[ef4]

The author is really arguing two things. (1) There is no such thing as moral progress, because human nature is fixed.(2) People are not naturally inclined to be free.

His first claim is demonstrably false. If you look at historical, statistical evidence you can rapidly demolish his position. Start with Stephen Pinker's Ted talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...

His second claim is probably true, but irrelevant. Humans do seem to naturally love hierarchies. And in the grand sweep of time and place, freedom is still a tiny blip.

But So. Fucking. What. Humans are naturally inclines to die of infectious diseases, too.

The author admits that science does progress. And more importantly, the capital structure of society progresses along with it, symbiotically. That puts the lie to the rest of his argument, because ideas from science have demonstrably altered human behavior, and science is already on the cusp of altering human nature directly at the molecular level.

[Mikeb85]

The more you study archaeology and ancient history, the more you realize that humans really aren't apt to change. The outward appearance of human behaviour is different (we work different jobs, eat different food, have different institutions), but we have the same social tendencies we did 7000 years ago.

As for our supposed decline in violence, it's mostly due to technological advancements which have allowed us to have more resources at our disposal, and an efficient international market to trade them. Our nature is no less violent, our circumstances are merely better.

[ef4]

> Our nature is no less violent, our circumstances are merely better.

Even if that's true, it has the same effect in the end.

"Put people in a better environment, and they will behave better" is a radical, pro-progress statement that would have been unrecognizable to most societies.

We're so infected with the progress meme that even people here arguing against it keep implicitly granting some of its premises.

[Mikeb85]

How about this: take people out of a 'good' environment, and put them in a bad one, and they'll revert to primitive behaviour. This is something that has been observable even in recent times. In recent conflicts people have committed incredibly base behaviour, including cannibalism... http://documentarystorm.com/the-cannibal-warlords-liberia/

Technological 'progress' is not really progress, it's just an accumulation of information, just like a snowball is simply an accumulation of snowflakes.

If our technology, accumulated information and institutions were wiped out tomorrow, we'd be back in the stone age, and it would take us another 5000 years to 'progress' back to where we are now.

We've been able to observe it in the past too, many civilizations were destroyed and the result was their descendants were much less sophisticated technologically. 'Progress' does not change people, and people will easily revert to base behaviour.

[ef4]

But if all our institutions and capital were wiped out, it would be appropriate for our behaviors to revert. That just proves that humans are extremely adaptable to changes in environment.

Which state shows our "true nature"? I would argue the concept is meaningless. Our current state is just as natural as any other.

To argue otherwise, you need to make theological assertions about humans being supernatural. A city is no less natural than a beehive, which is no less natural than a mountain.

[fusiongyro]

It's relevant because if people only behave better because they're in a better environment, you haven't really changed them. The goal is then dislodged from getting people more freedom and converted into creating better environments. It is easy to see how a goal of creating better environments could be hijacked to justify all kinds of unsavory political actions. And indeed it has been.

Gray isn't implicitly granting premises of progress by saying this form of governance is better than that, for the same reason that accepting local optimality doesn't grant global optimality. In other words, having a greedy algorithm that improves things doesn't imply that the greedy algorithm always finds a most-optimal state, or even that such a most-optimal state exists. Gray is arguing that it is a fundamental assumption of progressivism that there is a most-optimal state and that progressive political behavior of implementing liberal political agenda items is believed to move one closer to it. I don't see how any of your points address either of these assumptions nor do I see how others debating you are conceding them.

[ef4]

> The goal is then dislodged from getting people more freedom and converted into creating better environments.

But freedom is a property of the environment. How would you possibly get someone more freedom without altering their environment?

I actually don't think Gray himself would agree with you. He thinks the whole idea of "increasing freedom" is illusory. He's not arguing against progressive politics in particular. He's arguing against (small "d") democratic politics in general. Even modern (economic) conservatives believe in progress -- they just see it coming from markets more than governments. Gray is opposing them too.

One doesn't need to believe in global optimality to still believe progress is possible. If you believe that a society without chattel slavery is definitely better than one that has it, you already concede that there is at least a partial ordering (in the mathematical sense) of "social goodness". That's all that's required.

[fusiongyro]

I hate to shout "semantics!" but I do think you're misappropriating (or perhaps correctly reappropriating) Gray's progress. Arguing for political change on the grounds that it will improve things is not an implicit acceptance of the doctrine of progress as he defines it. If it were, the doctrine of progress would necessarily be continuous with all change and therefore meaningless. He's clearly stating that classical governments predate the doctrine, so how exactly could they have experienced change and refinement otherwise? Pointing to the expectation of improvement after change generally and calling it progress strikes me as really massively overbroadening the definition and missing the point.

He's not arguing that democracy is bad and that distinctions do not exist. He's arguing that it is clearly not the pinnacle or final goal of some sort of ever-improving vision. He illustrates this by showing that there are plenty of times in history when a democracy turns into something else, and a few times where a democracy built on brutality is erected on the ashes of a more civilized government of some other flavor (monarchy, often). This is not anti-democratic because it isn't a judgement about democracy, it's a judgement about progress and history. It is an indictment of the doctrine of progress, because the doctrine cannot permit the idea that a monarchy be better than a democracy. If the case is being made that democracies are bad, I don't see it here. The point I'm seeing being made (forgive me if I missed something) is simply that while two governments can be compared, what makes one better than the other ultimately doesn't have as much to do with the ideology as the way it plays out in practice, and the two are often quite far from each other.

I haven't read Gray's book, but I'm quite excited about it and am looking forward to it because of this review. Most of the negative feedback I see here has an indignant air to it that I tend to associate with first contact with powerful ideas. I will end my comments here, since if I'm off-base I'm not going to get any closer until I read the book, but thanks for having the conversation with me. I do appreciate the clarity of your thought and your taking the time to share it with me. Thanks.

[salmonellaeater]

I think his definition of progress is steady change toward an ideal version of humanity. The main problem is that the ideal changes with the age, and not in a predictable way. If you were to ask someone 500 years ago what a perfect person was, it would be quite different from the answer you'd get today. What does progress even mean if the ideal towards which humanity is moving keeps changing? It just becomes a random walk.

Also, just because human behavior is changing, doesn't mean human morality is becoming better in any objective sense.

[jonathanwallace]

The phrase "random walk" immediately makes me think of evolution. :)

[tootie]

I think the difference is the decrease in scarcity. There's a reason that intensive agriculture marks the beginning of what we consider civilization. Aside from the fact that it requires sedentary living, it removed the constant threat of starvation and relieved us of our basest instinct to kill or be killed. Human progress and arguably human evolution has gone beyond our genetic destiny and is now shaped by our works. People who live in first-world countries are unlikely to ever face a shortage of high-quality food, potable water, sanitation, basic medical care. There are simply fewer things to fight about.

[VLM]

A third point notable in its absence, is that religion, freedom, American two party voting, all of it exists to control, pacify the masses. Only the dumbest of the masses believe.

The purpose of the two party political system is to keep the masses calm, make them think they have an input. They don't, of course. But it calms them. Writing a book about how voters choice and free will doesn't really exist is pointless. The opiate of the masses sometimes causes hallucinations, who cares as long as the right people stay in power.

The situation is identical with religion, or "moral progress" or the articles example of militarism in Austria a long time ago.

Our technology for distracting and redirecting away large masses of humans from their own self interest has never been better.

You could summarize the pointlessness of the discussion to something like the whip doesn't exist so don't fear it's lash... Well who cares if it exists or not, if the only reason our culture talks about the lash of the whip, is to control the masses?

This individual TV commercial sucks. We could change the channel on the global TV system to a different channel, but its got the same general set of commercials. Or we could hit commercial skip, whoops it seems to be nothing but an infomercial channel. Maybe the system sucking is the actual lesson, not that one individual TV commercial sucks.

[AutoCorrect]

I would have to say that they are both true. We are, I believe, at a peak in our moral cycle. You're hemmed in by your narrow, human lifespan perspective.

How has science altered human behavior? We still lie, cheat, steal, and kill. Civilization is a thin veneer, and one that can be stripped away in a calamity.

The pendulum swings, and civilization rises and falls.