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.