Against “progress”
By Paul J Cella Posted in Culture — Comments (21) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It is a repetitive feature of the polemics of proponents of homosexual unions to argue that there is no “evidence” that this enormous, unprecedented innovation will result in lasting spoliation of society. As an articulate reader at my own blog phrases it, “Though many have tried, no one has come up with any actual facts. It’s an unscientific fantasy that same-sex civil marriage ‘damages society.’”
By thus limiting the range of acceptable evidence in such a manner as to nearly insure that their position will prevail — in the first place because sociological facts of the kind demanded will be years if not decades in coming (it took 25 years for the alarm sounded by Daniel P. Moynihan about the deterioration of the black family to really enter the public mind), and in the second place because they have preemptively ruled out of order any assessment of the moral climate of society — the Liberals have accomplished a rhetorical maneuver of great efficacy. They have chosen the field of battle, and we should not be surprised to discover that it is one very favorable to them.
Hence if we say that the very fact that, as a consequence of the logic of gay marriage, we are now obliged to reassemble the arguments against polygamy, bestiality, incest and perhaps even pedophilia, and present them to the public in only the very narrow language of legal rationalism; if we say that this alone indicates the damage sodomite “marriage” has inflicted on our society, they will reply that such evidence is unscientific, subjective, or some such term of sociological derision, and dismiss it from the debate.
When men cannot see that forcing a society to make a dramatic reappraisal “on the merits” of such patent moral and social deformities as polygamy and incest, is evidence of a drab regression and decay, then they have abandoned the virtue of discernment. They have lobotomized themselves. Scientific rationalism cannot judge of moral progress or retrogression, and therefore it must rule moral facts out of order. It would be as if we demanded that, in order to enter the public debate at all, the Liberal must first disabuse himself of all notions, concepts and language of “rights.” He would be struck dumb.
So as is frequently the case, on examination we perceive that the Conservatives are not opposed to objective progress after all — they are simply opposed to degeneration masquerading as progress. Our civilization made great progress — real, objective moral progress, progress that many societies, past and present, never made — by driving polygamy and incest out of our society (to the extent that we could); and now the “progressives” want to revisit it, because the logic of their favored innovation requires it — and all this in the name of progress.
Therefore I say that one of the most urgent tasks for Conservatives today, in the gloaming of modernity, is to dislodge this idol of Progress from the public mind, for it is a strange and jealous idol indeed. Now again: it is not real progress or advancement, much less concrete achievement, that we object to, but rather (a) enervation and rot impersonating progress, and, even more importantly, (b) the idea of Progress as a mindless but intentional historical process; purpose without mind; Providence without God; a notion of directional objective conjured, somehow, by directionless forces. The first is self-deception of a very base order, of the kind that makes otherwise thoughtful men imagine we are actually advancing when we take up anew, with pomp and solemnity, the question of whether a society which indulges incest and pedophilia is better, ceritas paribus, than one which proscribes them; and the second is nothing but absurd superstition. But I am afraid it is simply true that these two dreary things together comprise a not insignificant portion of the modern Liberal’s intellectual furniture; and because Liberalism is the dominant ideology, these two dreary things thus comprise a significant portion of the collective bafflement and alienation of our age.
It is simply assumed, for example, that we have made progress in the area of education; that organized ignorance has been, if not defeated, at least held at bay. This assumption becomes increasingly untenable as a man becomes more familiar with the literature of the past, until he is confronted with the distinct possibility that it is but a self-serving illusion. The most decisive evidence belying the conventional story of educational progress is the sense which builds on the reader that the older a book is, the more it can naturally demand of its readers. He discovers, with perhaps a bit of a shock, that a book from the late 19th century could print passages of untranslated Latin, Greek, French and perhaps even German and trust in the resources of the reader to discern its meaning. The latter two, of course, could be explained away as bespeaking of a primarily European audience, but I do not see how the former two can mean anything but a deeper learning in the reading public. We may have more broadly dispersed some learning, but we have in the process leveled it markedly; it is at least an open question whether these two developments together constitute progress.
Anyway, Progress is a superstition because, as Chesterton once put it in another context, it is a hoary relic, a narrow fragment chipped from a larger and saner whole. Our progressive believes that there is purposeful order to the universe, and especially purposeful order in history, but he recoils from the logic behind this belief. He asseverates with great gusto the last philosophical application of a specific theology, but hacks away the whole scaffolding of the theology itself. For the principle of Divine Providence is simply a deduction from the logic of Christian Revelation; from, specifically, the miraculous logic of the Incarnation, when the omnipotent and merciful Lord of Creation entered bodily into history. Once admit that God really became a Galilean carpenter (the really astonishing idea) and it is hardly absurd to posit that God is also the meticulous and mysterious craftsman of history. But what are we to make of those who deny with indignation and understandable bewilderment that God became man, and yet cling to the distant deduction that a mysterious Purpose guides history? We see them write and speak of history as a story of progress and enlightenment, yet fail completely to grasp the unreason in talking of a story with no Author.
So at once we have progress that is an imposture (and frankly, not particularly well-concealed one: for what great insight is there in affirming that polygamy is an evil?); and progress that is little more than superstition. Two fine things for good men to oppose without apology.
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Against “progress” 21 Comments (0 topical, 21 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I think that is clear to most. But this person who writes of no proof of any damages that come to a society because of the change of union based relationships that typically have provided decades of family lineage, support and personal identity for the individual when there is a change in social values and morals is stunningly wrong.(normally you'd see some value even when it's wrong, not in this case). These support systems are only one of hundreds of reconfirmable social data conclusions.
Although my thinking and beliefs make me far more liberal than not, it is also my belief that misleading information, not the "whole truth" type statements, flat-out-lies and all other various forms of smoke and mirrors has always irritated me a bit regardless of it's origin.
I can assure your reader Paul J, that there is plenty of information and evidence on this subject that has mostly been accepted by social scientist the world over. To say there is no such evidence is either a lie, ignorance, or some other circumstance that could not be refered to as enlightened or learned.
Indeed, social heritage is one of the first casualties of non-traditional (heterosexaul) relationships that begin to affect a larger percentage of the population than what is the biologically norm. (accepted at 5 - 6% generally). Indeed when it becomes a learned behavior, rather than a dna condition that affects this normal percentage, then you will see a massive increase in many other social conditions.
This can get your respondor Pual, to begin some kind of research into the subject before they open their (fingers) again.
a. Significant increase in divorce rate.
b. Significant increase in the number of children seeking mental treatment.
c. Significant increase in "boy crimes" ages 11-17.
d. Significant increase in "girl crimes" ages 11-17.
e. Decrease in successful marriages.
and there are hundreds more. All that can be identified as partially and in some cases totally responsible for the statistical change. Which by the way is normal in any society that goes through socialization and value changes.
Your reader has it backward. A societies personal behaviors do not change when it becomes industrialized, accomplishes a moon landing, develops court systems. It changes when the values and morals of a society change, and only then really.
The value and morals system that accompany most traditional family units studied world-wide, clearly accomplish great psychological and mental stability advantages over those sytems that do not and there is much more.
I do research for no one for free, but it can be found rather easily.
Good Day.
You know, the idea of progress ought properly be a conservative icon, not (at least no longer) a Leftist one. After all the Founding Fathers were deeply imbued with the Enlightenment faith in progress and they saw themselves as creating a true Novus Ordo Saeclorum in founding the American Republic. That naïve faith in progress took its first serious hit in their own lifetimes with the devestation wrought by the French Revolution, but it recovered handily in the 19th century as science and technology (and freer markets, and the growth of democracy) transformed the world and fueled a various reform movements. Of course the World Wars and the horrors of Communism did deal the theory of progress some very serious wounds, and the threat of nuclear weapons cast a dark cloud even over science. Still, it's mostly the Left that has picked up the Gloom-and-Doom chant, first over nukes now over global warming, "peak oil" and the like.
If America is going to survive and flourish as something other than yet another cynical great power seeking mastery, then I do think we need to hold onto something of our Founding Fathers' faith in the future. America is not just as "idea", but surely it must not ever stop including its founding idea?
Now, on the question at hand I have two main questions here which I respectfully ask its opponents to answer.
- What harm do you fear? An increase in divorce rates? A decrease in marriage rates? An increase in single parenthood? Something else? I am not trying to be obnoxious here, I don't want to get into shouting matches with anyone. But I do think if we are going to debate issues like this we need to be precise in our terms and not just rely on ill-defined or contentless slogans like "Protect marriage". What is the concrete, real-world threat to marriage.
- Having defined the threat, how is it believed to propagate? I have yet to see anyone propose an actual cause-and-effect mechanism for how gay marriage will alter the behavior of non-gays. For example, when the ADC program was introduced, an opponent of the program could easily have pointed out something which ought have been obvious even at the time: paying single women with children will influence such women not to marry (what you subsidize you get more of). Likewise with no-fault divorce: remove an impediment to divorce and of course you will get more it! But with gay marriage no causative mechanism is ever mapped out. That's why I am always so critical of these arguments since they appear to rely not on real world cause-and-effect but on some form of sympathetic magic, spooky-action-at-a-distance causality.
I used to be pretty sure of the definition of a Conservative: one who wishes to keep the government as unobtrusive as possible in the private and business sectors. I thought conservatives were against overly regulating business and private affairs.
But what I don't understand is how modern conservatives reconcile their purported wish for smaller government AND their wish to have it regulate the legality of contracts of marriage between two (or more) people.
I think polygamy is... gross, to be honest. But why is it, again, that it's illegal? I'm not being deliberately obtuse. I don't know the legal rationale for its criminality. If someone wants multiple spouses, why should I care?
(I know a lot of the arguments regarding the exploitation of women in this scenario -- and I agree with them. But we allow women to be exploited in several other legal circumstances, by their own choice: pornography, for instance. That grosses me out, too -- but I'm not advocating its criminalization.)
I can only think of one really plausible argument against polygamy: it would be a paperwork nightmare. WHo gets what in case of divorce? What about custody? Ugh.
But back to gay marriage, which really is neither here nor there compared to polygamy...
Setting aside personal religious beliefs (and set them aside we must, if we are to remain a secular society open to ALL people without regard to religion)... What changes if two women are allowed to get married and assume the rights and responsibilities of that legal contract? I cannot imagine society being widely affected by this, except to the extent that those who consider it an abomination will continue their hue and cry about God's will.
There are over 300 million people in this country. Quite a large percentage of that number do not subscribe to Christianity. Jews, atheists, Moslems, to name but a few. A very large cross-section of the population -- including many, many Christians -- has absolutely no quarrel with gay marriage.
In case it's not obvious, I'm not a Christian. As such, I DO feel threatened when organized Christians attempt to legislate personal and private behaviour. And make no mistake, there is a segment that wants not only to eliminate the possibility of legal gay marriage and civil unions, but would also, if granted their will, make homosexuality a crime again. That is what frightens me about the encroachment of ARGUABLY Christian beliefs into the law. Are we to be governed by precedent (the Constitution) or by the dominant religion of the day?
There may come a time when Christianity falls into the minority. I doubt Christians would be any less alarmed than I am right now, should, say, Shari'a law be put forth as the guiding principles for our legal system.
"Conservative": Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.
"Liberal": Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
Source: Dictionary.com
some sort of faith in progress is the hallowed tradition, as I pointed out by invoking the Founding Fathers. I could have gone even farther back and invoked the Puritans who, despite their bad rep as censorious theocrats, came to the New World with the intent of building a New Jerusalem.
The one great difference between the American and European strands of conservatism is the fact that American conservatism completely rejected the old Throne and Altar mindset that in Europe dreamed of a perpetual, unchanging social order based on monarchy, aristocracy and an established Church: a place for every man and every man in his place. Americans never had any truck with that thinking, so that (at least until our own day) American conservatism was also, in its own way, progressive and forward looking. Liberals of course have a hard time seeing this, but both Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were also optimistitic believers in progress.
What bothers me these days is that there is a strain of illiberalism that has gotten loose in both our liberal and conservative movements and threatens the foundational ideas on which our country was built. No doubt it's always been there (the Know-Nothings, the Birchers, the petty Stalinism of the 60s Left), but these days it seems to be growing in virulence, as manifested by the rampant paranoia on the Left (Bush caused 9-11! The GOP voting machines stole the elections!) and the bitter unwillingness of the Right to compromise (say, on Bush's judges) even though nearly half the country is against them.
Or take gay marriage: unlike abortion this issue readily admits of compromise (e.g., civil unions) yet there few people on either side will accept compromise. On one side we have the "No Separate But Equal Unions" fanatics and on the other folks who think any accommodation of the reality of same sex people here is the end of civilization as we know it.
The great thing about conservatism is that as a philosophy, it always loses eventually. Conservatism is fated to always fight rearguard battles, after the van of progress has already pierced the line of tradition. Even when you momentarily triumph, it merely helps determine the terms at the surrender table. You fight until you lose, then you form a new line several decades away and cast your defiances, only to have that line too destroyed by the advance of humanity's progress.
So gnash your teeth at the perfidy of modern times. If you go back and read your books from the 19th century, so full of Latin and Greek to edify your high brows, you will find conservatives of the time gnashed their teeth against the "modern" amoral nature of their times as well.
This is not to say you do not serve a valuable function. You help filter out the excess, you serve as a brake on the system to reduce unintended consequences of changes to tradition, but you still lose out in the end, forced to compromise, to preserve some aspect of what you think is important. If you're lucky, it will remain in the new environment, if not, it will become a dusty anachronism which fades away. Conservatism erodes, just like a boulder in the stream. Alter the course, sure. Stop the flow? Rarely, if ever.
As for the engine of progress and the Author of the story, well, in any event the Author gave us free will, which puts the pen in our collective hands.
Civil unions for all, "marriage" left to religions.
If a civil union confers upon the couple each and every single right and responsibility that a "marriage" would, it is a de facto marriage.
The government ought to get out of the habit of calling it "marriage" and all contracts of marital union between two people should be called "civil unions."
Married in a church? Lovely. You still need a piece of paper from the government to make it "legal." So, you're "married," in the eyes of God and all that -- but until you get that piece of paper declaring your relationship a "civil union," it don't mean squat.
Seems like a reasonable compromise to me, but for some reason, as you noted, there are some pretty voluble arguments against ANY government recognition of a "union" that doesn't consist of a man and a woman.
Go figure.
of only talking about social conservative and liberal thought while completely ignoring the impact of economic conservatism and liberlism on the morality or lack thereof in society. To say that loosend moral standards, and acceptance, is to blame for the breakup of the family is to ignore the fact that the increased financial independence of women has allowed them to escape abusive and awful marriages. We could go on and on into entirely economic discussions about how the industrial revolution completely changed the structure of the family, even affecting decisions about how many children people have and why people get married (as people move from agrarian based societies to wage based societies the economic reasons for having children--they are a source of labor and provide for you in your old age--break down).
Like it or not, marriage wasn't always about procreation, it was often about solidifying alliances, securing more land, getting a few extra cattle, getting rid of an excess mouth to feed.
I'm more to the left than most of the Republicans on this site, (esp. considering I outright support gay marriage) but I'd be surprised if there weren't many here that actually like that idea. Solves a lot of problems.
In fact, being libertarian, I don't think government should get involved in marriage at all, so calling all unions "civil unions" and leaving marriage to the Church would be perfect.
I'm a big fan of the view that much of the social change (for better or worse) we experience is driven by technology changing the limits of the possible (and sometimes the limits of the necessary) rather than by ideology or, still less, by any real change in the inherent virtue or depravity of the world. On another thread I traced this back as far as the Reformation which (I argued) would not have happened without printing technology. Likewise the sexual revolution: made possible by the Pill. And easy divorce: made possible by all the nifty labor saving devices and the mass commmunication and entertainment toys we now have, whereas before living alone was a difficult proposition, and seen as a severe ascetic practice even among the religiously committed (most monks lived communally; hermitting was rare).
in much of Europe. The Church wedding is completely separate and not recognized as your legal marriage. You have your Church wedding and then go to the Court house or Registrar for your civil (legal) wedding (or vice versa). In England until the mid-1980's the only Clergy that could also legally marry someone were priests in the Church of England. So if you got married in any other Church you had to arrange for a civil registrar (equivalent of a justice of the peace) to be present to perform the civil ceremony.
Of course many churches in this country (most notably the United Church of Christ) and some Jewish Congregations already perform marriages. They are just not recognized as legal by the state (except of course in Massachussetts).
Great diary. I may disagree with your opinions, but you put them forth beautifully.
the 'holy' part of holy matrimony is a sanction of the church, and should not be an expression of the state.
If the word 'marriage' conveys any more than what civil union conveys, as many would insist, in my view it should not be used by the state- the state should be the registrar of civil unions and leave marriage to the churches.
For those who want to defend 'what marriage is', in their view, I say this: Leave it to the folks who think like you (that is, let churches be the arbiter of what marriage is) and it will be safe with them. If you attempt to make it a state issue, what you'll now end up with is a situation where suddenly it's a moral imperative to impose your view on those who don't share it- and that's exactly the sort of conundrum the separation of church and state was designed to avoid.
posters here that have a problem with that idea.
However, I'd be all for it.
I used to be pretty sure of the definition of a Conservative: one who wishes to keep the government as unobtrusive as possible in the private and business sectors. I thought conservatives were against overly regulating business and private affairs.
But what I don't understand is how modern conservatives reconcile their purported wish for smaller government AND their wish to have it regulate the legality of contracts of marriage between two (or more) people.
Well said.
I think you should add that they historically have stood for promoting state's rights also (after Lincoln anyway).
The fact that modern conservatives don't want individual states to make their own call on the gay-marriage issue is also troubling and I don't see how they reconcile it.
In other words, this issue in particular reveals the very striking shift in current conservatism from conservatism of the past century. Maybe I'm just too conservative, but I don't like it. It involves intrusive federal government and weakening of state's rights.
The fact that modern conservatives don't want individual states to make their own call on the gay-marriage issue is also troubling and I don't see how they reconcile it.
I suspect that few conservatives would push the federal route if they didn't think some court somewhere was going to force 49 sovereign states to live with the ludicrous decision of Margaret Marshall and her merry band of judicial legislators on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
While there would certainly be some religious conservatives who would object to the legalization of homosexual marriage on a state-by-state basis, as long as it was done by the people's representatives (the legislatures) and not the courts, I seriously doubt that there would be the level of outrage that followed, say, this decision.
Let me attempt to be as thoughtful in reply as you were in your original post.
First, I take it on faith that you are aware conservatives come in many flavors. There are traditionalists, free-marketers, open-borders-types, religious conservatives, etc. That these groups are sometimes in conflict is not in dispute - but that's what a "big tent" is all about. We are hardly the monolithic group that some credit us as being.
Skipping a bit, homosexual marriage is certainly "here and there" when compared to polygamy - as polygamy is the logical next step. How is it you can say that a marriage can only be between any two people - why not three, four, seven, blah blah blah. The "slippery slope" argument, what not particularly satisfying intellectually, is certainly applicable here.
The problem with your line of reasoning is not that you wish to allow homosexuals to marry, but that you demand society as a whole put our seal-of-approval (in the form of a state-generated marriage license, I suppose) on that union. Well I hate to break it to you, but what you're hearing (in state after state that has had the opportunity to vote on these things) is that society as a whole is simply not ready to provide that seal - so the homosexual-rights gang has gone the nuclear route: the courts.
BTW, it is a misconception that homosexuals cannot marry. No one is denying the right of a homosexual to get married. What is being denied is the ability of a man and another man or a woman and another woman to obtain a piece of paper from the state sanctifying their relationship. You may consider that a distinction without a difference, but just ask any male/female pair of 1st cousins who want to marry whether or not they think the marriage laws are arbitrary.
If you're a man who wishes to marry another man, find a church that will perform the ceremony and go for it. But when you demand that society provide (through it's government) a seal-of-approval for something, then you have to accept that society may flat-out not want to do that.
That said, I have a no problem with extending to any couple the rights of commercial transaction that are afforded to married people (a civil union). Rights of property transaction, hospital visitation, and the like should not be limited solely to one group of people. Frankly, that could have been happening for many, many people across the nation right now, but that was simply not good enough for the homosexual-rights crowd. For them, nothing short of redefining what has been know for thousands of years as a marriage would do - and so, here we are.
What could be more conservative than keeping a millenniums-old institution from being redefined by a single appointee to the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?
I don't believe that I've brought religion into my side discussion at all and there is a simple reason for that. My arguments against homosexual marriage have nothing to with my religion (and I'm a Catholic, not that it matters) - but arise from my belief that every child deserves a mother and a father, and that the principal (not sole, but principal) reason for marriage is to procreate and school the next generation. Religion has nothing to do with that, so therefore to suggest that the drive to defeat the spread of homosexual marriage is driven by some sort of Christian fundamentalism is quite unfair.
Cheers.
That was one of the funniest things I've read in a long time, thanks!
that the question be settled upon the terrain of sociological facts not yet in existence, the cultural left is in effect commanding the rest of us to accede to its threats: "Allow us to create sets of facts on the ground for the next several generations; then we will study the matter, but by then, it will be impossible to undo them - and if you disagree, you are a bigot." This is their game; one almost senses a sort of esoteric purpose in their palpable dishonesty, a demand that only certain intellectual disciplines be permitted to address the question, which disciplines require so much time in order to gather their data that a set of facts (social arrangements) no one will be able to dislodge will arise in the interim. Heads, they win; tails, we lose.
What is nearly as preposterous as their belief in progress in the absence of any rational, metaphysical basis for it, is their superstition that such progress always and everywhere entails the liberation of individuals from constraints, even those constraints were are constitutive of civilization itself. Imagine such a universe! Progress is always, everywhere, and in the lives of all individuals, exactly what cultural leftists want! It amounts to nothing more than a trite little "just so" (im)morality tale, a grand "because I say so" asserted as the wish-projection of the left.