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.