On Progressivism & The Barbarians

There seems to be hardly any intellectual virus more tenacious than this particular strain; yet the emptiness of the idea should be self-evident to any thinking person. The idea is that the present is better than the past, because this is the present and the past is the past, and consequent upon this piece of monumental imbecility is the idea that anything old, however venerable it really is, is unworthy of attention and contemptible. This strange mentality is enamoured of buzzwords, particularly the word forward as well as the very obvious progress. They both mean the same thing, of course. We must move forward! (Why?) You are stuck in the past! You cling to ancient and outmoded ideas! Your outlook upon life is medieval!

Anyone who seriously thinks in this way needs to examine this philosophy and see what basis it has in reason. It is true that certain advances have been made in medicine, and discoveries in the physical sciences generally: and I think it is this discovery that creates an illusion of progress. Something once discovered is unlikely to be forgotten for a long time, generally speaking. And continuous discovery creates an impression that things are getting better, and insofar as the expansion of knowledge in particular fields is concerned, this may be the case. But to extrapolate from this that old things are to be done away with and new things to be welcomed is stupid.

I hope the reader does not think, when I use words such as "stupid," "monumental imbecility," "self-evident to any thinking person," I am merely extolling my own opinions and despising those of others. I would not use such words, or any words, if I were not determined to insist upon reality. I have no desire to irritate people for the sake of it; that would be odious and futile. I sincerely hope and pray that I would never descend to such depths. I should also make it clear that when I use words, I try to express my meaning in the words that give that meaning. It is amusing, sometimes, to see people infer subtexts that I had not intended. It is also somewhat vexing.

I hope nobody thinks that because I object to the Progressivist Philosophy (if it can be called that) I think that old things must always be revered because they are old, and that new things must be resisted because they are new: this would be the exactly opposite error, of precisely equal gravity to that which I am opposing. I am suggesting that we consider reasonably what is new and what old, that we exercise due caution in rejecting old things and accepting new, that when old things become noxious they must be reformed or done away with, and that when new things are harmful they must be cast away.



I find that this Progressivist outlook tends (though not invariably) to belong to that category of persons whom Belloc called "The Barbarians," mentioned by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen in his essay on Belloc. Here are Wilhelmsen's words:



“The Barbarian” within is the man who laughs at the fixed convictions of our inheritance. He is the man with a perpetual sneer on his lips. He is above it all: he judges the poor believer in the street or in the church, some old woman huddled before a shrine of the Virgin mumbling her beads, and he judges her harshly. It is hard enough to come by belief and to live in it, but to throw it away for a cheap joke is despicable. Such are the Barbarians.



And these are Belloc's:



The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers .... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.



And these are Belloc's also; and with them I conclude:



We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.



15th October, 2010