One of the worst things one generation can do is trap future generations in one specific way of life or one way of solving problems. There is perhaps more than some think to the witticism by someone whose name I can’t recall: “I refused to be a radical when I was young because I didn’t wish to be a reactionary when I grew old.” There is perhaps more, though perhaps not much more, to the simple observation that modern rock-and-roll music is little more than a set of ruts worn-down by one generation drawing upon deeper traditions such as African-American blues and Celtic music. That is, rock-and-roll was a genre with limited artistic possibilities and most of those seem to have been explored by men born in the period 1930-1950 or so. In a strange but interesting way, rock-and-roll music can be used as an analogical case to the problems I’ll be discussing in this essay.
Here goes:
Progressives, with their tightly organized programs embodying strong views on how to solve certain problems lock future generations into specific ways of organizing their political and social and economic activities.
Whatever you might think about the solutions of the New Deal, whatever true urgency you might attribute to the construction of the national security complex after World War II, we’re stuck with the particular programs and institutions, we’re stuck with the costs and the large number of federal bureaucrats and even engineers and scientists who are making good livings doing what might not need to be done any longer. If those things ever needed to be done.
I have to admit that I sometimes think of progressive-talk as being no more than self-interested rhetoric by which one group of intellectuals and businessmen and educators and others to justify building up programs which suit their fancy or provide them or their students or followers with good livings. This is unfair because there is a fairly high percentage of consistent progressives, that is — not `progressive’ on a selective basis — who seem truly motivated to make a better society, to care for the poor and elderly who’ve fallen through all available safety nets, and so forth. While the motivations are noble, progressives should think a bit more in terms of long-lasting programs which can solve one problem today and trap the next generation. They should realize that they are tying individual human beings and human communities together with artificial bonds of dependencies which might create serious conflicts in the long-run. Progressives, and anyone solving problems including businessmen, should realize that we human beings have a tendency not only to fight the previous war but also to burden future generations with the weaponry and strategies we’re developing for our current wars.
We should try to leave behind weaponry as light as possible and strategies as flexible as possible. It would be nice if we could even leave easily disposable weaponry and strategies.
Leaving behind the metaphors of warfare, I’ll also suggest we should be more humble and also more respectful toward our ancestors, troglodytes that they might have been by the standards of our enlightened age. We should consider that maybe even the feudal systems of Medieval and early Modern Europe were developed as serious solutions to problems when the solutions advertised by the moral giants of the Modern Age weren’t yet available. The feudal system might well have been an imperfect solution to the problems of a world with low levels of literacy, little non-animal power generation, few roads, regular invasions by Vikings in Western Europe, by horsemen from the central steppes of Asia in Eastern Europe, by other all Europeans including your angry brother with his band of knights and knaves. The feudal system became bad at least by staying around too long but that’s the way of all human institutions and will be true of the welfare systems, the educational systems, the legal systems being set up by the modern progressives.
I happen to believe these modern progressivist programs were poorly conceived to start with, that they create dependencies upon centralized powers in order to help those who fell through safety nets and those who have had bad experiences, even severe abuse, in communities which develop as part of natural human relationships, such as the family, or those which develop by bottom-up processes which we can handle pretty well, such as local political communities and ethnic clubs. It doesn’t matter to the point I’m making — modern progressives are no different from those in the past who solved the problems of their age and left the solutions to burden succeeding generations.
As I’ve said recently in various ways — we try too hard to build what must develop over time, bottom-up by way of a communal process in line with the unfolding of truth through a closely related communal process. We modern folk don’t seem to be all that good at either sort of communal process, that of nurturing communal life or that of seeking truth. Human beings will need to become good at those sorts of processes if our race is to ever to mature into a peaceful and well-ordered community on that largest of scales, the scale of the Body of Christ. (No, I’m not arguing for or against universal salvation, only that the Body of Christ will contain all those who will share God’s life for time without end and the pilgrim Body of Christ should be seen as including all living human beings as well as a good number of deceased human beings.)
I’m not claiming we should stop trying to help the poor and the downtrodden, I’m not claiming we should stop trying to solve all sorts of problems. I’m only claiming we should be humble enough and prudent enough to be modest in our efforts to develop programs which might — in principle — solve serious problems but prove to be burdens for future generations, burdens of the sort which make it difficult for our descendants to solve their problems or even to fine-tune any successful programs we leave behind us.