Restore nineteenth century optimism.

Which was when fear of global warming, overpopulation, ex Warsaw Pact nukes being grabbed by terrorist organisations, and other 'end of the world' ish fears (millernian fears, perhaps?) arose throughout the world. One fear exits, another arrives.

I also find it difficult to agree with the forum's marxists going on about anti-proletarian culture in the elites of society. For example, many Romantics were also political radicals (at least, in the late 18th-early 19th centuries many were)-far from being anti worker. Lord Byron supported the Luddites-a working class movement-who acted not, I think, because they decided that they wanted to stay poor and opressed forever, but due to concerns on their part about Cheap Labour from Those Dark Satanic Mills putting them out of a job. And besides, I don't know about you, but many people do find trees and fields prettier to look at than a smoke-belching factory. (Although modern steampunks may beg to differ!)

On the other hand, I do agree that there were many, many ideas of 'progress' in the 19th century. Everything from eugenics, to empire building, to communism, were all discussed. You also see even the Downtrodden Masses getting some of their progress fulfilled, with (for example) the British Labour party being formed in the early 20th. On the other hand, there was plenty of invasion literature and suchlike to suggest that optimism was far from universal.

This incoherent ramble of a post has gone on for long enough.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Which was when fear of global warming, overpopulation, ex Warsaw Pact nukes being grabbed by terrorist organisations, and other 'end of the world' ish fears (millernian fears, perhaps?) arose throughout the world. One fear exits, another arrives.
Similarly, late 19th century and early 20th century England was filled with fears of invasions, being passed by other Great powers, ever ominous fear of the decline of the west, and yes, foretelling of Apocalyptical wars.

But in both cases, the general feelings was of optimism and progress, among the upper class and the materially better off at least.
 
One of the things that you will notice about culture and popular philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth was a certain sense of optimism that seems not to exist now. The last fragments of it seem to have disappeared in the sixties but most seemed to have disappeared (in the west anyway) earlier. How can we arrange it so that this sense of optimism and the inevitability of progress continues to the present day? Or alternately how can this sense be restored sometime in the future?

In the late 19th century, such optimistic ideas were completely grounded in the experiences and attitudes of a few rich western societies. I suspect nobody really asked people in India, China, or most other non-western societies if progess (defined largely in scientific, intellectual, and technological terms) was occuring or even desireable.

Today, with such a diverse world-culture, there is much less agreement on what "progess" means. Does it still mean better and more efficient machines and new technological and scientific innovations? Or does it mean returing to a less technological lifestyle? Does it mean abandoning old superstitions and religious dogmas or preserving them? Does it mean being part of an increasingly interdependent global economic system or becoming more locally self-sufficient? Does it mean anything anymore?
 

Hendryk

Banned
In the late 19th century, such optimistic ideas were completely grounded in the experiences and attitudes of a few rich western societies.
And even then, as others have noted, late 19th-century Western societies were pervaded with a diffuse dread, a fear of decline or decadence which occasionally reached neurotic levels. By the first decade of the 20th century it had got to the point where many people thought the only remedy to that perceived decadence would be a nice, bracing little war.
 
And even then, as others have noted, late 19th-century Western societies were pervaded with a diffuse dread, a fear of decline or decadence which occasionally reached neurotic levels. By the first decade of the 20th century it had got to the point where many people thought the only remedy to that perceived decadence would be a nice, bracing little war.

It's remarkable how widespread the feeling was in Britain the WW1 was being fought to keep things as they were or, better, how they ought to be and had surely been before the creeping uncertainties of the Edwardian age; the Germans were frequently represented as the forces of some sort of destructive nihilistic modernism. This started to break down well before the war was over: everybody loves 'as in the ancient time' rhetoric, but in practice winning the war meant a quiet revolution in government. But in 1914 it was everywhere, and that's just the interesting thing.

Now, this is just what you might expect from a public-school class raised to believe that games were war, war was a game, and heroic death was beautiful; and yet faced with a reality in which the empire was menaced not just by mass-politics, socialism, the Irish question, incipient Indian nationalism, the Germans, the decline of industry, and the shift of trade; but also by becoming really really boring for the average imperialist. (Isn't it fascinating that that splendid novel of British decline from the inside, The Riddle of the Sands, opens by conjuring up the figure not of a diabolical German but of an officious, besuited junior member of the Burmese civil service?)

But what about the rest? The working classes who had been going on strike with exploding frequency, the women who had been agitating for suffrage, and the rival militias who had been arming to decide the fate of Ireland all signed up for the war effort. One can't avoid the impression that the certainty of the great adventure, hurrah! was preferable to the uncertainties of these fights for various kinds of future even for the people who were supposed to be fighting for them.

You can say this for the summer of 1914: nothing like it had happened before and probably it never will again.
 
Last edited:
The reality of the late 19th Century was that people were not optimistic, they expected that civilization was overheating, going out of control. They in fact believed that civilization would spiral to its own destruction, and there was already a concept that any future war would be apocalyptic. Sci-fi authors in fact predicted that in any future war the spade would outdo the rifle in terms of importance, there were already predictions of apocalyptic land wars involving recognizable precursors of armor, social strife was actually rising in all European societies, not just Russia, and there was a whole arms race before 1914. In addition there had also been a string of successful territorial land-grab wars in Europe decided by rapid, lightning, brutal application of firepower *before* logistics got involved.....
 
Science fiction wasn't everything, though. I don't know about other countries, but in Britain the mud of war had been transformed unto baptismal water for the Muscular Christian soul. And the army had managed to learn from the Boer Woer tha the working classes needed to shape up and that cavalry still worked.

I exaggerate, of course. The British army took lots of steps to get ready for modernity before 1914, or it could never have done what it did. But all reforms were asking 'How can we get the best possible results from a force officered by men who can kick a ball about and conjugate Latin verbs'?
 
Gah, typo. I mean a small-p in the first instance of "progressive."

Many French thought it "progress" to focus on going to war with Germany; many Germans felt that "progress" lay in lording it over other nations (culturally if not economically or politically); a sizable chunk of the Left thought bomb-throwing was "progress."

One of the few constants was that a lot of Western societies genuinely believed that war and combat were good things.

Most Non-Western societies as well, as long as they were winning. The Arabs, the Persians, the Mongols, the Turks and others were all Non-Western and liked to go conquering.
 
Science fiction wasn't everything, though. I don't know about other countries, but in Britain the mud of war had been transformed unto baptismal water for the Muscular Christian soul. And the army had managed to learn from the Boer Woer tha the working classes needed to shape up and that cavalry still worked.

I exaggerate, of course. The British army took lots of steps to get ready for modernity before 1914, or it could never have done what it did. But all reforms were asking 'How can we get the best possible results from a force officered by men who can kick a ball about and conjugate Latin verbs'?

True, but it springs to mind primarily because the invasion genre has been displaced by its more exotic spawn, the alien invasion. The root of all of those alien invasion tales people write today was fear of a German or French invasion in English literature and reverse tales in other literature. On the other hand people in the early 21st Century tend to forget that the older model US conservatism might have wanted a small government but it absolutely balked a large, professional standing army and considered the mere proposal of one anti-American.
 
True, but it springs to mind primarily because the invasion genre has been displaced by its more exotic spawn, the alien invasion. The root of all of those alien invasion tales people write today was fear of a German or French invasion in English literature and reverse tales in other literature. On the other hand people in the early 21st Century tend to forget that the older model US conservatism might have wanted a small government but it absolutely balked a large, professional standing army and considered the mere proposal of one anti-American.

Yep: that craze gave rise to modern espionage thrillers, too, via The Riddle of the Sands. But even the wry, realistic version it represents, and the subversive science fiction of Wells, in the end portray members of the British armed forces as playing up, playing up, and playing the game.
 
The reality of the late 19th Century was that people were not optimistic, they expected that civilization was overheating, going out of control. They in fact believed that civilization would spiral to its own destruction, and there was already a concept that any future war would be apocalyptic. Sci-fi authors in fact predicted that in any future war the spade would outdo the rifle in terms of importance, there were already predictions of apocalyptic land wars involving recognizable precursors of armor, social strife was actually rising in all European societies, not just Russia, and there was a whole arms race before 1914. In addition there had also been a string of successful territorial land-grab wars in Europe decided by rapid, lightning, brutal application of firepower *before* logistics got involved.....

I see what you are getting at, but I don't believe it represented the overall sentiment in the west. Basing the argument on cautionary tales by Wells and others misses the point that even these apocalyptic visions were based on a notion of progress - that humanity's scientific and technological knowledge would continue to increase. If I was a writer in 1900 wanting to sell articles or books about what the "future hold in store for us", I'd write about steam-powerd armored landships and giant dirigbles laying waste to cities with poison gas, not something about all people living happy lives made possible through robot cooks, amazing medicines, and socialism. Both scenarios are flip sides of the notion of progress, but only one would sell lots of books.
 
I take it that you're not familiar with the term fin-de-siècle.

The devastation and horrors of the World Wars not come out of a golden age. That period was gussied-up by post-WWI sentimentalists; there exist almost no contemporary accounts referring to the period 1890-1914 as anything resembling an "Age of Optimism"--the Belle Epoque is a bourgeois fantasy. "Dynamic anxiety" is probably the best term for the end of the 19th Century.

Agreed. Uninformed nostalgia blurs our perception of the era.

1860s: Wars in the US & in Europe (for more on European "optimism" see the next decade)

1870s: Reconstruction in the US... unification of Germany & Italy at the expense of France & Austro-Hungary; Holy Alliance is still influential in Europe at this time (1848 Revolutions failed to overthrow it's influence; it loosened it) which means that conservatism, monarchical police states, propaganda, censorship are flourishing in Europe and continue to do so until the end of WWI; in Austria for example, people would bolt their doors in this time period sometimes with 13 locks & hide from the outside world with heavy curtains. If you want something you can relate to, watch the film "The Illusionist" to get a sense of the police-state world that was the late 19th Century in Europe.

1880s: "Bomb throwing anarchists" in the US (Haymarket affair), worries about Immigration begin again in America; Europe continues its age of censorship & police states

1890s: Height of the fin de siecle in Europe; Labor strikes in America, economic panic in America

1900s: Largest Labor strike in 1902, Economic Crisis in 1907, & Scandals (Evelyn Nesbit)

1910s: World War, War Profiteering, & Influenza

1920s: Red Scares & Gangsters

1930s: World wide Depression, rise of Fascism, Bonnie & Clyde

1940s: World War; height of the Mafia

1950s: Cold War, McCarthyism, Bomb Scares, JDs (Juvenile Delinquents)

1960s: Cold War

I don't see a century of "peace & optimism" I see a century of nervous nellies & panic-stricken people.

What the original poster seems to be pining for is the spirit of the Progressive Era that was embodied by the GI generation until they were discredited through Nixon in the 1970s.

The misty view of the Progressive Era comes from the GI perception of the time (they were kids through the tail-end of the thing, just old enough to remember it, but not old enough to have a clear memory of the damn thing) and that nostalgicized view of the period is mostly embodied by such Middle Class entertainments like Disneyland's Main Street USA or Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man". However even in "The Music Man", the first song (which often is overlooked in analyzing the thing) actually looks at the pressures and times in a realistic manner to some degree:

"I have to offer credit, just like those department stores back east."

"You can talk, you can bicker, you can talk all you wanna, but it's different than it was."

"Why it's the Model-T Ford that made the trouble, made the people wanna get up and go 24 miles to the county seat."

"It's the you need a biscuit that's caused all the trouble. Put the biscuit in the air-tight sanitized packaging. Who's gonna patronize a little bitty two by four kinda store anymore?"

We're not invited to enter a secure and stable universe (as most people tend to view The Music Man depicting) we're invited to enter a confused, slightly chaotic, changing, and topsy turvy world. Change that has some people (traveling salesmen, railroad owners, & small town grocery store owners--and small businesses in general in this case) worried for their futures--which is especially worrisome since those people are the bedrock of the society that The Music Man depicts.

Ultimately the largest critique of The Music Man is that those who go around selling the promise of "change" & "dreams" are selling you a delusion and are usually just looking to cash in & leave town as fast as they possibly can. You can buy into it & live in a world of illusion or choose not to. The choice is yours. The only way The Music Man ends happily is luckily enough, the fiend is reformed in the end by the heroine, who magically contains all the practical skills necessary to make his illusion a reality that the town can buy in to. Essentially saying that you need a balance of vision & practicality in order to make that grand dream a reality.

~Chas'88

P.S. Excuse my mostly American biased POV.
 
Agreed. Uninformed nostalgia blurs our perception of the era.

1860s: Wars in the US & in Europe (for more on European "optimism" see the next decade)

1870s: Reconstruction in the US... unification of Germany & Italy at the expense of France & Austro-Hungary; Holy Alliance is still influential in Europe at this time (1848 Revolutions failed to overthrow it's influence; it loosened it) which means that conservatism, monarchical police states, propaganda, censorship are flourishing in Europe and continue to do so until the end of WWI; in Austria for example, people would bolt their doors in this time period sometimes with 13 locks & hide from the outside world with heavy curtains. If you want something you can relate to, watch the film "The Illusionist" to get a sense of the police-state world that was the late 19th Century in Europe.

1880s: "Bomb throwing anarchists" in the US (Haymarket affair), worries about Immigration begin again in America; Europe continues its age of censorship & police states

1890s: Height of the fin de siecle in Europe; Labor strikes in America, economic panic in America

1900s: Largest Labor strike in 1902, Economic Crisis in 1907, & Scandals (Evelyn Nesbit)

1910s: World War, War Profiteering, & Influenza

1920s: Red Scares & Gangsters

1930s: World wide Depression, rise of Fascism, Bonnie & Clyde

1940s: World War; height of the Mafia

1950s: Cold War, McCarthyism, Bomb Scares, JDs (Juvenile Delinquents)

1960s: Cold War

I don't see a century of "peace & optimism" I see a century of nervous nellies & panic-stricken people.

What the original poster seems to be pining for is the spirit of the Progressive Era that was embodied by the GI generation until they were discredited through Nixon in the 1970s.

The misty view of the Progressive Era comes from the GI perception of the time (they were kids through the tail-end of the thing, just old enough to remember it, but not old enough to have a clear memory of the damn thing) and that nostalgicized view of the period is mostly embodied by such Middle Class entertainments like Disneyland's Main Street USA or Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man". However even in "The Music Man", the first song (which often is overlooked in analyzing the thing) actually looks at the pressures and times in a realistic manner to some degree:

"I have to offer credit, just like those department stores back east."

"You can talk, you can bicker, you can talk all you wanna, but it's different than it was."

"Why it's the Model-T Ford that made the trouble, made the people wanna get up and go 24 miles to the county seat."

"It's the you need a biscuit that's caused all the trouble. Put the biscuit in the air-tight sanitized packaging. Who's gonna patronize a little bitty two by four kinda store anymore?"

We're not invited to enter a secure and stable universe (as most people tend to view The Music Man depicting) we're invited to enter a confused, slightly chaotic, changing, and topsy turvy world. Change that has some people (traveling salesmen, railroad owners, & small town grocery store owners--and small businesses in general in this case) worried for their futures--which is especially worrisome since those people are the bedrock of the society that The Music Man depicts.

Ultimately the largest critique of The Music Man is that those who go around selling the promise of "change" & "dreams" are selling you a delusion and are usually just looking to cash in & leave town as fast as they possibly can. You can buy into it & live in a world of illusion or choose not to. The choice is yours. The only way The Music Man ends happily is luckily enough, the fiend is reformed in the end by the heroine, who magically contains all the practical skills necessary to make his illusion a reality that the town can buy in to. Essentially saying that you need a balance of vision & practicality in order to make that grand dream a reality.

~Chas'88

P.S. Excuse my mostly American biased POV.

Strongly agree, people tend to have a rose colored view of the past. I tend to be of "The world is slowly getting better" school. Not blind optimism but a realization that the past was worse for the most part. Even by the 19th century most people were better off than the serfs or slaves that they were in previous eras. A lot of what a previous poster called "bourgeoisie and petitsbourgeois' triumph " can be translated into the fact that the very desperately poor (IOW people on the verge of starvation) was a fraction of it was earlier except during the World Wars and to a lesser extent the Great Depression.
 
Not only all that CDA noted here, but only for the USA was WWII really a mostly positive experience and even then in the USA its more dislocating effects proved ultimately net gains (I highly doubt anyone will defend segregation in society or in the army, nor will very many people claim the USA is worse off for treating women equal to men at least under the law). Pretty much everywhere else the experience started at bad and slid into outright apocalyptic.
 
Not only all that CDA noted here, but only for the USA was WWII really a mostly positive experience and even then in the USA its more dislocating effects proved ultimately net gains (I highly doubt anyone will defend segregation in society or in the army, nor will very many people claim the USA is worse off for treating women equal to men at least under the law). Pretty much everywhere else the experience started at bad and slid into outright apocalyptic.

I agree with the point - a few of us feeling good about ourselves in no way makes up for the horrors visited on most of the countries involved - but although Britain's experience of war was grimier and more exhausting than that of America, it is still a universally positive memory and, indeed, pretty much the national epic of Britishness.
 
I agree with the point - a few of us feeling good about ourselves in no way makes up for the horrors visited on most of the countries involved - but although Britain's experience of war was grimier and more exhausting than that of America, it is still a universally positive memory and, indeed, pretty much the national epic of Britishness.

True, but at the same token the USA never had sustained bombing raids or ballistic missile assaults on our major cities. Nor did the USA have to deal with the bit of the war where every time British armies met Germans or Japanese they got smashed, so we had rather less shocks to our ego. There was six months of the Pacific War and Kasserine Pass, complete neglect of Italy, and magnifying our successes in Overlord. British experience in WWII was grim all the way around, and the Russian experience in WWII is one of the few that qualifies for Grimdark in its fullest meaning. :(
 
True, but at the same token the USA never had sustained bombing raids or ballistic missile assaults on our major cities.

You don't have to deal with it raining all the time, either. ;) The essence of Britain's WW2 folk-memory is that we are a nation of masochists. The sustained bombing raids were proof of our superior moral fibre.

Nor did the USA have to deal with the bit of the war where every time British armies met Germans or Japanese they got smashed, so we had rather less shocks to our ego.

While our defeats were disastrous in that they prolonged the war and let to our boys getting killed or captured, we were frankly in need of some shocks to our ego. As demonstrated by Dad's Army, success isn't the point.

Yes, it was a grim time, but that's part of its appeal.
 
I would argue that there was more optimism, mostly because the apocalyptic conflict (whether class, national, or otherwise) coming was considered to be a good thing by most writers, or at least something that could be avoided. This was by no means universal, though: a lot of the 19th century/early 20th century utopian novels go through an apocalyptic period of chaos on the way (cf. Wells' The World Set Free, with a nuclear world war I before world government ensues), and a few could even be considered dystopian (Caesar's Column is a good example, where world revolution against oppressive corporations destroys world civilizatoin in the '80s, and Swiss colonists in Uganda try to build a better society which won't suffer the same fate).

To get back the optimism of that time: well, as stated, we kind of did in the '90s. And I wouldn't say 9/11 changed everything, the people of the fin de siecle had their own terror threat - bomb-throwing anarchists! I think if nuclear weapons had never been developed, the lack of the use of chemical and biological weapons in WWII might have been seen as a way forward, and we could have had less pessimism and apocalyptic sentiment in the '50s and '60s - if we weren't busy with WWIII, that is.
 
Top