Improvement or Deterioration?
For the last several centuries it has been the trend of Western History to "avoid dogma" and develope a "skeptical faith". "As long as the end justifies the means" is an age old saying. The question that this paper arises is does the end justify the means. The answer to this is no. People have avoided dogma and kept a skeptical faith for many years and we have merely regressed beyond where we started. The sources used for this paper was ReligiousTolerance.org, Merriam Webster, and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.
The world as a whole has been on a slow path of self destruction for at least the last four centuries, if not since the fall. With each passing year the world seems to fall apart just a little bit more. There are ambitious people that would disagree with this thesis. This is because it is true that we are better off scientifically today than we were a thousand years ago. We have had huge technological and medical advances. But is science really all that matters? Must we continue pushing until every human being alive has developed "a skeptical faith", and has learned to "avoid dogma". Are all of these technological developments, humanists, reformations, and revolutions helping to improve our world or are they simply holding us down?
The reformation that occurred in the 16th century greatly changed the course of history. Up until this time everyone had remained under the rule of the Roman Catholic Church. The government basically consisted of the church hierarchy and instead of taxes people payed a tithe to the church. This was just the natural order of things until Martin Luther came into the picture. He was a monk and then he later became a priest. He believed that the manner in which the church was going about its business was wrong and freely began to speak out against it. Instead of merely leaving the faith he decided to take it upon himself to try to alter some of the age old traditions. He wrote what is known as the 95 Theses. Basically this was a list of 95 things that he believed to be wrong within the Roman Catholic Church. At first many people disregarded him. It was as if he was saying here is a list of 95 things wrong with what I believe in. It could be compared to a modern day scientist with a PHD in bio-science technology publishing a book titled The 95 Things That I Do Wrong Every Day.
It seems as though Luther merely intended for people to clean up the ways of the Catholic Church. But instead of helping clean up this faith that he believed in, all that he managed to accomplish was driving people away from Christianity for good. Today because of him and other such humanists, our world stands divided. According to Religious-Tolerance.org as of the year 2000 Christians made up 33% of the worlds population. There are now a total of 19 major world religions that are divided into a total of 270 religious groups. There are roughly 34,000 Christian groups around the world. Instead of cleaning up one religion, all Martin Luther managed to do was take the first step towards dividing that one into 34,000.
The humanists way of thinking in the 16th century soon lead to the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. It was called the Age of Enlightenment because many people believed that it was a light shining in the darkness. These very same people soon found that this was not so and that it was truly quite the opposite. People believed that this was a time to expel the ignorance that had once been known and trust in science and equality. The most admired writer of the 18th century was Voltaire. He was feared in part because he used his writing to criticize all that he disagreed with. Voltaires biggest enemy was the church.
This time of enlightenment certainly lead to disruption but not the kind that these humanists had been hoping for. It turned into a time of mass murder during the French Revolution. The people in France found themselves dealing with starvation, terrible taxes (more than a 10% tithe), tons of suffering, and a group of upper-class people that did not care about what was happening and that were exempt from taxes.
The Industrial Revolution began about 1733. The ideas and thought processes that it began would continue on for several centuries. The revolution brought about the coming of factories, cotton-spinning machines, steam engines, sewing machines, steel plows, the reaper, and vulcanized rubber. All of these items ended up being extremely beneficial to the world but they came at a bit of a cost. It changed the way that people viewed themselves and the world around them and not necessarily in a good way.
Before the Industrial Revolution a person could be walking down a side street and meet another person and recognize them as a neighbor, fellow Christian, or just an acquaintance. Due to the Industrial Revolution the same person could be walking down the same side street but recognize the person as homeless, poor, or rich. Everything became about money and marketing titles and schemes. A persons self-value began to rapidly change too. Before the Industrial Revolution people independently made items from their homes and owned private businesses but after the revolution people worked mainly in groups or in factories. For example a man that had owned his own shoe business for twenty years would be pressured into working in a factory where he would only be allowed to stitch one small piece of the shoe together and for just half of the pay. The value of any given persons life began to go down but it was okay because it was in the name of science.
In chapter 29 of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations Landes is able to provide his reader with many things to ponder and many quotable quotes. For example on pg. 514 he states "We should want to know why, all of us, because the why may help us to understand today and anticipate tomorrow." So if we were to know why things have gone so badly in the past and why peoples self-worth and that of those around them have gone down, why so many people have ended up working in factories, and why so many people have died from starvation because of weak government ruling, than maybe we could understand what is occurring now and figure out what may happen in the near future. On pg. 517 Landes talks about the Thais and how they used to spend years on their religious rituals and traditions that were important to their culture but now they cut all of those short. Landes states "As a result, young men spiritualize for a few weeks-- time enough to learn some prayers and rituals and get back to the real, material world. Time, which everyone knows is money, has changed in relative value." Time, money, science, atheism, and technology may have increased in value but everything that used to be held close to people and was considered morally right has flown out the window and our world is suffering because of it.
Perhaps the best point the Landes makes in the entire book is on pg. 518 "Convergence is the watchword of the day, the promise of eventual equality, of the generalization of prosperity, health and happiness. That, at any rate, is what economic theory tells us, assuming mobility of the factors of production. Experience is another matter. The numbers for the small set of advanced industrial countries seem to confirm convergence, but individual countries do not always stay with the pack." This pretty much says it all. People keep striving for equality and perfection but as we have clearly witnessed in the past it is nearly impossible to achieve a world wide convergence of anything. All that we have managed to do is end up with less of a sense of belonging and individuality than what was known centuries ago. People engaged in the enlightenment period looking to gain individuality but in the end they have ended up with less than what they began with.
According to Merriam Webster the definition of revolution is "a sudden, radical, and complete change" or "A fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something." The definition of reformation is "the state of being reformed; the act of reforming." A revolution may mean change but it does not necessarily mean that it is change for the better and reformation may reform something but that does not necessarily mean that the object in question was not better off before it was reformed. There is much less acceptance in the reformed version of the world and a much lower level of tolerance. So what exactly was achieved? Or maybe an easier question to answer would be, what was lost? Perhaps the lesson of the past 600 years is that we should stop trying. Though it has been the trend of Western History to "avoid dogma", "cultivate a skeptical faith", and "listen and watch well", perhaps the world might just be better off if a new trend was started. Something to the effect of cultivating a skeptical science, looking towards dogma (as opposed to avoiding it), and learning to be content with what has already been achieved instead of pushing each other into the dirt to be the first to discover the next ipod touch. Though this is all as likely to occur as complete convergence. So perhaps a happy medium might be best. Maybe we will locate one before some suicidal humanist decides they have had enough and just blows up the earth. Maybe not.
Ashley Nichols
watch this to check out how far equality has really come
