29. "Progress"

In the early part of the 20th century we used the word "progress" pretty confidently. It wasn't just that we had not yet experienced the full horror of war between industrialized nations, it was also that we had, as historians more sophisticated than those we read in high school would soon show us, a naive view of history.

That view was called by these historians "the Whig view," and it was naive because it "presented the past as the inexorable march of progress toward enlightenment" (Wikipedia), a view the Whigs liked because their party's aims — constitutional government, personal freedoms, scientific discovery — fit right into it, and gained them credit.

Later historians, more thorough in their research, didn't like it because it left out too many of the complications, too much of the irrationality, in past life. Confident use of "progress," then, showed the more sophisticated that you, like a Whig, were ignoring historical complexity so you could hang on to a pleasing narrative.

Of course we churchgoers could never use "progress" with full confidence anyway because it suggested that material or political betterment, rather than spiritual betterment, was on our minds. When we got to college after the war we couldn't use it because it suggested that we were ignorant of what Emerson and Thoreau said about American materialism, and when we got to graduate school it showed that we were ignorant of what Heidegger said about American technology. We hadn't understood how much literature and philosophy had undermined faith in reason.

Wikipedia entries show where we would stand now if we used the word "progress" with confidence: squarely in the middle of the insufficiently educated public.

Despite their shortcomings as interpretations of the past, Whiggish histories continue to influence popular understandings of political and social development. This persistence reflects the power of dramatic narratives that detail epic struggles for enlightened ideals. Aspects of the Whig interpretation are apparent in films, television, political rhetoric, and even history textbooks."

Even in history of science textbooks, where so much corrective work has been done, "the grand celebratory and didactic narratives of scientific discovery and progress" still prevail.

I can't read that without thinking of the place where those narratives probably prevailed with the least embarrassment: at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1933. Exhibit after exhibit proudly showed how far we had gone in improving industrial products. I remember one in particular, set up by the New Departure Ball Bearing Company. Inside a glass case one perfectly round, perfectly hardened ball bearing after another dropped onto a perfectly flat, perfectly hardened plate, slanted so as to bounce it onto another such plate, then onto another and another until it bounced into a hole to return for another trip. On and on the balls went, clink, clink, clink, throughout the Exhibition, never flattening on plates that never dented, hitting the same spot for days.

I think of all that filled the word "progress" with meaning for me then: the ball bearings better than any that had ever been produced, their counterparts displayed in nearly every hall I went into, the grand Exposition park before me when I came out, the skyscrapers of a city grown to three million behind me. (In 1833 the population had been 300.) "Progress" was the right word for what all that showed, as it was for what my family showed: immigrant grandparents who owned a brick house, a father who wore a white collar, an aunt (my guide at the Exposition) who was secretary to a high executive in the New Departure Company.

Did the expression "faith in reason" apply to what underlay the efforts of those around me? Southside Chicago was still choked with immigrants fighting, often against each other, to better themselves. If you failed to "use your head" (to reason) you fell behind. You weren't holding to a faith; you had recognized a necessity.

How hard it would have been to say to those Southsiders that their trust in reason was naive. What the hell else could you trust? It would have been naive not to trust it. Those who didn't just hadn't looked at the empirical evidence. The poorhouse was full of people who hadn't used their heads.

Oh, oh, memory is making use of the word "progress" more difficult. Reason keeps you out of the poorhouse. That's progress?

Making my use even more difficult is the reminder that this was 1933, three years into the Great Depression. Everything had been going down and I've pictured my people and the nation making progress and believing in it. Confident use of the word is no more justified than it ever was.

Still, I can't see how a demonstration of that to those Southsiders that would have made any difference to them. They would still have tried to use their heads in the same way, with the same justification.

This tells me that "progress" doesn't matter. "Reason" matters. "Progress" is just an admiration-word applied by spectators to a particular outcome. Those engaged in the action don't care whether the outcome is called "progress" or "minimum regress" as long as they produce it. If "reason" is undermined they lose what will produce the best outcome. If "progress" is undermined they lose little. The word is no more important to them than the word "art" is to those immediately engaged with a painting.