Subj : EUROPE To : Frank Masingill From : Bob Eyer Date : Mon Oct 23 2000 08:23 pm >>If you argue AGAINST these dynamics it is because, I >>suppose, that you, like Bob Eyer, consider the murderous >>gangs for whom a Europe, deprived of the canons of western >>thought by this intellectual positivism and the social >>circumstances of the early 20th century, accepted as >>leaders. BE: -"Bob Eyer"?? That's me you're talking about here. And your -sentence is a triviality. You say, " ... I suppose that you, -like Bob Eyer, consider the murderous gangs for whom a Europe, -... (phrase in apposition) ..., accepted as leaders". >You told me once that while the nazi horrors were clearly bad they >represented a mere passing phase in the overall progress that >mankind was now experiencing because he "he"? Does this refer back to mankind? >had overcome the ignorance >and superstition of religious philosophical period when he was >mired in primitive error. Now I know that you did not use those >precise words but that is what I read in your evaluation of the >the period since "enlightenment." If I have erred in remembering >your thought then I shall stand corrected. My view is very simple here: While history shows good evidence of progress overall, it doesn't go forward in a straight line; nor does it show perfection. At the beginning of the Enlightenment toward the end of the 17th century, we began to realise that progress existed. The celebrated Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns was definitively settled in favour of the Moderns by 1700. But there were many cases of barbarism in the 18th century. In the 19th century, progress was defaced somewhat by the violence of colonialism. In the 20th century, the two world wars wrought terrible damage and intolerance. But, despite these things, overall progress continued. While wars and disease actually did limit population growth before the end of the 18th century, wars and disease did not limit it afterwards. The two world wars killed off something like 100 million people. But they occurred at a time when the world's population was far larger than the losses and was growing so as to dwarf them within less than a generation. At no previous period of human history had the human race recovered so quickly from its worst cataclysms. Not only has the population of the world grown rather drastically and much faster than at any previous time in human history. In addition, the average welfare of mankind also drastically grew during the same period. Between 1800 and 2000, the AVERAGE longevity of individual members of the human race improved from around 30 years to the range between 60 and 80 years. Only very few countries and relatively tiny populations of the world show individual life expectancies from birth less than 60 years today. The poorest countries of the world today (such as Sierra Leone) offer their small populations life expectancies around 40 years. But even this figure far exceeds the mean life expectancy of Englishmen in the time of Thomas Malthus in England and of George Washington in America. Most of the increase in human longevity occurred during the same century which saw the world's most destructive world wars. These wars hardly had any impact at all in reducing the population or limiting human longevity. For they in fact affected only a small percentage of the human race (less than 2 percent). The past two centuries have seen undeniable effects of progress. The population has grown as it never did before. People live more than twice as long as they used to, despite the huge population increase. Progress has eliminated practically all slavery. Public education for all has been established in nearly every country of the world, wiping out practically all the illiteracy which previously held back the human race. For the first time in history, women have achieved equal status with men in most countries--or at least they have achieved an equality which even the utopians of past ages did not imagine. These benefits were not purchased at the price of conformity any more than longer life expectancies were purchased at the cost of reducing the population. Today there exist more religions, more art, more independent thought, more choice in every conceivable thing for a far greater proportion of the human race than any previous utopianist had ever imagined. Not Plato, nor Thomas More, nor Tommaso Campanella envisioned that material welfare could go along so well with the sheer sweep and extent of human choice and freedom which exists today. It is true that modern technology has made warfare much more dangerous than it used to be. But politics has controlled warfare in such a way as to limit the destruction of warfare to a far greater extent than was possible in the distant past. Even when the Atomic Bomb was used twice against an enemy in the 20th century, it was used to save lives rather than kill off as many as possible. This too is a first in human history. Never before the 20th century has warfare been so well configured as to achieve progressive ends. And the end of warfare per se is within sight alone within the Modern period. No previous period of human history seriously contemplated such a thing. Thus, despite the backsliding in a few corners of the earth or in some brief and unfortunate episodes, the general direction of history is proving to be unmistakeably biased in favour of universal progress. Bob --- PCBoard (R) v15.3 (OS/2) 5 * Origin: FidoNet: CAP/CANADA Support BBS : 416 287-0234 (1:250/710) .