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[QUOTE] Originally posted by Ecthy
Human history considers human societies over the time, and human societies change. With the possiblity of technical improvement, and the constant competition between groups and sub-groups of human society, technical advance, and economic expansion, are almost inevitable. What is judged as "progress" is however defined by humans, culturally mostly, but also in different ways. Do you consider an ideologically motivated definition of progress as cultural or as scientific? Our western way of thinking (call it culturally or ideologically directed) embraces economic and technical advance, so we tend to say there's always progress in history. This doesn't exclude the possibility of isolated societies in hierarchical order that do deny certain developments; think hunter-gatherers in New Guinea that repulse certain developments, or Imperial China when it banned certain ideas or technical concepts.

It sounds like you dont see an "objective" notion of progress. Thats why I jumped to 'directional', which could imply that things always move in the same direction (once youve got iron, you never go back to bronze, once you have literacy you dont go back, etc, etc) without placing a value judgement on the direction.

China, of course, was in a position from the Tang to about 1800 or so, where it was not really in direct competition with other states. The farther it fell "behind" the more precarious that position became.

New Guinea? Are you sure youre not thinking of Australia? New Guinea tribes adapted the sweet potato very quickly, per Diamond, and were driven precisely by intertribe competition to adopt any innovations that they were socially capable of maintaining.


directional? History as you see it depends on the prism through which you watch it. Since, as I explained in an earlier post, humans tend to see history in a biased manner, they also focus on certain processes more than on others. Therefore, history appears as "directional" to many, because A) they focus on certain phenomena more than on others, for reasons cultural, ideological, class-wise etc. and B) because they pretend their own temporal POV to be the end of history. Whig history is a good example for this. If you live in late 19th century Britain and look at the past of your country, it might appear that history always leads to the increase of freedom and representative government. If however you look at 20th century Europe from 1920 until 1980, isolatedly because you live in 1980 and are talking to your grandpa, you might find the opposite to be true.

Yes, and thats presumably one reason why these kinds of Hegelian notions went out of fashion 1920 to 1980, except for keepers of the flame like Kojeve, who insisted that "reason" would win out. OTOH even the totalitarian developments were not simply reversions to the past, but incorporated mass mobilization, which was clearly a "modern" concept, and so indicated a direction, though not necessarily a liberal one.

But we are looking from a different vantage point, now in 2007. From 1989 to 2001 it looked pretty clearly like Kojeve was right, and that 1920-1989 was the anomaly, the antithesis to be overcome, not 1789-1914. In 2007, amidst demoralization on this side of the pond with events in La Proche Orient, Latin America, Russia and elsewhere, its starting to feel like 1989 to 2001 was the anomaly. I think that too is shortsighted, but I was looking for your thoughts.


But thanks for your responses so far.