The Virtual Rambler

Number twenty two: 17^th March 2012

A Brief History of Progress

Appearing on the Eurasian scene some 500,000 years ago , early members of homo sapiens practised a hunter-gathering mode of life in small , nomadic bands. They are suspected to have believed that all things - plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems - were animated but animistic perspectives are just a notion coined by anthropologists to describe a lost belief system. For all of prehistory , humans didn’t see themselves as being any different from the other animals among which they lived. The haughty gulf between ourselves and other creatures lay in the future. Our ancestors changed the scene of their operations as the seasons required or convenience prompted. Their knowledge of those environments built up over generations of gathering the wild fruits of the forest and (after the development of bone fishhooks) fishing from rivers or the coast. Their ‘working day’ was a fraction of ours as they gradually controlled the use of fire and developed a diverse range of stone , bone and wooden utensils – needles , harpoons , spear-throwers , and eventually bows and arrows. Those qualified to do so suggest that spoken languages accompanied these developments , which took place over the passage of millenia until a succession of Ice Ages swept across northerly habitats. After the last one receded about 14,000 years ago , the systematic production of food rather than foraging for it appears to have been introduced in a number of independent locations. Was it a similar coincidence that in seventeenth century Europe , mathematical calculus was invented independently by two men who have had biscuits named after them - Newton and Leibnitz ? Did the plants that were domesticated utilise humanity in the same way that flowering plants co-opted pollinating insects , to propagate their species more widely ?

Settling down to farm required durable housing and co-existence between humans and their stock animals. This led inexorably to increased population densities , as private property became a means of differentiation from nomadic ‘foraging’. The spread of farming technologies heralded a stain of cities across the horizon. ‘Civilisation’ derives from the Latin word for a city or city-state and always refers to concomitants of an urban way of life. Infrastructures of trade and communication were refined ; new patterns emerged , of economic control via social administration and book-keeping. A bureaucracy was required to requisition food from the ‘commoners’ and to conscript them for work on large construction projects – irrigation schemes , tombs and temples. Social distinctions , prestige goods and ruling powers all increased. What we call taxation , or ‘tribute’ , was introduced to finance wars of conquest and priests were elevated to justify them. Setting a precedent for all times to come , the production of wealth proved easier than its distribution. Wherever the cycle of growth got underway , there was never a shortage of men who regarded others as their inferiors , and therefore in need of correction and guidance. Some of the ever-increasing population were employed in tilling the fields from dawn until dusk , others were confined to caverns and condemned to dig out metallic ores for their army's weaponry and state coinage. Human ingenuity drove the process of growth in every case , and the inability to exercise restraint eventually brought every former city and empire tumbling down. History became a treadmill turned by rising human numbers. The soil , like the people , was coerced into fruitful output for a while , then abandoned when each fell exhausted from the forced labour imposed upon them.

More recent power structures developed less draconian measures of constraint when they discovered the ultimate control tool , in the shape of flickering screens. These provided a social pheromone as unifying as the chemicals secreted by queen ants and bees throughout their colonies. Formerly our ‘sneaking kindness for a lord’ paid respect to tradition and the past. We now prefer to admire those who best represent change , novelty and the future. From California to Davos flows the next generation of interactive software into the arms of wealth and power. The “naïve” political vocabularies that had once asked whether prevailing social arrangements were fair or not fell out of favour , replaced by Economic blather about growth , efficiency and productivity. When I hear the word progress I think of Hogarth’s two series , Progress of a Harlot and the Progress of a Rake. We have become hostage to a financial system that effectively privatised governments. We looked upon the works of the mighty and despaired. There were now customers pushing buttons to order the latest electronic gew-gaws and Logistics winging those fripperies their way. There were venal brokers tapping keys to initiate share-trading via complex computer algorithms. There were ever-widening disparities of class and power between rulers and ruled. There was widespread anxiety.

Wig

The Virtual Rambler

Number twenty two: 17th March 2012

A Brief History of Progress

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Number twenty two: 17^th March 2012