The Progressive World View
Progressive decline or Advance to a higher humanity?

According to UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff (Lakoff), the progressive world view that he promotes is modeled on a nurturing parent family. He believes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all, and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

However, the basis for this is an astonishing misconception. First of all, this is not the view of most “progressives”! Their view (essentially Marxism) is that children are born, not only good, but nearly identical in their potential abilities. The world is not good, especially the society in the Western world is bad, it damages the character of people and hinders their full development. This is the view of J. J. Rousseau that has been taken over by all socialists. It is the reason why they are convinced that one has to change society (if necessary by destroying it in a revolution)  in order to improve the world. Of course, what they do not recognize (because it was not in their master's writings) is the fact that society is but the sum total of human individuals. Even if you can invent a better arrangement than the current Western society (which, of course, seems possible; an example would be a totalitarian dictatorship with a wise dictator), it still has to operate with the same individuals who will mess up any large system - in most cases against their own long range interests because their undisciplined emotions make them deaf to the voice of reason. This happened in all totally socialist experiments, as much as in all other dictatorships, to a greater extent than in a free society because there are fewer controlling provisions other than the state, and much less motivation to utilize opportunities.

Numerous people are working diligently with the aim to destroy the present culture of the free world, in spite of the disaster that this destruction has caused in the last century. Again, just as it happened in Russia 1917,  the perpetrators do not want to understand the disastrous consequences of their efforts. The present word population can only be supported (barely in many places) with the present high productivity based on a free enterprise system. If the plans of the revolutionaries (those who seek change without knowing the consequences) succeed, the worldwide productivity will invariably drop precipitously and we will have a worldwide starvation of unprecedented proportion. A first indication of this danger has been the diversion of some maize production to the biofuel industry which caused food riots in several poor areas of the world that suffered most by the rising price of maize (and rice). The cause of this were not even revolutionaries but a worldwide hysteria promoted by a media run out of rational control.

The second, wildly unrealistic claim of our ideologists is that the human individual is born good. Humans are by nature raw, and they can learn; but left to themselves most remain in their raw state wide open to all seductions. This has been perfectly understood in antiquity, in China by Hsün-tzu  (Hsun Tzu  -  An excellent, more detailed article about this great man is in the Encyclopedia Britannica), in the West by Plato. The great problem of very free societies has been in the past that the critical need for a conditioning to freedom has not been recognized in its overriding importance. The result is plainly visible in the high crime rates, many times higher than seen in rigidly controlled societies. It is astonishing, but revealing, to read that Lakoff disapproves " to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones -" ! This is bad? Can he really mean that the good citizens are not the disciplined ones ? This sentence illuminates the political problem:  A disagreement about the basic valuation of things that is so deep that it cannot be overcome with arguments about details.  Of course, Lakoff would also disapprove the idea of a better conditioning of the young for life in freedom.  I am sure that the origin of these views is the shielding of most intellectuals from the dead seriousness of life.  They only have read about things, but lack the actual heart wrenching experience which is the only thing that has a chance to change a  person's sentiment.

The third error is that people are not born with nearly identical abilities. They vary to an extraordinary degree from one individual to the next. The genetic influence is estimated to account for up to 75% of the observed variation - which makes later conditioning by the civilization difficult, but not impossible (see essay #12).

What Lakoff and similarly oriented idealists propose will not work, as such ideas have never worked before. As stated above, the only effect in societies that have adopted unrealistic ideas has been that things have become progressively worse.  But what is the alternative?  Can man only live in chaos or in tyranny?  Are these the only alternatives?

To find an answer to this key question, we must face the facts and accept them as they reveal themselves in the experience of the ages. 

1)  Man cannot find happiness unless he is free to use his natural abilities. A tyranny inevitably treats man as an animal that must be forced into what is desired by the owner.
2)  If man is free, the temptations overwhelm too many individuals and their transgressions lead progressively to an intolerable chaos and to a gradual loss of freedom. It is obvious that man cannot live in freedom unless he has learned and is prepared for it. 
3)  Man can learn, he has developed his dormant abilities and acquired astonishing skills. But, it requires training and at least for a short time in a state of apprenticeship. How to live in freedom in society must also be learned.

The conditions in the free countries at the beginning of this 21st century show that any encoragement to undisciplined living is dangerous for people and their society. They cannot live the good life under materially favorable conditions because they cannot resist the siren songs of the demagogues and the seduction to more senseless consumption. Indeed, no society in the past has managed to survive the arrival of luxury.  But we can overcome the problem, at least to a great part, and without forcing people into yet another tyranny. Instead by force for the adults, improvements have to be made early at the individual level through intensive Conditioning as it has been proposed by Plato, Hsün Tzu, and many others. Unfortunately, it has never been done sufficiently for the general public. Since people do not like to hear that they are endowed with bad desires, none of these old recommendations have ever been accepted. The Constitution of the United States is a great document. But it assumes a population as it existed in the late 1800s. Today, it is largely being ignored because it is not even known sufficiently. It seems obvious that the first and indispensable step for any social improvements would be to face the facts of our nature, as problematic it may be. Of course, our weakness for hearing good news about ourselves even if totally unrealistic, brings people into government who share Lakoff's ideas and with their wrong policies make things progressively worse.

These key decisions must be made to get Western society out from its path into decay:

A.  We must have a system of preparatory Conditioning for the young (teen age) that can instill discipline and deep knowledge of the values that made the country great. These values came from Religion, but as such can also be justified on purely secular grounds (see e.g., the essay on ethics).  It is more important today to have the youngsters understand deeply their own moral weaknesses and vulnerability than to learn the multiplication table. The multiplication table is such an obvious practical necessity that we do not have to worry about it.  But to adopt habits of discipline is not an obvious necessity.  Otherwise we would not see these hordes of undisciplined people, even including professors, who think that disciplined people are bad.

B.  We must review and modify our system of criminal justice - it has become too "progressive". The penalties are insufficient, inhumane, and very expensive for society and for the individuals. The present system is at the same time too mild and ineffective, yet injust in its arbitrariness in relation to the individual case. Mandatory rules without leeways for the judge hinder justice and are in principle wrong.  On the other hand, many judicial decisions that have become known in the public make it doubtful that all judges have the necessary educational backgrround for reaching a just conclusion (within the legal boundaries).  Perhaps the worst is that there is now in the system a clear preference of formal procedure over justice and public safety.  This shows that the basic system of values is vague and distorted. But beyond this, it is immoral to let procedure decide the case, instead of a just weighing of the relevant facts.

I am not naive enough to think that any change will be easy. Unless the intellectuals, the leaders of public opinion, can see the urgent need for changes and influence the media to make them acceptable, change will come anyway, but in ways that will be exceedingly harsh and unpleasant, as it happened before - in Russia, in Germany, and in hundreds of other places.

Copyright © 2003,  Gernot M. R. Winkler       last corrections  on  10/24/2009