The religion of progress

Ideas of progress and revolution are so thoroughly ingrained in our world that we tend to only think of them as entirely modern phenomena, something taking place within the last 250 year or so, when the Enlightenment bore its fruit and the revolutions of the United States and France ushered in the world as we know it. Yet that usage of progress and revolution are just a repurposing of ancient concepts, implemented to apply scientific certainties to a world that was being “set free” along a linear timeline. Up until then, revolution had simply described the journeys made by the planets and stars, or similar objects in movement, and progress was how far along on this journey those objects were. Very straightforward terms for physical realities which fit perfectly into the ancient cyclical understanding of time and the universe. With the rise to dominance of monotheistic understandings of the world in late antiquity, these ideas became somewhat sidelined in their importance. It took another thousand years until they began to bubble up in the Renaissance, mixing with various branches of knowledge and being infused into European concepts of linear time and development to become those elements that have so defined us in the last 150 years. It is the marination in centuries of religious dogma and ideas of higher powers and destiny that made superficially secular ideas into ideological creeds, made progress into a cult, both left and right, and the idea of revolution the tool by which to bring about a paradise on Earth.

Though born out of cyclical time, the nature of modern progress and revolution owe more to the eschatological understanding of time – that is, the religious concept of time that deals with the end of the world. All big-name monotheists have been convinced that the end of the world is just around the corner, whether it’s Jesus, Muhammed, or Martin Luther. They all see themselves on the cusp of the apocalypse, and their teachings should be understood in that light. It wasn’t just in the lifetimes of the prophets and theological celebrities either, monotheistic communities or societies around the world have continuously been convinced the world was about to end. The fervor that this induces in relation to covenants, commandments and socio-political life should be fairly self-evident, and can be seen today in movements such as ISIS or many evangelical Christian movements who are trying to establish political power bases as they see the end of the world being relatively close and aim to fulfil the prophecy through bringing about the “final battle” where Jesus will return, and so on.

21st century religious fundamentalism aside, it is the nature of this conviction that coincides with progress and revolution. After the Europeans discovered the Americas for themselves, they were forced to question this eschatological mindset, as their religion and the holy books that provided the main orientation point, and source of information regarding the world as it existed, had nothing to offer and made no mention of this “new world.” They had to make sense of this novel piece of geography on the fly, so as to integrate it into their known world, with little to go on. For example, some were convinced that Columbus had just discovered the Garden of Eden. As Europeans slowly began to understand just how large the world really was, and how many different peoples, animals, and “worlds” there were, they were forced to build an understanding of all the things they saw. Much like a small child, they placed themselves at the center of this vastly expanding world. Encountering so many, varied cultures, and ways of life, some seeming familiar, some seeming distant and alien, or base in nature, they also scrambled to understand what this meant for themselves. Who were they? Looking at their past and knowing what they knew of the ancient world as their ancestors (as they saw it), the idea of development, some movement from primitive to sophisticated began to take root. Over a couple centuries this became the idea of progress as a movement from a past to the present and, something that was novel, the movement into the future, and one that could be better than the now.

As more and more discoveries were made, with the sciences illuminating what had once been mysteries and refuting millennia-old bible-held truths, secularization also began to spread. With time, humans began to replace the divine as the center of the universe and knowledge. Thinkers again began asking questions concerning the nature of reality, and as they theorized about a past that seemed to keep stretching further backwards, and a present that was harnessing and unleashing super-human powers to enable ever-bigger structures, both physical and geopolitical, it all appeared to be moving in a single direction, with people, most importantly European men, pushing this movement forward. Out of the cyclical and eschatological end-time came linear time, and as colonial empires spread and attempted to bring global populations under one structure, a unified time and history presented itself with Europeans at the forefront. Thinkers like Hegel saw this development of the “races”, as he referred to them, moving from origins in Asia, over India towards Europe and on to North America. He saw the Asians as being too ancient to present any vitality, but (surprise, surprise) the German race had reached a level of aged wisdom that made them the preeminent culture. These types of unifying generalizations were typical and carried in them a type of natural order as well as idea of destiny. Humans were the locus of their own world, and increasingly seemed able to shape it as they wished, to force a new world into being. Now that humans (in this context, they always meant men) had this agency and power, building machines to alter nature, they could also alter the structure of their society and were not bound to rulers who professed to be ordained by god.

Revolution became the way in which humans could achieve this, to come together and use their force to push their societies to “progress” further along the linear timeline of history. But where were they headed? There was no more end-time to contend with and the paradise that awaited the faithful afterwards, so where was progress going to take them? The religious blueprint made itself felt here too, as these questions discussed out of necessity as revolutions had now created nations (not kingdoms) founded on progress. The liberty and freedom of men grew into holy values – freedom from tyranny, freedom from serfdom, freedom of the markets, etc. – the terms and nature of these freedoms became the battleground of the next centuries and remain so to this day. By the mid-19th century, the future was wide open, established as a destination that humanity would arrive at, and with the revolutions of 1848, Marx’ and Engels’ publications and the rise of socialism, Darwin’s theory of evolution and the final abolition of slavery, the contentious ideas of progress and where this, now common, future was headed became bitter disputes.

A future society where all people are equal, where no one is exploited, and no one must go hungry. A society where the market is completely freed, where “the invisible hand” will reward the work ethic and dedication of those who give themselves fully to the best impulses lurking within organized humanity when not constrained by tyrannical overlords (meaning, big government). A future nation that belongs wholly to the insert racial/ideological/religious group here. Right and left, the progressive ideologies encompass a myriad of shades and sects devoted to their creed and hoping that, with their strong-held beliefs, they will be able to create the foundation for the future, the “shining city upon the hill” that will be home to the true believers. It is interesting to note that it is not a debate over the concept of progress itself, this is accepted as a given. It is who these instruments of progress should benefit. Right and left agree about where they currently are historically, and they agree that they are moving into a common human future, they are just bitter enemies when pondering how this should be organized. Like Shi’ite and Sunni, like Catholics and Protestants, like sects in any religion, the progressive believers make war on each other and do not see any need for loyalty to any who do not believe in the exact version of their democracy, capitalism, socialism, communism, libertarianism etc. Trotskyites fought Stalinists, Leninists longed for the good old days, Maoists cannot understand why the little red book should not be the bible for all. Neo-liberals rose up in the late 1970’s, with Reagan and Thatcher as their godheads, to strike down the post-WWII socialist leanings like an economic Counterreformation to Keynesian blasphemy. In the United States today, European-style social democracy, though very neo-liberal in northern European countries, is tantamount to pure communism. The left in Europe, though having access to healthcare, unemployment benefits and opportunities far beyond any population in the rest of the world, decry their governments as capitalist and neo-fascist. European governments chase a left-wing insurrection that simply does not exist. Under it all lies a morality and righteousness that rivals that of any religion. Millions of Savonarolas around the world clash as they try and force the system to the great future beyond, the paradise that will set us all free. Who that “all” is and what “free” means, is fairly up for discussion, but the determination with which all know their truth to be how reality is actually structured and what powers truly are at work – be it the “deep state”, “the left”, “mainstream media”, “the Rothschilds” (the list is endless) – is thoroughly religious. Unseen powers are at work, vying for control of “our” world, to make us do their bidding. The battle of good versus evil for the fate of the world and a paradise that will await the faithful if they do their due diligence.

Today, as the collapse of linear time stares us in the face, as climate change reminds us that we do not operate outside of nature’s framework, as pandemics almost instantaneously bring our globalized world to a halt, we are confused. People grasp at last centuries ideologies like driftwood that will keep us afloat in the maelstrom of reality that every other human in history has had to take as a given. We, the privileged, thought we had been set free, that we had arrived, thought that it was the end of history. These last hundred years were like any other, just more so. More dead in a shorter time, more wealth in a shorter time, longer lives, all the knowledge known to humanity at our fingertips. Yet, as we looked at all this and contemplated the opportunities, it feels like we became transfixed, staring at our reflection in the water, and forgetting everything around us. Dreaming about all the things we would create, because we knew we would create them, the world and its realities were secondary. Nature was a backdrop for the huge and momentous occasions in history. Oceans were where shipwrecks lay, mountains were crossed by generals and constituted borders, the resources in the Earth’s crust were there to power our progress. This isn’t limited to the greed of capitalism, just remember the grey, polluted cities and skies of Eastern Europe during communism and worker’s states around the world and it is obvious that the proletariat paradise was not one that thought green. Cities erected in the middle of deserts, nuclear tests off Pacific islands, five- and ten-year plans – no one took note of the environment when contemplating humanity’s future. Once we had achieved untold wealth, we needed to progress ideologically, outsourcing slavery and pollution to achieve green, clean cities, to structure our diet morally because we can choose what we want to eat on any given day. We progressed to wholly virtuous and righteous beings on the cusp of the progressive and linear wave. And yet, as we become reminded that there is no such thing as this wave, that we are simply on the high seas and will remain so forever, we scramble to make sense of everything with the ideas we have at our disposal.

We grasp at socialism as the one true way, we grasp at race, at identity, at the free market as needing to be fully unleashed to free and feed us all. Longing for purity in concept and understanding, purity in belief, and with a disdain for any who pollute their views with elements of the other. In the realization of the multiplicities that make up our world, both in time and perspective, and the overall inability to conform this reality with our own view of the world and the progressive ideas of a future golden age, we fall back on sectarian infighting based on our virtuous morality. Either with us or against us. Thinking of the hundreds of years of war between Muslim factions or European Christians, with the millions of dead, this does not feel very heartening. The fact that the leaders of all the major global powers are ideologically amorphous, yet authoritarian in character, seems to be a symptom of this confusion and the indignant refusal to cooperate with anyone who doesn’t subscribe to one’s own holy truth.

Progress and revolution are the scientific, astronomical certainties of the ancient world infused with the morality and dogma of the monotheistic religions, set free on the stage of history by European colonial powers as they fashioned a history and world to their liking. Even those who revolted against the exploitation that lay at the root of the industrial revolution, its inequality and colonization, could not and cannot help but base their approach in this same paradigm. They aim to harness progress to achieve a different end, simply constituting the other side of the coin of an extremely limited worldview. As our horizon is opening and as natural time comes crashing in, in the form of climate change and the scale that it operates on, we are forced to understand that the debates that we have been having in our societies can be made meaningless in the blink of an eye. Like an individual aging into adulthood and becoming aware of what has constituted their morality to date, as well as their general insignificance, we are facing a reality that simply does not allow for a humanity that thinks it is moving towards a common future and goal. Clinging on to our framework and paradigms, we lash out at the uncomfortable idea of an end to our linear, progressive world, a shift into something else, as yet unknown. The ardent adherence to our ideologies in the face of problems that do not allow for purity of political vision is destabilizing our current democratic societies. In the same way that we are becoming aware of the malleability of time, as we ponder multiple universes, and begin to understand the vast and intricate world of our own neurology and perception, we could become aware of a society that incorporates multiplicities as a matter of fact. Democracy is the perfectly imperfect system for this, as flawed in nature as we are, and pliable enough to settle our multiplicities within it. In that way, it is not that much of a jump to at least begin a transition away from the hypocritical morality of progress and revolution.

Image credit: The headquarters of Mussolini's Italian Fascist Party, 1934 (http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/headquarters-fascist-party-1934/)