Progress as Comforter

Many people view Progress as an unstoppable force that may have undesirable consequences. Progress is just how the world works and there is no use trying to alter it. Progress may be bad, but there’s no use lamenting the inevitable. And the consequences weren’t foreseeable anyway.

This notion of Progress is used against these people as a political tool, a calculated way of coaxing the masses into accepting changes they may not like. It is also a scientific tool, used to suppress any tendencies to question the desirability of research. It’s a business tool, used to blunt opposition to developments not easily defended. Just label a change as ‘Progress’ and it becomes a fait accompli. Opposition to these changes is like opposing the passing of time.

And once they have our consent, or at least resigned acceptance, their responsibility is now shared with us. We are just as much to blame. how could they have let this happen?How could they have let this happen? and no one told me about this are the lame excuses we are left with when things go wrong.

Rarely does it ever occur to people that change is deliberately labelled as Progress for the very purpose of blunting opposition and sharing blame. Without the shield of Progress these changes would have to pass judgment on their own merits. It is precisely when something has been identified as Progress that it should immediately become suspicious.

In many ways it has been comforting to have this notion to explain the otherwise disturbing changes taking place in all our lives. Without such an excuse to disengage from the decision making process, we would all have to take responsibility for the way our society is run. Without Progress we would have to analyze, discuss, propose and promote ideas regarding the organization and regulation of our society. Fortunately, the the autopilot of Progressautopilot of Progress has relieved us of this onerous task. We can sit back and relax, knowing that it is all proceeding as it should, or at least beyond the possibility of our control.

Progress as a Beacon

The other widely held notion of Progress is as an inevitable but welcome force, always leading toward improvement. This version of Progress sees only the benefits. After all, if something is inevitable it’s easier to accept when viewed as benevolent.

Under this view, to oppose Progress is like opposing motherhood, and besides, look at how much better off we are. Examination of events in detail is unnecessary because the outcome will naturally be positive. To these believers, the litany of Progress is undeniably good, something we should be happy to recite.

Believers point to the undeniably good developments of society such as improved medical care and plentiful food. The down side of a drugged up, over medicalized society stressing cure rather than prevention, and chemical laden produce are either ignored or not recognized.

This utopian attitude is as bad as the other one of resignation, leading people to withdraw from decision making and to emphatically embrace the new, even to the point of becoming cheerleaders for changecheerleaders for change.

Change for change sake is a related attitude. We’re not progressing if we allow thing to remain static. If something has been in place for a period of time then it must be changed, for fear of becoming outdated, stale or old fashioned. This implies a more active role, actually seeking out opportunities for change.

out with the old
in with the newThe CBC exemplified this attitude with its now defunct repositioning experiment. First they abolished the National and Journal, a beloved institution, and moved the news to 9 pm in a free form wash of news and analysis. When that didn’t work they moved to a news followed by analysis scheme (essentially the old National and Journal format)) then moved back to 10 pm, having lost substantial audience in the process. Finally, they dumped the analysis host in a pathetic attempt to liven up the place.

Brought to You by Progress

Progress has been a distorting and destructive idea of modern times. It has been used as a cover for choices taken on numerous issues of vital importance to society. These developments were trumpeted as exciting, the bountiful harvest of the natural evolution of our societies.

The development of nuclear energy, the better living through chemistrychemical revolution, the space age, the pharmaceutical boom, the dominance of television and entertainment, the suburban expansion, the computer and information revolution, and now the genetic revolution have all been conducted under this guise of Progress. Indeed, most people wouldn’t even realize that fundamental choices were made regarding each of these developments.

At the time they were taking place, these developments were unassailable. Some still are. Others are so ingrained in our society and economy that we prefer to pretend that nothing has gone wrong. And Progress is such a good political tool that we never can admit that how we got here is our own fault.

Are we fooled by fresh vegetables year round? Are we happier thanks to television? Are we better off as a result of the proliferation of over the counter medicines, are we healthier? It’s amazing that our ancestors ever managed to survive. People don’t even think to consider whether these things are good. They must be, because they exist. And these are the supposed benefits of Progress, what about the down side?

The Torching of the Past –

Progressive Side Effects

Have you ever noticed that Progress is usually connected with phrases of powerlessness and despair such as “Oh well, that’s Progress” and “you can't fight city hallYou can’t fight city hall”? These are the signs of side effects. Typical of developments justified as Progress are the unintended consequences that are dismissed as inevitable and minor. Since little or no long term or comprehensive planning is done, side effects become the norm. Opposition to the side effects is portrayed as opposition to the development as a whole and as such is easily fended off. Little attempt is made to lessen the effects since they are taken as normal and ignored in the grand scheme of things.

Those that battle Progress itself are dubbed modern day LudditesLuddites, people who history will show to have been wrong. Funny that no one ever looks back and analyzes these decisions born of Progress. Are we really better off because of everything we have casually accepted as Progress? Have there not been changes that have turned out to be bad? Is all new mechanization, computerization, automation, or medicalization automatically good? Because that’s the way we act. Our modern day Luddites are never vindicated because, by definition, what they were trying to preserve was supposed to change. Their perspective is irrelevant, they are not given the opportunity to choose their course, the course that Progress must dictate.

The Mennonite and Amish communities in North America have lived apart from Progress for years. How do they compare to the social and environmental problems of our society?

Those that don’t automatically buy into Progress are considered backward or old-fashioned, people whose opinions are to be dismissed. Society demands that people accept and incorporate these changes into their way of thinking, to adopt a positive attitude. Complainers and trouble makers are the ones who harp on about these things.

In the process we purge tradition and erase the past, without giving it a second thought. We change our ways just to keep up with the times. Not only do we obliterate what’s old, we damage the values that go along with it. Values that may have developed over a long period and with very sound underpinnings. Freed from this nostalgia and sentimentality we can build the better future.

The Passing of the Torch

But the idea of Progress as the inevitable structuring of society and the environment toward more development, with the consequential diminishment of citizen control, is now waning. It was discredited, finally, by innumerable failed economic, technological, and social experiments, and the belated recognition of the destruction of our environment.

The anti-Spadina Expressway movement in Toronto actually did manage to fight city hall. What was then seen as Progress is now regarded as an appalling possibility.

Progress has been used one last time though in the classical way, to smother discussion of the merits of the recent pivotal issues of free trade and the global economy. The global economy is simply unopposable, just the way things are going to be. This is the basis of almost all media coverage of globalization, the natural, inevitable, and unstoppable development of human economic and societal organization, reaching to a higher plane of civilization.

Its name may not be used, but it is surely thanks to our conditioning by Progress that Globalization is now sweeping the world.

Go Forth and Multiply

This globalization gives the green light to exploiting factors of productionfactors of production from around the world. Factors of production is so wonderfully abstract, it makes you forget that there are real life consequences to these decisions. But there are radical consequences.

Globalization is the antithesis of local control. Anything that can be decided locally must now be measured against the scale of global competitors. Local reasoning, attitudes, and values are basically irrelevant when labour, goods and services can be freely exchanged for foreign substitutes. A factory can be moved to where the cost of production is the least. Of course this is what business should do, you will hear, this is the correct business decision. Yes, this is how we now organize our society, we are to accept the aggregate result of these cold business decisions. If a societal justification really is required, we are offered up the notion that the result of all this freed up business activity is bound to produce better living standards... and thus a better society. It certainly will produce more international financial activity.

Do we really know what the effects of globalization are going to be? The intended effects seem to be massive restructuring of national economies and forced integration into the world market. Who’s to say that all this coseying up to the neighbours isn’t going to end in a death-embrace, induced by local impoverishment, wildly gyrating markets and financial instability? We certainly can’t rely on the economists or financial professionals to predict behaviour. Aren’t we just assuming that it will all come out in the wash?

The 1995 Mexican market turmoil required an American bailout we were told, because failure to act could result in a world financial market meltdown like that of the Great Depression.

And what is the nirvana of globalization? Do we even know if there is one? Are we just lapping up the idea that globalization is inevitable and uncontrollable? After all, it is a good way to explain away the difficulties we are currently experiencing. We certainly wouldn’t want to blame any of our problems on our system of Capitalism, or the structure of our political system, or the notion of Progress. Or on our own disengagement from the system.

The problem is that we are living under globalization now, we have no choice, everyone else is, and we better make the best of it. At least, that’s the party line.

Standards to Live By

Through this notion of globalization we now have an economy where everything changes, nothing is stable or can be counted upon. There are no assurances, no jobs for life, no sacred social safety nets, we just have to cut back to survive. And remember, the government can’t control anything for fear of upsetting the balance dictated by globalization.

What have we traded all this for? The general business argument, the main justification of global markets if Progress doesn’t cut it, is this: increased business activity (more buying and selling), brought about by increased productivity (more output by fewer people using less equipment) produces higher standards of living (more money for workers), and that this must be good. That we’ve traded social stabilization programs for more money is assumed to be a good thing. After all, you can always use some of that new money to buy yourself a better home security system, or your own armed guards, or to donate to the homeless.

Business activity alone does not address social equity, does not support those that can’t cut it in the fierce global arena. Globalization forces push governments to drop expensive social stabilization programs funded by taxes which could put local businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

harmonizationHarmonization is the order of the day¹¹. Harmonization means reducing our social standards that affect commerce (potentially just about anything) to the levels of our prominent competitors. If we don’t we’re told, our businesses will be disadvantaged leading to lost jobs. Only in a world defined in the terms of capitalism could we expect the process of harmonization to be useful and beneficial. No consideration is given to the social reasons behind these standards, they are simply viewed from the business perspective.

Our lingering belief in Progress has allowed us to passively accept globalization as eventually good for us, even if all current evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary.

The World is Their Oyster

The attitudes of the victorious American system were enshrined not only in the constitutions of Germany and Japan but also in the world financial institutions that were set up after the war. The Bretton-Woods exchange rate system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank are all institutions that carry out Western (mostly American) notions of capitalism in the world trading system. These notions stress individual achievement over social harmony, business growth at the cost of human suffering, and development over stability.

Imposition of the American system of capitalism on impoverished countries by the World Bank and IMF wasn’t just happenstance. Privatization of state industries, disastrous mega-projects, and cash crop and resource based export oriented economies were the result, with practically no regard for internal welfare (or warfare for that matter). Maintenance of Western advantage in trade was the driving force. The reason Western governments support the World Bank and the IMF is to encourage and integrate developing countries into their system of commerce. They want good customers and resource exporters. Creating economic rivals is not in the plan.

The GATT was ostensively a mechanism to prevent repetition of the wild prewar trade protectionism swings. It is more importantly an all or nothing trade integration pact. To gain entry to the world trading system, countries must agree to the whole package. National and local variations in economic and social organization are submerged by the world trade rules. Cultural differences are dismissed when they affect trade.

In the latest round, the GATT even outlaws national self-sufficiency strategies, by enforcing trade in food and industrial products. Countries must open their economies to all international trade regardless of the way they perceive such dependence.

The Uruguay round was delayed by Japan’s objection to allowing American imports of its staple, rice.

The conveniently wishy-washy concepts of dumping a subsidydumping and subsidy are used to bash away at any successful trading partner. Dumping is defined as selling in another country at a price below that in your own, or below cost. The idea is that companies would either dispose of excess production or deliberately try to harm the foreign producers by flooding their markets with cheaper goods. A standard price your competition into the ground strategy, it’s known as predatory pricing when carried on within a country. Once the damage is done and the competition evaporates, the prices are hiked to gather in excess profits. What’s convenient about dumping charges is that they are defined by the recipient country, which then imposes stiff tariffs against the offenders. This encourages much leeway in definitions and application.

Canadian steel companies were charged with dumping in the U.S. market, even though the Canada-U.S. steel industry is tightly integrated and U.S. companies were following almost identical practices.

Subsidy can mean just about anything, from direct grants to business, to generous income support or health care systems. The one defining feature is a connection to government. So almost anything your government does successfully is open to attack as a subsidy to one or your exporting sectors.

Social Consequences

One exasperated GATT negotiator explained, during the final days of negotiation before the conclusion of the Uruguay round, that they were “not attempting to solve all the social problems of the world”. Perhaps they weren’t attempting to solve any.

Government and business go about the age old struggle of trading taxes for social services. Even if the taxes are not levied directly on the businesses, they argue that taxes on their sales reduces them, or taxes on the wages of their workers drive up their salary demands. Except during buoyant business periods, this acts as a damper on social spending. In the global market there is an added damper, as businesses compete with others in jurisdictions that have lower social spending.

Public social services are inherently disadvantaged in this system of trade that considers only the money value of goods. Downward pressure is put on all services paid through taxes including unemployment insurance, welfare, family benefits, pensions, health care, child care, education, and infrastructure spending. Even minimum wage and labour and safety standard laws (child labour laws?) are under threat by this myopic focus on trade for trade sake.

Environmental and health regulations are lumped in with non-tariff barriers as bad. environment versus jobsEnvironment versus jobs has been the troublesome tradeoff in developed countries for years. The thinking is that if we don’t accept the jobs that pollute our environment then the companies involved will simply shift production and thus employment to a location that will. The minimum wage has undergone this same analysis since its inception. The danger is that this tradeoff will now be expanded to include other social costs as well. If we don’t lower our taxes that pay for health care or welfare then we’ll lose jobs to another less costly jurisdiction.

Change for Change Sake

What the notions of Progress and globalization try to explain is the process society has been living with for hundreds of years, living with changeliving with change. Change of ever increasing magnitudes – the industrial revolution, the information revolution, the biotechnology revolution.

But almost all changes are introduced for short term gain, or at least with regard only for the short term consequences. This seems to be the nature of our society. We implement first and ask questions later. The gee-whiz aspects tend to captivate our imaginations so. When a study of the longer term consequences of changes is finally made, we are usually left with a mess that no one is capable of or willing to clean up.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

We seem to be able to admit to ourselves, however reluctantly, that we become more like our parents the older we get. This is a result of the way we are socialized and how we learn our culture. The way we think and the way we act is in large part a reflection of how others around us conduct themselves in public.

In the age of television and instant news, the range of examples of public behaviour that is available to us becomes the range of the world. In particular, we see examples of behaviour that would not normally occur in our surroundings and our culture, but these too become examples of how to behave.

As I write this, we in quiet and safe Ottawa have been shocked by the random drive-thru shootingdrive-by shooting death of someone who happened to work for the same company as I. He was out to the corner store in the early evening, when he was shot in the chest from a passing vehicle. Several other shots had been taken at store windows earlier in the evening.

To some people in this world, especially our neighbours in the cities of the U.S., this would not be particularly notable. “Oh we have drive by shootings all the time” said one visiting New Yorker on our evening news. But we don’t, and shouldn’t have had this one either.

Our news casually covers the horrors and degeneration of societies around the world. We see it every day. It becomes part of the repertoire of things people can do. And then someone decides to copy an act they have seen numerous times on T.V. Our society becomes infected by the worst aspects of others. Our children grow up incorporating into their minds the ways of acting that they see around them, including what they see on T.V.

We tend to throw up our hands and say ‘that’s the way things are’. This is how the changes become permanent. We excuse ourselves by thinking that nothing can be done, certainly not by us. These are global forces and you can’t stop Progress. And so nothing is done.

The problem is we don’t even entertain the possibility that things could be changed. We look at regulating television and say that it’s either an issue of freedom of speech, American style, or that technology changes so rapidly that we have no hope of controlling it. We’ve given up responsibility because it’s so easy to think nothing can be done.

We let our society get out of control. We let violence escalate. We also give it a place to incubate.

Like Parent, Like Child

Children are a reflection of their parents’ attitudes and actions. I’ve always found it interesting that parenting is practically the only important thing we do where society requires no qualifications, we are neither taught nor licensed, and we have no supervision or support. At times it seems that society places little value on this activity.

We have participated in a great experiment on the family in the last several decades. Our economic and social structures have changed drastically in relation to child rearing. Once the extended family was common, providing ample supervision and example for children as they grew up. We then moved to the nuclear family, father at work providing for the family, mother alone at home looking after the kids. Now because of changes in economics, aspirations, and social bonds, it is normal either for both parents to work or for single parenthood. Is it a big surprise that children have less supervision and see less of their parents than in the good old days?

What is the likely result of this diminishing parental involvement? As less socialization takes place in the home and more at school, on the streets, and through popular culture we are experiencing more and more behaviour from children that does not meet with our approval. Society struggles to fill the void, but in the process is over taxing the schools with the increased need to socialize kids at the expense of educating them. As these children get older we are shocked by more involvement with gangs and violence. We are worried. Our answer is to build community centres for fear teenagers will get bored and start a riot.

The U.S. has midnight basketball programs for youths, to get them off the streets at night.

Assuming that we aren’t happy with these consequences, shouldn’t we be examining the reasons, the real underlying reasons and dealing with them?