Be careful what you wish for

Are things getting better? In some ways, undeniably. Progress is not altogether a fiction, or ‘modern myth’ in John Gray’s terminology, if we focus on such ultimately important ideas as medicine or science. Has life progressed since the discovery of antibiotics? Definitely. Would one seriously wish to have lived before the discovery of anaesthesia? Certainly not. In such areas, the existence of progress is, surely, undeniable.

That isn’t John Gray’s focus, but the fact that progress certainly exists and is real in some areas of human endeavour makes one think that the evidence, in areas where he does address his attention in this interesting, original and memorable book, might be read in two ways. He is right to point out that social existence does not necessarily run along lines of improvement, and that within recent history a well-ordered and structured society has frequently declined into savagery.

In Gray’s view, this decline has, as in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, frequently been abetted precisely by those dreams of improvement that are supposed to have despatched butchery to the historical past. But, all the same, for many individuals, the change in social attitudes has led to a definite improvement in circumstances and in opportunity. If you were black, or gay, or even a woman 60 years ago in Britain, your circumstances and your opportunities were objectively inferior to what they probably are now. Progress here is not as simple and as uniform as in the case of medical advance, but it has happened, may be witnessed, may even be measured.

It’s right to comment immediately on the notion of progress, because Gray, in his starting point, dismisses it too readily. For him, Arthur Koestler’s excursions into mysticism and parapsychology are ‘not as fantastic as the idea that humanity is slowly ascending to a higher civilisation’.