March 14, 2008
The Myth of Progress
N.T. Wright, I predict, will be considered one of the greatest thinkers of the 21st century. He is a first class writer and the kind of fellow you would want at a book club: he knows how to discuss tired, old stories in a fresh way. He deals with many of the issues that Erhdman engages but actually believes that Jesus’ resurrection really did happen.
What I personally love about Wright is his ability to be critical of “liberal” theologians like Erhdman while still making “conservative” theologians very uncomfortable. This implies, for those who don’t concern themselves with such distinctions, that it ain’t no brand of George Bush Christianity.
Speaking of Bush–and more to the point of this post, in Wright’s latest book, Surprised By Hope, he has a quick riff about politics and progress which I find so intuitively appealing that I am interested in what you think about it.
The first position is the myth of progress. Many people, particularly politicians and secular commentators in the press and elsewhere, still live by this myth, appeal to it, and encourage us to believe it. Indeed (if I may digress for a moment), the demise of serious political discourse today consists not least in this, that the politicians are still trying to whip up enthusiasm for their versions of this myth–it’s the only discourse they know, poor things–while the rest of us have moved on. They are, to that extent, like people trying to row a boat towards the shore while the strong tide pulls them further and further out to sea. Because they face the wrong way, they can’t see that their efforts are in vain, and they call out to other boats to join them in their splendid, shore-bound voyage. That is why the relentlessly modern and progressivist projects that the politicians feel obliged to offer us (”vote for us and things will get better!”) have to be dressed up with the relentlessly postmodernist techniques of spin and hype: in the absence of real hope, all that is left is feelings. Persuasion wil not work because we’re never going to believe it. What we appear to need, and therefore what people give us, is entertainment. As a journalist said recently, our politicians demand to be treated like rock stars while our rock stars are pretending to be politicians.
and later,
The real problem with the myth of progress is, as I just hinted, that it cannot deal with evil. And when I say “deal with,” I don’t just mean intellectually, though that is true as well; I mean in practice. It can’t develop a strategy that actually addresses the severe problems of evil in the world. This is why all the evolutionary optimism of the last two hundred years remains helpless before world war, drug crime, Auschwitz, apartheid, child pornography, and the other interesting sidelines that evolution has thrown up for our entertainment in the twentieth century. We can’t explain them, given the myth of progress, and neither can we eradicate them.
Thoughts?
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20 Responses to “The Myth of Progress”
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Thoughts?
A host of them!
One is the idea that popped into my head many years ago that there was no progress only excavation. This is a slightly different proposition than Wright’s and implies a usefulness for exploration that Wright’s (to my ears) cynicism discounts.
As to the notion of evil and progress I think evil is a simple byproduct of biological imperfection. A logical extension of a finite entity’s inability to hold all wisdom and all knowledge at any given moment. A byproduct of the process of discovery each of us navigates. Some of it large: Auschwitz. Some of it small: fill in your own examples.
I am also interested in the notion of evil in terms of how closely it relates to human emotion. I perceive George Bush to be evil because he has caused me pain, because he has created circumstances because of his biological limitations that make my life more difficult, at least psychologically. If I were a purely logical entity, or were able to watch but not feel the effects of his biological imperfection, his evil would become abstract.
Just as history becomes abstract, and, thus, less impactful, over time. An art we can explore without the pain of immediacy.
It can’t develop a strategy that actually addresses the severe problems of evil in the world. This is why all the evolutionary optimism of the last two hundred years remains helpless before world war, drug crime, Auschwitz, apartheid, child pornography, and the other interesting sidelines that evolution has thrown up for our entertainment in the twentieth century. We can’t explain them, given the myth of progress, and neither can we eradicate them.
Well, surely it can otherwise these things would still exist. In fact, I’ll venture to guess that the reason drug crime is so bad is because the movement pushing progressive criminal reform has always been dismissed in the states (at least when compared to mandatory minimums, three-strikes, and the death penalty) I’ll grant that the reformulation and reemergence of these particular kinds of evil (globalized hatred, mass-murder, racism, etc) is always troublesome but then again, it’s not as though his so-called “shore-bound” progressives have enjoyed long periods of unchallenged rule.
Indeed, it’s his type of argument about the futility of “progress” that drives people to irrational protection bargain agreements where the comfort of nostalgia is purchased with personal liberties and self-assured righteousness is enshrined by hatred of “the other”. It’s not too difficult to see how GWB and others have used these exact tactics to demoralize the public and ultimately sell a ticket based on the myth that progress is just folly, peace is a dream, and charity is for suckers.
The idea that progress is a straight line running unopposed from bad to good is nice but surely it is as mythical an idea as they come.
Two things I forgot to mention:
1. Wright is British. I suspect not knowing this might color the reading of the quotes.
2. The context, as I read it, suggests that both Obama and GWB fit into the category of politicians he would call progressives. Although, considering #1, he probably has others in mind.
The significance of my the second point is that the “shore-bound” progressives are really anybody, regardless of party, in the political arena from the 19th century on.
R #1: I don’t doubt that it has, although his own history should tell him that slavery, colonialism, and even Hitler’s evil were turned back by people who refused to surrender to hatred, domination, and fear. It may have taken time but as it is said, “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.”
Re #2: Ha! What’s the opposite of a distinction without a difference? I’ll grant that many politicians blend together but it would be a foolish thing indeed to group them together as such. In that scenario abolitionists were equivalent to pro-slavers, suffragettes to anti-women groups, and so on and so on.
It makes sense on a metapolitical level, hence
“the demise of serious political discourse today consists not least in this, that the politicians are still trying to whip up enthusiasm for their versions of this myth–it’s the only discourse they know, poor things–while the rest of us have moved on.”
Either way, your thoughts are appreciated. My natural tendency is to think so differently from you and Deron that it is useful to see other perspectives, particularly in print.
Fair enough, but I have to ask: what is the alternative to the shore-bound progressive’s “version” of discourse being offered by Wright? Blithely being carried out to sea? And then what? This doesn’t strike me as an argument for something so much as an argument against everything. It would seem that it is this particular genre of nihilism that has enabled Bush to be so successful in driving his version of the discourse.
Afterall, just because two boats are pointing in the same direction doesn’t mean the are heading to the same destination.
Speaking purely politically, I am always confused by conservatives inability to recognize the progress made under liberal administrations. Let’s just compare the Clinton Bush presidencies. Under Clinton sustained economic growth, increased income for the populace as a whole, budget surpluses, limited, strategic military intervention internationally that changed people’s lives for the better, strenghthening government response agencies by appointing people with disaster relief experience, a dramatic reduction of people on welfare, measurable progress on climate change, containment of the nuclear threat posed by Iran and North Korea, among hundreds of examples that would further my point, and yet it is Bush’s implementation of decades old conservative principles that has brought our country to this point, and as Aaron mentions, ironically reinforced conservative notions of the inability of public institutions to solve problems.
I instantly felt a need to jump in when I read this–but Deron and Aaron have done such a fine job of responding that there’s not much I would want to add.
It’s interesting to note, though, that notions of progress–or even a desire to improve living conditions around the world–are often regarded as irrelevant when this life is viewed as secondary in importance to the next. From that lofty view, looking out at the world just before stepping into the boat to paradise, it must indeed all seem to look more like a pitiful abstraction, a vast dance of fools. And surely there will be no need of progress or change or learning or personal growth in heaven (how could there be with all strife banished?), and little need of hope there either. Good thing we have it here–so we can look forward to not having it, and so the sight of pain and suffering will no longer move us at all if it ever did.
The myth of progress is what gobsmacked Ivan Karamazov, as I recall.
The interesting thing about Wright’s book, Daryl, is that he is arguing that the view you articulated about the next life is profoundly unbiblical and, therefore, unchristian and he tries to trace the historic reasons why contemporary evangelical thought has shifted towards that view and how that has done damage to our politics and perspective about this world.
Wright is completely correct on this theological point and anybody who tries to make a biblical argument for the next life you articulated is unqualifiedly wrong. (And I do not make strong statements like that about theology.)
What I am interested in seeing is how Wright lays out his alternative and, so he claims, more traditional perspective on the matter and what ramifications this might have in the political sphere. I suspect I will like the theory but not the practice. So, Aaron, I’ll have to keep you posted since I haven’t finished the book yet.
Sheila, one of my greatest embarrassments is not finishing that book.
Deron, I suspect that much of the willed ignorance from conservatives stems from the unhealthy confluence of theology and political perspective. In other words, every time a liberal does something good/right it somehow disproves the conservative political perspective and (so the argument would run), therefore, the theology as well. That, obviously, just wouldn’t do.
Andrew: Interesting. I’ll read Wright’s book, and perhaps you will read Ehrdman’s (if you haven’t already). I have to say at the start though that I’m always surprised at the range of idea-juggling that goes on under the name of Christianity. Are you saying that Wright is a Christian who has somehow come around to the view that there isn’t an afterlife that is the central focus of what it means to be a Christian? Or that we should try to do some good here before we move on to the next life, but we shouldn’t delude ourselves with the thought that we might exceed our past goals of alleviating suffering? I’m sure I’m just confused about what the facts are regarding what’s biblical and unbiblical–but those facts often seem to come round to their opposites without much notice of that fact.
“That, obviously, just wouldn’t do.”
Well said.
God, y’all, how I struggle. Wading through the interpretations of the Word. In my heart, I feel we’re called to love. Am I good at it?
Some times, yes. Some times not, I still cuss out the person who cuts me off in traffic. I have a world to learn.
The rough argument is that the physicality of the resurrection (the focus of his book), particularly in the context of other Jewish understandings, implies that the “new heavens and the new earth” is actually a renewal of this world we live in now. So, when we die perhaps we “go up into heaven” (who knows? the bible says little on the subject) but the hope is that we will return, resurrected to this world.
The church, then, is/should be a vanguard of this great renewal. This means that evil in this world should be taken seriously, the church should be concerned with things like justice and the environment.
Frankly, I think that initially sounds crazier than the alternative you have sketched out, Daryl.
I haven’t read Erhdman but I have read some material and perspectives he deals with. But I will get one of my boys at my old seminary to grab me a copy from their library.
Oh right, Rick. I almost forgot.
Andrew, Rick, the book Saint Saul I have talked about previously (spoiler alert!) makes the case that these words you linked to are possibly the only words we can associate with any certainty with the historical Jesus.
Good deal, Andrew–we will talk again about these things after reading. And thanks for you synopsis of Wright’s argument here, which includes: but the hope is that we will return, resurrected to this world. Wow, I’m sure we can both point to a few million Christians who would balk at that idea. I plan to write something soon about the great range of Christian ideas that exists between the question “can’t we all just love each other?” and the news that John McCain, having gone on stage to accept the endorsement of Pastor Haigee, then had to distance himself from the endorsement because of Haigee’s view that Catholics are not the real thing, and that we must attack Iran because the Bible says we will. McCain apparently wants the Catholics and the nut cases on his side, with thoughts of love surely at the center of it. To speak of the latter situation as one in which “those people” are simply not in possession of the biblical “facts” seems to miss the point: it doesn’t matter if their view of the Bible is not one’s own, if there are clearly enough of them to actively push the world toward destruction.
P.S. Now I see that an almost identical situation has arisen in Obama’s camp, which, sadly, just helps to make my previous comment.
About your last point, I couldn’t agree with you more, Daryl. It is this reality that makes for unlikely allies.
Deron, I had forgotten about that book. I wanted to flip through it. Thanks for reminding me.
[...] post I recommended Ehrdman’s Misquoting Jesus, and shortly after that a fellow flocker recommended N. T. Wright’s book Surprised By Joy. I have just finished reading this work and found it [...]