The Totalitarian Trap
The Totalitarian Trap
During the mid-century modern era—say from the 1850s through the 1930s—progressives posed four ways to deal with those who would not progress:
Convince them they would be much better off if they just jumped on board with progressivism.
Manage those who could not be convinced. Force the reluctant to go through training to keep the jobs, treat them as socially undesirable, etc.
Educate every person in the culture through every means available on why they should desire and support progressivism. The means included public schools, colleges, newspapers, and entertainment such as films and theme parks.
Finally, those who cannot be changed in these ways should apply eugenics so they cannot reproduce. Assuming some resistance to progressivism is genetic, the "reactionary" components of the culture will eventually die out. In the most extreme progressive incarnations, struggle sessions and mass executions are the final stage.
Those who argue for convincing at the beginning of a progressive cycle often say, "We would never go beyond convincing and education! We do not want to hurt anyone. We want to guide them along a better path for their good gently." By the time the progressive age has burnt itself out, these people are arguing for the most extreme measures in the name of progress.
This process of moving from gentle or soft progressivism to hard progressivism can be called the Totalitarian Trap.
Progressivism should start with improving man's control over nature and end with increased human flourishing. People in progressive cultures should always be happier, live longer, have more freedom, etc.
History tells a different story. Every historical progressive movement has ended in a loop of "that didn't work; we need to increase our control over people to make them happy!" Every progressive movement in history ends in a regime attempting to control every aspect of every person's life to create perfection.
Progressivism, no matter how softly and carefully it begins, always ends in some form of totalitarianism.
Why? Because progressivism—even the gentlest forms—begins by abandoning human dignity.
Abandoning Dignity
A complete definition of human dignity must wait for another series of dispatches; for now, let's work with this partial definition:
Dignity is the ability to shape your life's direction and content freely.
If progressivism always strives to restrict human freedom along paths that some "elite thinkers" believe are best for society, it always works against human dignity.
One of the many paradoxes of progressivism: How can you increase human freedom by coercing or forcing people to believe and do specific things? You cannot.
Trying to force people to flourish always ends up destroying the person. As C.S. Lewis says:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.[1]
Abandoning Purpose
To force people to flourish, you must know what flourishing means. What kind of life does a flourishing person live?
Suppose you build a hammer for driving nails and then use it to drive screws. Will the result be something you can call flourishing? What about if you create a wrench to turn a bolt and then use it to hammer a nail? Would this be flourishing?
Neither case can be called flourishing. It seems, then, that flourishing is somehow related to purpose. Which leads to a rather important question: What is the purpose of a person?
Midcentury modern progressivism tied flourishing to material wealth. The person aimed to work as little as possible while enjoying the highest material wealth possible.
As we will see in future dispatches, modern progressivism ties flourishing to a peculiar kind of freedom—the freedom of eternal youth and consequence-free decisions.
But what if we were created for some purpose outside of this world?
In that case, chasing flourishing in either the form of material wealth or inexhaustible choices will lead us away from our purpose—and hence away from both dignity and flourishing.
Both midcentury and modern progressivism tie technology to nature. Both of these definitions of flourishing share a common idea—that man is merely a part of nature. Lewis predicted this outcome. As we gain control over nature, we will use that power to control others. Ultimately:
…what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with nature as its instrument.[2]
It should seem obvious that to understand progress—as opposed to progressivism—and truly flourish, we must discover what humans are meant for.
Abandoning Reality
Finally, when progressivism fails, it often changes language. If reality refuses to match what we believe should be, we change language to fit what we desire rather than what is.
Disconnecting language from reality is called nominalism. Once again, a deeper dive into how we understand reality must wait for other dispatches. For the present, consider how language is used in our modern progressive world. Orwell said:
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
In 1984, the past was forgotten, and a new language was developed to prevent people from thinking about (or saying) certain things.
Detaching language from reality is one of the simplest ways to control a society's perception of reality. Of course, this disconnect cannot hold forever, but while it holds, it is effective.
The Bottom Line
Progressivism—real progressivism that holds the human condition can be infinitely improved, if not perfected—always leads to totalitarianism. History tells us that every weapon of war man has invented is used. History tells us that once the goal of "making people flourish" is agreed upon, there are almost no lengths to which humans will not go to make this end come about.
What's next? We need to look at the origins and nature of our modern progressive age to see if we can find these same patterns.
[1] C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).
[2] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).