The Fallacy of Progress

When you think of humanity, what comes to mind? Is it something specific? Do we have a static nature about us that when broken down, only applies to a few individuals or a select group? I do not think most people would accept that idea. What appears to be more plausible is that humanity is a much more dynamic and plastic population of animals. If this is accepted, what are we all doing here? Is there an end-goal to all of this? Are we perfecting ourselves to some justified end? Are we truly bettering ourselves? I say no, and I will attempt to show why the idea of progress is a fallacious one.

It really begins with Charles Darwin. Until his groundbreaking paradigm theory of evolution, philosophers, scientists, and thinkers alike could not so elegantly describe the dynamic change of species to species and species from species in such an efficient way. After a few years of speed bumps over the road of conventional academic thought, evolutionary theory became the number one solution to how species change over time. The problem of course arises is how humanity fit into this grandiose framing of nature. In fact, evolution describes how natural selection selects for traits in a species best fit for its environment; humanity is no different. In The Descent of Man, Darwin describes humanity in a similar way that of other animals: our ape-like progenitors evolved to have greater mental faculties like intelligence and moral and social behavior that it paved the way for us overcoming the other species on Earth. Darwin knew that inherited traits ‘progressed’ our species to a place beyond others. This may sound like an argument for a progressive nature, but it isn’t. What it sounds like to me is merely an adaptation for survival. That is the very basic foundation to any species; survival.

Darwin even points out how many civilizations and groups of people, at the time, had been the same as they were generations prior. “Progress seems to depend on many concurrent favorable conditions, far too complex to be followed out.” (p. 168) Factors such as climate, geography, industry, and the arts all play a role on whether or not society can ‘progress.’ Even then, it depends on what one means when the say that, and what we are supposed to be progressing towards.

Of course there have been some thinkers who have recognized what our past is about. Political thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes understood very well what our animal nature can tell us about ourselves. Hobbes knew that humanity is a violent creature. Because of our natural predisposition to survive, we would do anything to achieve that. In fact, it is almost certain that the horrors of war were made solely responsible by a fight for survival. He again recognized that this was the normative state of human nature. Yes, we have made breakthroughs throughout history, but for the most part we are in a constant state of war over resources. Hobbes’ solution to this problem was a kind of progression. Unfortunately, it was to reform society to a state of tyranny. In Hobbes’ eyes, the safety of the people could only be achieved by utterly giving up complete freedom to the occupying sovereign. This would be the only way to reinforce a moral standard among the body politic that would ensure a state of safety. I could not say better than he that “the passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them.” (p. 97, Leviathan)

I think it evident, but it must be said that this isn’t progress. It is a stymieing of the autonomous individual; it snuffs out the very light that produces our reason and rational faculties that contribute the most to our own personal survival.

However, in our own survival, a problem persists that I cannot seem to shake. That is of course the role of women in the progress of humanity. Something that has been lost to the great philosophers of old, and not rediscovered until the enlightenment, was the vital role that women play in our society. I would argue that we could not survive (reproductive necessity aside) without the opposite sex. Part of what it means to survive is to attain or inherit a kind of strength or fitness best suited for our environment. I find it evident that women are far better at this than men have mostly been. Just look at the physical and dominating threat that men pose to women. I ask again to look at the societal structure that rewards men for positioning themselves atop the hierarchy. The daunting fact that women have withstood the constant barrage of endangerment from their biological counterpoints is astonishing. This here is the turning point.

If one were to argue for human progress, the leveling of the playing field for roles between men and women has equalized their opportunities. As I attempt to argue for the continued survival of our species, women must be fully brought into the fold, whether or not we ought to progress toward a specific state of nature. The prolific enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft realized this despite her detractors arguing against educated roles for women. She knew that strength was indeed a virtue, claiming that “a degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be denied - and it is a noble prerogative!” (p. 110, The Vindications) Wollstonecraft wrote honestly about the roles women should take, and recognized their ability to become strong. She said the following:

I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists - I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of the heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt. (p. 111, The Vindications)

The beauty in that passage lies in its message for strength. Nature is not kind of those who are weak. I think it is important to corale this idea of progress back in closer to a simpler fact. So what if we’ve leveled the playing field, if in fact we cannot see an end-goal in sight? If our desired goal is to force humanity to conform to a kind of moral code like that of Hobbes’ vision, then we must reconcile with the fact that we have paved a bloody road in order to get here, with no real justification that is made obvious.

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, he described our history of moral progress as a kind of economy of punishment. In order to keep society in line, parts of the population have been broken down into creditors and debtors. For the function or creating responsible, moral creatures, if a person where to take on a debt and not repay it, the creditor has the right to take out punishment against the body of the debtor for collection of that debt. This idea of retributive justice alone has persisted throughout humanity’s history for as long as there has been people. If this is in fact what is forcing us to progress toward some idyllic human form, then it is fundamentally flawed. Negative reinforcement is far more effective than positive, so it is not that it isn’t useful. However, if collectively we do want to strive for a higher sensibility or responsibility, we ought to focus on the individual rather than the group. It is when “we place ourselves at the end of this tremendous process [of following moral custom], where the tree finally bears its fruit, where society and its morality of custom finally brings about that for which it was only the means… the sovereign individual.” (Nietzsche, p. 248)

The only progress we are capable of is that of moving beyond the confines of custom and defining ourselves, for ourselves.