Social progress - inevitable logic of history or fluke?

I'm admittedly just talking about America here; and for most of the US at least, that was arguably only toward the end of the period (though indisputably not in the west). And on the other major social issues -- religious freedom, free speech, and personal freedom -- government and business interference in personal life only got worse (modern censorship, various prohibitions, forced sterilizations, etc). Plus eugenics, and various other medical "advances" that actually made things worse (lobotomies for "hysterical" women, etc).

Aye, but there were also improvements in worker's rights, business regulation, and legitimate medical science, and all the aforementioned stuff.
You have to take the good and the bad, you cannot look only at one.
 

katchen

Banned
I think that we can find historical theories to justify historical progress and we can find historical theories that justify history going in cycles. And I think that if we study some of these theories, our thinking will be enriched, we will have more to discuss and we won't be reinventing the wheel as much as we often do.
So here's a menu of historical theories: Others can contribute other theories, obviously.
Check out Lloyd de Mause's work The History of Childhood. www.lloyddemause.com . Lloyd DeMause has pioneered the study of Psychohistory, which is a theory that ties historical progress to the rise of less traumatic and destructive means of child-rearing See . www.psychohistory.com/‎ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_deMause‎.
According to DeMause, (whose original training was in Freudian psychoanalysis), hiuman history is a progression from infanticidal and abandoning modes of childrearing (common in hunting and gathering societies, apparently), through more advanced socializing and the most advanced, helping mode of childrearing. And the more advanced the mode of childrearing, the less the psychological trauma and the more productive people can be. But this progress is not uniform, and societies can and do slip into collective dissociative social trances in which war sacrifices of young people are demanded. Like it or hate it; it's probably worth studying and one of the more innovative theories of historical progress. And psychohistory has a Yahoo discussion group moderated by Lloyd deMause's student (and also a therapist), Jerrold Atlas.
A more cyclical theory based on child-rearing is the the generatlional cycle theory of William Strauss & Neil Howe www.lifecourse.com/‎. Strauss & Howe's theory is that each generation attempts to correct what it's members perceive as the childrearing mistakes of their parents (which results in raising children who are like their grandparents). It was Strauss & Howe who coined the term Millenial, to describe the generation born between 1985 and 2005(?) and when we look at generational cohorts and how they are influencing society, we are looking for the most part at Strauss & Howe's 1990 work "Generations: The History of America's Future". Because one of the features of Strauss & Howe's work is that because it is cyclically based, it can and has been used to prognosticate the future based on how different kinds of generation, Artist (Sileint, post 2005) (idealist (Baby Boomer), reactive (Generation X) , Civic-hero (Millenial, people hope--unless it has been too traumatized too early in life by a too early Crisis Period in which case it becomes a reactive/Artist generation. And milestones in society, according to Strauss & Howe's theory are related to where a generation is in it's cycle. For example, an indulged idealist generation is prone to have a spiritual and religious Awakening when it is coming of age, which was the case in both Great Awakenings in US history, the Missionary Awakening around the 1890s and the 1960s and 1970s. Secular crises are supposed to happen when Civic Genearations are coming of miliitary age, since Civic Generations are hero generations which are expected to do what is necessary to surmount thiese crises. By this token, Strauss & Howe find that the American Revolution and World War II happened on schedule, when they were good for the development of the United States and the Civil War Crisis and the current crisis (which started and began to affect childrearing on 9/11) came early and were not and are not being handled as well.
For those of us who are interested, Neil Howe has a discussion group on the same format as this one that can be accessed at Lifecourse.com. At least he did the last time I looked.
Finally, also for those who are interested in cyclical theories of history, no discussion of cyclical history would be complete without discussing Emmanuel Wallerstein's work in World System Theory, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Wallerstein). Personally, I think World System Theory (agree with it or disagree with it;;like it or hate it) is something every history or political science or international relations major or grad student needs to study and be cognizant of, if only to rebut it. There is a list of Wallerstien's works at the Wikileaks site and those works are highly respected in the field and available at most if not all university libraries.
Wallerstein ties major world wars in the world system (he does not believe that there was any one world system prior to the 16th Century, but if so, his rules may work in smaller regional subsystems like Europe and East Asia earlier) and are tied to 50-100 year Kondriatev Cycles of technological advancement and obselescence. Wallerstein's cycles tend to last anywhere from 70-100 years while Strauss & Howe's cycles are ideally 88 years. Well worth reading--and it will take a LOT of reading. World Systems theory has actually become a subdiscipline in historiography complete with it's own journal and discussion groups at history conferences. So far, it is not large enough to organize it's own learned society and hold it's own conference.
My personal theory is that history contains both cyclical and progressive elements and that most progressive elements are technological--thus the Kondriatev Cycle. I think it is possible to progress and at least for historical moments, to attempt to create a social trance that holds back or reverses progress---until reality becomes intrusive enough that the social trance is broken. Sometimes the intrusion of reality can result in major wars.
What I am hoping for the future is that we avoid the creation of any one global system, at least long enough for humanity to profitably expand into the rest of the Solar System. Despite what environmentalists say, steady, sustainable, no-growth social systems are to be avoided as much as possible and may only make grudging sense in space habitats that must function as small ecologies amongst other space habitats doing the same thing. Because steady-state systems are both stagnant and inevitably become not only inequiitable but attempt to create social systems and trances that justify human inequality. China as the Middle Kingdom or Japan under seclusion are arch examples of this. Better a system that reamains loose and imperfect enough long enough that people who are so motivated can get off the Earth and possibly even expand Polynesian stye from Kuiper Belt object to Oort Cloud object and out of the solar system if they are so dissident that they are more comfortable being by themselves.
 
Aye, but there were also improvements in worker's rights, business regulation, and legitimate medical science, and all the aforementioned stuff. You have to take the good and the bad, you cannot look only at one.

First off, sorry about getting back to this so late -- I thought I remembered responding days ago, but it's possible I forgot to type it up. Anyways...

Worker's rights (of white men), like women's rights, kind of started showing up in their modern form at the end of said period; the latter 19th Century saw plenty of worker/management violence, but little solid "progress" until the 1910's (admittedly, mostly due to an obtrusive court system, but all the same). YMMV on whether "business regulation" in itself counts as a chief metric for progress.

I'll admit that there were plenty of legitimate medical advances, that was mixed with helpings of crazy and destructive medical practices and ideas, but then my point was mainly about "social regression" -- advances in science, technology, and what have you were certainly advancing around this time, but when talking about "social progress", you're not really talking about what society is capable of doing so much as what it chooses to do with its growing power. And on this, things weren't just bad around the birth of the 20th Century, they were actually getting worse going into and through the First World War.
 
The half century five decades from 1875 to 1925 were pretty much a downward slope for non-white American, each decade more white supremacist than the last.
Could you give an example?
Yes, but that period saw great improvements as well. Education standards, literacy rates, (technology, medicine, science,) etc. all saw vast improvements. Even on social issues, it wasn't all bad. The era you mention saw suffrage being expanded thoughout the Western world, for instance, and culminated in womens' suffrage being introduced.

I'm admittedly just talking about America here; and for most of the US at least, that was arguably only toward the end of the period (though indisputably not in the west). And on the other major social issues -- religious freedom, free speech, and personal freedom -- government and business interference in personal life only got worse (modern censorship, various prohibitions, forced sterilizations, etc). (Plus eugenics, and various other medical "advances" that actually made things worse (lobotomies for "hysterical" women, etc).)
Worker's rights (of white men), like women's rights, kind of started showing up in their modern form at the end of said period; the latter 19th Century saw plenty of worker/management violence, but little solid "progress" until the 1910's (admittedly, mostly due to an obtrusive court system, but all the same). YMMV on whether "business regulation" in itself counts as a chief metric for progress.
but when talking about "social progress", you're not really talking about what society is capable of doing so much as what it chooses to do with its growing power. And on this, things weren't just bad around the birth of the 20th Century, they were actually getting worse going into and through the First World War.
No problem, I'm glad you actually did come back to it.
I'll parenthesy anything regarding science, as you've said we aren't talking about that.

Whether things happen near the end of a period should not matter, and in regards to social changes it should actually be a good thing. Social changes do not work as one-time events; rather the pressure of change builds and builds until the law must comply.
Business regulation is most certainly not the chief metric of progress, but I think people agreeing that businesses shouldn't be free to take and destroy and do anything they can pay to is a good thing, even if it starts only as disgust at what's in the food.
My point is not that nothing bad happened in this time period. My point is only that if you're evaluating the progress/regression of the period, you have to factor the positive and negative factors. There certainly were negative factors in this time, but there were also many positive factors.
 
Could you give an example?

In the 1870's, it was Reconstruction -- there was enforced universal male suffrage, there were black congressman, and a Civil Rights Act was passed. In the late 1870's, Congress abandoned this progress. In the 1880's, Jim Crow began to show his ugly head, and grew further in the 1890's; in the later part of the 1880's through the 90's, the Supreme Court backed this trend. On top of this, Congress passed racist laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act. On the economic front, business leaders became increasing powerful in the market (forming monopolies and trusts) and over their employees (modern management combined with federal military backing got the use of violence against any striking employees). In 1898, America graduated from being an expansionist to full on colonial power; the way the insurrections in the Phillipines were put down managed to at times surpass any savagery perpetrated by US armed forces since Sand Creek in the 1860's. In the 1910's, the US only became more imperialistic, occupying nations like Haiti for years on end; also this decade, segregation was brought to the federal government, and the KKK was reborn.

Violence against labor, sanctioned by the government, grew syeady worse -- Haymarmet became the Pullman Strike became the crushing of the IWW. Eventually, the country found itself in a full on Red Scare, deporting activists left and right, clamping down on newspapers, and generally seeking to control the new forms of media (like radio and film). Then there was Prohibition, getting it's start early in the century -- as state and local governments sought to ban certain substances, in many cases to control working class non-white populations -- the philosophy had gone national, outlawing the sale of America's longtime favorite drink. This was in conjunction with management that was growing in power over the schedules and social lives of their employees. Also the KKK was growing. And yes, there were advances in legitimate medicine throughout this period and in Women's Rights nationally during the late 1910's and 1920's, but for much of this period the idea of "progress" meant advances in medical and institutions that made the control of wives and daughters, on top of the aforementioned control by employers, etc.

I could likely go on if I had time, but that's it for now.

Whether things happen near the end of a period should not matter, and in regards to social changes it should actually be a good thing. Social changes do not work as one-time events; rather the pressure of change builds and builds until the law must comply.

That's certainly one way of seeing history; another is that there's no guaranteed outcome to social struggles, and that there is only "progress"'when the right side wins. Of course, that's more or lees the debate we're having here.

My point is not that nothing bad happened in this time period. My point is only that if you're evaluating the progress/regression of the period, you have to factor the positive and negative factors. There certainly were negative factors in this time, but there were also many positive factors.

Likewise, my point isn't that there were not elements during this time that we could not call progress in retrospect, but that when you look at the full balance (at least in the US), that the balance of social trends were for the bad -- less racial social justice, more inequality of wealth and opportunity, less freedom of speech, person, etc. And moreover, at the time these developments were widely considered to be attributes of "progress" -- "modern civilization" was thought to increasingly mean more power for rich white men, and less license given to individuals to live life outside of bourgeois norms.
 
There is probably a relation between production, war and ability to supress a majoritypopulation...I think most people want freedom and desire happiness while feeling solidarity towards others. Those who don´t are in conflict always on some level, and need to build defences.

Production, the need to produce to defend requires educated and willing workers.

War, egality in soicety reflects egality on the battlefield. People will not fight for nothing. Conflict, could of course mean demonstration or strikes as well, as long as the majority is on equal terms with the ruling elite.

Supress, it is really enough not to work or strike, and production would end as long as the majority of the people easily could overthrow the government if they want to, and they know it.

At certain points in history, by desperation or by communicating ideals, it occurs to the majority that they dont´t really have to live in misery to hold up classes of irresponsible leaders. And if these can´t do anything about it it wold probably happen either by steady reforms or by eruption.
 
Nope, I firmly believe we could have almost any society we can concieve of exist, and that our own is far from the only combination of elements, of all the billions or more we could have, that can work.
 
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