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The Virtual Rambler
Number twenty two: 17th March 2012
A Brief History of Progress
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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
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Archive
Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing,
9th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 –
Managerialism, 17th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia,
27th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha
Male, 13th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General
Elections, 3rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure
Industry, 15th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to
The World Cup, 15th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human
Nature, 12th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 –
Communities, 13th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds
Apart, 6th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling,
22nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS,
24th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 –
Transience, 4th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional
Accents, 15th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The
Afterlife, 21st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak,
27th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night
Walks, 3rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan
and Charles Dickens, 8th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another
Nutty Professor, 16th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer
Choice, 16th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing
Shorts, 18th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief
History of Progress, 17th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth
of Sisyphus, 16th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural
History, 20th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European
Self Importance, 26th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet
Dreams, 25th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess,
17th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial,
20th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way,
21st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On
Rambling, 14th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing
Into The Abyss, 18th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 –
Intellectual Gloom, 25th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great
Human Achievements, 20th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 –
Autobiography, 20th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good
Health, 21st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 –
Deconstruction, 20th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home
Town, 19th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient
History, 21st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 –
Possessions, 20th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting
Stoics, 20th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time,
20th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't
Allow, 20th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary
Nexus, 20th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking
Liberties, 16th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or
Less, 20th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under
Control, 20th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting,
20th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose
Without Trace, 20th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger
Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 –
Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially
Mediated, 19th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20th September 2014
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