Chesterton and Politics
I saw a great post by Paul Cella about a comment GK Chesterton made in The Everlasting Man. The whole thing is worth reading but the short version is that the idea that political structures improve and progress over time seems to lack evidence. He says there are very old civilizations and very new barbaric societies. That the data has not been analyzed in any scientific way and a few thinkers firing out a few anecdotes has been accepted as proof. Now the temptation, which Paul avoids, is to lay your own theory based on your own world and life view. Then fire out your own anecdotes and pretend you have proved something.
The point is we don’t know which reading of history is right. Because of that we don’t know how human political structures developed. But we think we do. That is where it gets dangerous. We think we know politics always progresses. Sure there are some bumps and grinds here and there but civilization always get more advances as a general trend. Now Chesterton was writing before WWII and the holocaust which seemed to prove his point that barbaric regimes were not something we have advanced beyond.
Still progressive thinking often dominates today. Like in Chesterton’s time, it is just assumed as fact. The arc of history has to be that political systems get better. Not based on some brilliant analysis of the data but really based on a world and life view that can be traced to Darwinism. That is an unscientific extension of the biological theory of evolution to a moral change in mankind.
Where do we see this? I see it in Afghanistan and Iraq. The idea that those countries will develop into democracies is based on the fact that progressive ideas always win over regressive ideas. That we don’t need to analyze those societies and see if there is a reasonable chance democracy will take hold. We just need to look at the date. The fact that it is the 21st century means the Taliban cannot win. But it isn’t true or at least we have no good reason to believe it is true.
The other place I see this is in modern western society. We don’t have a lot of concern that we might make society worse. All those bad chapters in human history can be ignored because we have progressed. So if you compare modern Western society to ancient Rome and point out how they embraced abortion and homosexuality and it did not end well for them. People just don’t see the parallel because we are more advanced than they are. But are we? Are we immune from the forces that brought down Rome? Only if you make the assumption that modern society is stronger because it is modern. That the democracy in Athens fell but we don’t even need to look at why because modern man has changed.
Essentially it asserts that mankind, through its own effort, is winning the battle against sin. This is where progressive thinking contradicts Christian thinking. Catholics do believe in progress but the way we progress is by getting better at embracing God’s grace. People remain capable of choosing to reject God’s grace resulting in damage to society and even it’s total collapse. The advance of science does nothing to change this. It does make man capable of greater good and greater evil. It just does not make him any more likely to choose good. On the contrary, more capable people tend to become more arrogant and less Godly. We had to learn the hard way that Nazi ideas were bad. We seem destined to learn the hard way that divorce, abortion, pornography, contraception, etc. can destroy a society.
I would say the Enlightenment (which clearly predates Darwin) would be more responsible for the notion of “progress” you’re describing. At any rate, it is ultimately God that makes all things new. “Improved” social or political frameworks are no guarantee of improved relations among human beings.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:40 pmBut that really bites off a lot more that Chesterton and Cella are trying to attack here. Basically there is an idea that moral progress is being made as we travel through time. Sure we abolished slavery in much of the world. But then we invented terrorism. The data is mixed but it is often cited as basically a story of progress. This is viewed as science but it is actually dogma.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:07 pm