ROOM FOR CULTURAL PROGRESS

There is something disturbing about our politics. It centers on the answer to the question, “What is progress?” The question sounds naive or even simplistic but when we try to answer it, we bang our heads against the unyielding wall of political controversy. However, the controversy is not as simple as headlines would indicate; it is not just Democrat verses Republican but deals with the meaning of the word ‘progress’ and our fundamental needs. To seriously confront the question we have to decide if there is or is not a direction to cultural progress, a place where we want to go. Does cultural evolution have a direction or an endpoint? I think it does have direction and that it should be obvious which way the arrow is pointing. Of course, it can never have an objective even if it cannot have an end.

Almost everyone, but not everyone, believes in evolution. Religious fanatics seem to believe we were created with culture; consequently, they believe that culture was perfect. I was at a dinner party and overheard two people talking. One was someone I consider a mathematical engineering savant; one of the smartest people I have ever known. He was earnestly describing heaven in great detail to his interlocutor. What was obvious to me, and I felt should have been obvious to him, is that if he could describe heaven the way he personally wanted it to be, that heaven is fanciful. It was some kind of endpoint in what he considered social or cultural progress but also environmental. What he was doing was answering the question I asked in the first paragraph.

The problem with finding an answer to that question is that we live in a real world. People do get sick or hurt or fight in wars, and die. In the perfect world, everyone would agree with everyone else. We all know that is not the case just as we know we must die even if we don’t want too. Step back from the myth of finding a solution that can never be and ask about what those thoughts say about cultural direction. What we as human beings have to work with is our physical limitations but also a growing and unlimited mental capacity especially with extracorporeal or silicon memory. What is medical science all about? What is politics all about? There is no reason we cannot figure it out.

I ask myself, what would happen if we had a 100% Republican majority in congress, a Republican president, a republican supreme court, and all Republican judges? What would be the direction they would take society? In what direction would they steer the cultural arrow? Flip the party affiliations and ask the same question; again issue by issue? Are they aiming the arrows at the same target?

Inherently, I want equality among men. That is obviously unachievable: some are born intelligent some not so much, some are born tall others, not so much, etc. Therefore, I reduce equality among men to “equal opportunity” among men. The point is that there is overall cultural direction in that. We fool our selves about equality with voting laws but everyone knows voting is intentionally made unfair to win. Are all women equal to men or even equal to each other; another myth. Again, they are obviously not equal but we fool ourselves into believing we achieved that with women’s suffrage. That statement may be laughably superficial but it does give cultural direction. We have issues before congress in the form of legislation to establish equal pay for equal work, voter suppression, and laws directed at even eating at a lunch counters together. Can there be any question about what direction we are taking as a culture? Of course not, we are heading away from the ugly places. We have established direction.

The final question has to be; do you really want everyone to get along? Do you really want everyone to have an equal say in government. Do you really want so-called “moral order” in a family; one-man: one-women and the man is the boss. Do you really want religious freedom leading to strife for dominance of one religion over another? Do we really want and need these things; perhaps all we really need is room for progress. Last time I looked, that is exactly what we have.

URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated