time To Die has the pop culture advantage, therefore your essay needs to become pop culture advantage.

Labour in all ways
Belinda
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Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: A Modest Proposal to Permanently Eliminate All Injustices, Disharmonies and Material Scarcities from Human Society

Post by Belinda »

I am not going to read all your essay because first I must read published and reputable authors that are on my list of must dos.

May I ask if your idea of progress implies a given end of history, or is your idea that progress is open-ended?
Michael James
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Re: A Modest Proposal to Permanently Eliminate All Injustices, Disharmonies and Material Scarcities from Human Society

Post by Michael James »

My understanding of progress is that it always interprets history as moving towards a predetermined goal. What’s more, all historical advancement, when correctly implemented throughout society, is benevolent and uplifting, increasing the overall happiness and/or freedom of humankind.

By open-ended do you mean history is without an ultimate object or aim? If yes, this seems to me to necessitate a cyclical conception of history rather than a linear, progressive one. Am I wrong?
Belinda
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Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: A Modest Proposal to Permanently Eliminate All Injustices, Disharmonies and Material Scarcities from Human Society

Post by Belinda »

Michael James wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 7:33 pm My understanding of progress is that it always interprets history as moving towards a predetermined goal. What’s more, all historical advancement, when correctly implemented throughout society, is benevolent and uplifting, increasing the overall happiness and/or freedom of humankind.

By open-ended do you mean history is without an ultimate object or aim? If yes, this seems to me to necessitate a cyclical conception of history rather than a linear, progressive one. Am I wrong?
By "open-ended" I imply neither cyclical nor linear patterns of history. All grand theories of history are suspect.

True, as individuals and as societies we live forwards and to do so we need to orient ourselves towards what has happened. However if enlightenment values mean anything for us they mean scepticism
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