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| Machu Picchu: One of many examples |
Lots of thinkers have identified patterns and goals in the course of historical events. The identification of cyclical patterns predominated from archaic times well into the Axial Age and the development of long-running cultures and civilizations. Like seasons, civilizations rose and fell. Early on, these patterns are found in chronicles of the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties, St. Augustine, the medieval Muslim thinker Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), and others. The tradition continues into modernity with Vico and Gibbon. In the twentieth century, some of the best-known figures in this tradition were Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West) and Arnold Toynbee, with his monumental A Study of History. Both of these two twentieth-century thinkers build their theories on biological metaphors of growth and decline in the individual. One late-twentieth-century entry into this field was Joseph Tainter, who published his work, The Collapse of Complex Societies, in 1988. Tainter, an anthropologist, argued against Toynbee and others whose work he found too “mystical” or “literary.” Instead, Tainter argues that a society increases complexity to address declining returns on investments for energy. (Abbreviated EROI: energy return on investment; i.e., the amount of energy a society expends to capture a given amount of energy for use.) In short, societies jerry-rig solutions to capture enough energy (food and fuel) to continue functioning. In time, however, the complex schemes to maintain standards collapse under the weight of the accumulated complexity. Soils deteriorate, forests are cut, water supplies dwindle or become polluted, and so on.
In the early twenty-first century, the work of biologist and Cliodynamics founder, Peter Turchin, has gained attention. (Cliodynamics is the use of large data sets and statistical analysis to history to discern large-scale patterns and trends.) Turchin, along with historical sociologist Jack Goldstone, developed a theory of demographic-structural change that considers elite overproduction, population pressures, increasing immiseration of the laboring classes, and other factors to account for social unrest and revolution. These are the circumstances that bring down social, political, and economic regimes. Turchin also helped revive interest in the work of Ibn Khaldun, a medieval North African, who identified a pattern of initiative and decline within dynasties and regimes.
(For Turchin’s use of Ibn Khaldun and his identification of overall patterns, see his War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires (2006); from an eerily accurate forecast of current American troubles and set into a complete theory, see Turchin’s Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Theory of American History (2017); and for an update co-written with Jack Goldstone during the turbulent 2020 election season (and thus before the January 6 attack) see “Welcome to the “Turbulent Twenties’” (20 Sept. 2020).)
With the advent of modernity—the European discovery and exploitation of the Americas and other parts of the world and the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions—another train of thought arose, that of Progress. The idea of progress largely displaced cyclical theories of history that provided accounts of rise and decline.
Modernity and the attendant belief in a sense of progress began in Northern Europe and spread around the globe to the point where many of its beliefs and characteristics are nearly universal. At the same time, historical consciousness arose; that is, our ability to understand ourselves and our species as creatures in time that make decisions that create—at least in significant part—our future. Progress is cumulative; knowledge and materials of wealth begin to accumulate, such that each succeeding generation enjoyed a higher standard of living and (unevenly) shared welfare than the generation before it. This unprecedented increase in human welfare wasn’t shared equally (or equitably) within nations (i.e., between classes) nor between nations (i.e., rich and poor; “North” and “South;” “East” and “West”). Yet, from where we stand now in the twenty-first century, aggregate human welfare is immensely greater on an individual and aggregate basis than ever before in the human story. Ordinary people in widely dispersed locales throughout the globe know levels of material abundance and physical well-being that no royalty or aristocracy could have dreamed of achieving even a hundred years ago.
But is there a worm in the apple? Have we as a species broken the chains of cycles? Are we on the path of endless Progress? As I write this, it most certainly seems not.
But before exploring the above questions, there are other lines of thought that we should consider: dialectic thought and logic (Hegel and Marx provide the most prominent of examples); evolution (Darwin & Wallace); and process philosophy and thought (Whitehead & Hartshorne). Each of these trains of thought, beginning with Hegel in the late nineteenth century, adopts, at least in principle, some concept of progress. In Hegel, this is first conceived as “dialectic.” A short while later, the theory of evolution and natural selection set forth by Wallace and Darwin makes its appearance. The Hegelian-Marxist dialectic doesn’t arise from the study of biology but it begins by claiming to have identified the pattern of society and thought that moves toward a more or less ideal resolution. And while Hegelian and later Marxist conceptions of the movement of the dialectic became increasingly important in the nineteenth century, the idea of the dialectic was joined (and in many ways complemented by) the theory of evolution and natural selection. (Both theories were influenced by Malthus's theory of population and scarcity; Darwin accepted it, Marx contested it.) The theory of evolution by natural selection came into the public limelight with Darwin’s publication of The Origin of the Species (1859). With Darwin’s expositions of evolution and those of his supporters, evolution moved onto the main stage, influencing not only biology, but also philosophy, social sciences, political thought, and history. At least in the English-speaking world, Herbert Spencer, along with “Darwin’s bulldog,” T.H. Huxley, became the foremost proponents of Darwin’s insight. Unfortunately for the application of evolutionary perspectives and insights outside of biology, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, evolution became associated with Social Darwinism. This ideology misapplied Darwin’s insights in an attempt to justify social privilege, economic hierarchies, and racism. So while evolution became the unquestioned principle of biology, its application to society and culture became suspect.
However, while the association with Social Darwinism stymied the application of evolutionary thinking to society and culture, evolutionary thinking continued on the fringes of social and political thought and philosophy. Figures like Henri Bergson, C.S. Pierce, William James, and Alfred North Whitehead all incorporated evolutionary thought into their own thinking. Whitehead’s “process philosophy” is an especially clear example of the marriage of evolutionary thought and contemporary physics to appreciate the continuing process of change at work in the universe. These thinkers didn’t write much about society, economics, or politics. But their insights and inspirations were applied by their successors to human affairs. Appreciations of change, creativity, and evolution were gaining traction, albeit slowly.
Also in the twentieth century, thinkers outside the mainstream made similar contentions: the Indian independence leader and teacher Sri Aurobindo set forth the first iteration of “integral philosophy.” The French Jesuit paleontologist, Teilhard De Chardin, identified the “noosphere” (a collective human mind of sorts) as an evolutionary phenomenon. The English solicitor and member of the Inklings, Owen Barfield, developed the concept of the “evolution of consciousness.” The Swiss thinker Jean Gebser developed a taxonomy of cultural changes that he dubbed “structures of consciousness.” These thinkers and others applied evolutionary thinking to humanity and, on the whole, helped create a hopeful, aspirational attitude about humankind even through the bloody, war-torn, and ofttimes horrific twentieth century.
The heirs to these developmental and evolutionary thinkers from Hegel through Barfield (the most recently deceased (1997) on the list above) are the Integral thinkers, beginning with the work of Ken Wilber first published in the late 1970s. For those of you not acquainted with Integral thinking, in a nutshell, it's a school of thought that focuses upon evolutionary and developmental changes in individuals and groups (societies, cultures). I should be quick to add that individuals and societies proceed along a course of development at different rates and settle at varying levels of attainment. Individual lives display differing physical, mental, and spiritual levels of attainment. Also, individuals vary greatly in levels of attainment: some may be great athletes or scientists while remaining emotionally and spiritually stunted. And humankind as a whole has developed (evolved?) from its earliest manifestations through to today, with some societies realizing a totally new and often extraordinary level of knowledge and consciousness. In short, we know more about our world and ourselves than our ancestors and have a greater range of action and control than ever before. And not just concerning our physical environment, but also the level of our knowledge of our minds, our relationships, our emotions, and our relationship to reality as a whole.
If you believe that this is an optimistic outlook, you've reached a fair conclusion. Looking back over the scan of human history (our time on this Earth as thinking beings—beings who can express themselves—we see huge gains in human knowledge, abilities, and consequently, human welfare. Integral thought, represented foremost by the work of Ken Wilber and Steve McIntosh, make strong cases for its perspective, detailed and comprehensive. Also, outside the circle of proponents of Integral Philosophy, other thinkers share this fundamental optimism. For instance, those identified by Carter Phipps as “Evolutionaries” in his 2010 book of that title. Across a wide variety of thinkers under the Integral umbrella and more broadly within Phipps’s catalog of Evolutionaries, we see a tale of human progress. (I suspect that most of these individuals eschew or would at least avoid the term “progress” because of its somewhat antiquated and checkered past, but still, in the end, the differences from some past uses of the term are not so great.)
“The short twentieth-century” (1914-1991) witnessed a titanic three-way struggle between liberal democracy, fascism, and totalitarian communism. (More garden-variety forms of authoritarianism—strongmen, military juntas, and various forms of monarchy and aristocracy—all continued to exist but failed to compete in the great political-economic struggles of the twentieth century.) With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, liberal democracy was widely declared the winner. The liberal democracies, with the rule of law, democratic forms of decision-making, markets, conceptions of human rights and national self-determination, and individual freedoms (thought, expression, movement, etc.) became the dominant model on the world stage. Francis Fukuyama, writing first in a 1989 article, and then in a book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), identified this triumph as a resolution of Hegel’s dialectic of master and slave (also sometimes translated from German as “lordship and bondage”). Fukuyama’s conception of the struggle for recognition is based on an interpretation of Hegel tendered by the twentieth-century French thinker Alexandre Kojève. This variety of Hegelian dialectic identified an ongoing struggle for “recognition” among peoples and individuals as the motor of history. (Marx later converted Hegel’s ideas on this matter into his concept of class struggle as the dynamic of history.) Fukuyama argued in his 1992 book that with the decline of communism as an attractive system and the seeming triumph of liberal democracy, the Hegelian dialectic of lordship and bondage had been resolved. The liberal democracies then ascendant had achieved a sufficient degree of universal recognition to have realized “the end (as the purpose) of history.”
As Fukuyama noted in his book, this didn’t mean that events would no longer occur, and in that sense, history would continue. And he also noted the potential for a worm in the apple. He reminds of this in the title of the book, which is all too often truncated: “the end of history and the last man.” “The last man” nods toward Nietzsche’s concern about contentment in bourgeois society. And, as we all now realize, history did not stop. In fact, in many of the most significant events since 1992, we’ve witnessed history going backward: the genocide in the Balkans in the 1990s; radical Islamic terrorism in the early twenty-first century; a nearly worldwide financial collapse in 2008; a pandemic in 2020; and as I write this, a revanchist, strong-man regime in Russia has invaded a neighboring nation with only the flimsiest fig leaf attempting to cover its naked aggression. Contrary to whatever hope we might have held about the “end of history” as an end to violence and domination, we seem to be going backward. Why?
Evolution is directional toward greater complexity. Increased complexity (at least up to a point) creates greater powers within a species by way of creating a greater array of adaptive behaviors and tools. And within humanity, biological and then cultural evolution has provided us with powers for self-guided creation. But species have flaws and vulnerabilities. A species must address vulnerabilities by genetic or behavioral adaptation to the changing environment, or the species crashes and burns; to wit, it becomes extinct. Biological evolution doesn’t provide an encouraging guide for us humans. Change in the environment is constant, but the magnitudes of diverse changes vary greatly. Contemporary humanity lives in the Anthropocene Age, in which humanity’s actions have themselves become a significant factor in molding our physical environment. The astonishing increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that fuel global temperature increases—and thus global climate change—provides the most obvious and alarming aspect of the reality of the Anthropocene. Can we adapt to or alter these changes that we have fueled? Can we alter our behaviors and actions that have triggered these changes? Can we stop ourselves from further imperiling our well-being as an entire species?
If not, why not?
To some extent, we must learn to guide our own evolution. But can we do this? Are there “bugs” in the human operating system or in our programs of society, politics, and economy, that remain so deeply impeded within our collective psyches that they prevent us from taking effective actions to preserve and enhance our well-being? I proffer that we have bugs both at the deep level of our operating systems, bugs that are a part of human nature and the human condition; i.e., the situation that we are born into in the way of history, society, economic relations, and political relations. Can we debug humanity?
One fundamental reality facing each person is that of impending death. Individuals of all species experience death and thus a limited lifetime. We humans know of our mortality, even as we often work to shunt it aside, out of our awareness. Entropy creates the inevitability of death. It reflects the fact that any physical system runs down. Thus, no matter how fortunate we are and how careful we are, the reality of entropy will inevitably express itself as death, regardless of our physical, mental, or spiritual attainments. As embodied creatures, our reality is marked by the absolute finitude of time and energy available to us.
But as a species, or as a group, the time and energy horizons available to us, while not infinite, are nevertheless nearly limitless. In principle, at least, we humans should have access to sufficient time and energy to allow us—if we act wisely—to continue to adapt to our environment. We have, in increasing measure, gained the ability to shape ourselves. After all, what is education but the molding of a person with the knowledge of the culture that has been accumulated over the eons? (Or it should be.) What is any endeavor of self-development other than an effort to increase our knowledge and skills to shape our destinies through greater knowledge and wisdom? Any skills we gain allow us opportunities to shape ourselves and our environment in the most favorable ways. What is the value of the development of historical consciousness if not to gain of self-knowledge as a species and as a party of any sub-group (culture, civilization, nation-state, etc.)? And the same applies to individuals. We have gained—and continue to gain—greater knowledge about ourselves, collectively and individually. And because this project of self-knowledge is not complete, we can appreciate that one aim of the human project has been, and will remain for a long time to come, the achievement of self-knowledge.
But what is the value of self-knowledge? Is it a matter of mere contemplation? A thing of beauty valuable only as a completed achievement? I think not. Not because self-knowledge isn’t in itself a thing of beauty—I have no doubt that it is (although, to be honest, I’m a long way from it.) No, we realize the value of self-knowledge in action more than through contemplation. Self-knowledge, from its most primitive manifestations to its most enlightened manifestations, is at the root of any reality of goodness, truth, and beauty. Only to the extent we act—consciously, intentionally, purposefully—can we realize self-knowledge and appreciate its value. The philosopher R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943) asserts that “all history is the history of human thought”. And what we think (at many levels) is manifest not only by our words but also by our deeds, our res gestae (deeds done). But note that communicating by words or images also constitutes a type of deed. In one manner of viewing the issues, all thoughts are a form of deeds; some manifest, most not. Thus, history consists of deeds, human actions marked by some level of thought and intention. History is not some grand design or a natural process but an account of human thoughts manifest as deeds. The natural processes that surround us and that we inhabit provide the scenery of human actions in which we humans create the stuff of history.
So, the question is whether at this juncture of the human story, have we the ability—the power of thought and action—to shape our future and overcome the confining residue of our collective and individual greed, foolishness, and ignorance. Have we, as individuals, acting collectively, sufficient self-knowledge to act to save ourselves from the quandary into which we have placed ourselves? Can we—will we— act to deliver ourselves from the grave dangers that we have created? Yes, it’s possible that we can rectify our situation, that we can extricate ourselves from the plight into which we’ve placed ourselves. But how?
Let me circle back here. If decline, decay, collapse, and such are a matter of entropy, the dissipation of energy within a system, then what we need is negentropy—-a flow of energy into a system. In what form? Foremost, we require energy in its most ethereal of forms: enthusiasm, drive, purpose, goal, thought, goodwill, determination. Here I harken the spirit of William James. We must realize that we are facing “the moral equivalent of war.” And, I hasten to add, I don’t believe that I’d have had the temerity to make this assertion but for the example in Ukraine that we’re now witnessing. In the face of brutal, overwhelming force, the leaders and people of Ukraine have refused to capitulate to the evil that has been brought to bear upon them. And in the rest of the world, especially in the liberal democracies, we’ve seen a coming together with a unity of purpose arising from a shared revulsion at the level of transgression and brutality displayed in the invasion. This shared response has triggered a willingness (so far) to sacrifice in the face of this manifest evil. Few (if any) thought this response possible before it became manifest. This Great Refusal will no doubt dissipate in some measure. It, too, will prove subject to the pressures of entropy, of decay, as time and hardships and frustration take their toll. But maybe it will prove enough to turn a tide. Maybe. It provides a necessary dose of hope that we can succeed when the chips are down.
I posted an initial query based on these musings on the Developmental Politics group Facebook page, and I received several thoughtful responses to my musings. Among the responses was one from Steve McIntosh, the leader of the Developmental Politics group, the head of The Institute for Cultural Evolution, and a leading Integral thinker. McIntosh commented in response to my post:
Decay, the force of entropy, is continuously breaking things down. Human history accordingly evinces regular events of destruction. Some of this is “creative destruction” (making way for something better). But often, we see merely “destructive destruction” (which counts as regression).
Cultural evolution is not predetermined, it is highly contingent and primarily “up to us.” So naturally, its course is marked by both growth and degrowth. Nevertheless, something more keeps coming from something less over the long term. The abiding possibility of cultural failure and regression (and its frequent occurrence), however, is necessary for freedom’s exercise to have moral meaning.
I was particularly struck by McIntosh’s statement that “cultural evolution is not predetermined; it is highly contingent and primarily ‘up to us.’” This strikes me as undoubtedly true, and a really good news/bad news statement. Yes, human action can make a difference, but human indifference and ignorance (which precludes meaningful action) can muck it all up. Humanity, looking backward, especially over the last 250 years, has been riding a rocket of material development and knowledge acquisition that has gained momentum as it seeks to escape the pull of gravity. But have we enough thrust to escape the gravity of finitude? Of our own inherent weaknesses? Economist Eric Beinhocker talks about the “great transition” ahead; and indeed, we do face one. If we pass it, we will look upon our past as a comedy, a happy ending. But if we fail, we will look upon the human project as a tragedy: so much promise, so much effort, wasted because of flaws that were within our power to alleviate. I want a comedy; I fear a tragedy. I keep plugging away in my small way—as I'm sure anyone reading this does—to realize the comedy and avoid the tragedy. But the crucial point is not to speculate about the outcome, but to act to create it. Now, more than ever in human history, we have the power, the capacity, to write our own ending. Which ending do we intend to pursue?
Where do we start? There will be no single convincing, comprehensive answer to this query. But that being said, we need to start everywhere. We need to change our conditions through individual and collective (political) action. We need to realize that for all the perfection and accomplishment we imagine, we have some very stark, persistent, and deadly traits that we will need to continue to deal with far into the future. And we need to get started down these multiple tracks to reach our multiple goals. The clock is ticking.
