Jonah Goldberg provides a way to see societal morality that
might sound foreign to some readers.
Here is his take:
What societies decide is right or
wrong becomes what is right and wrong
for most of the people who live in them.
But I think the lessons of history show that societies can choose poorly
– and that this can be proved empirically through facts and reason. Some cultures are better than others, not
because of some gauzy metaphysical claim, but because they allow more people to
live happy, prosperous, meaningful lives without harming other people in the
processes. Because this is true, it is
incumbent upon all of us to fight for a better society, to defend the hard-learned
lessons of human history, and to be grateful for what we have accomplished.[1]
This conservative author goes on to point out that what one would
consider a normal life – approaching the material well-being one can find in
advanced nations like the US – is a relatively modern development. At best, according to Goldberg, one can only
go back just over three hundred years before any humans began to appreciably
improve their state of being.
Civics
educators don’t need to agree with Goldberg, but they are immeasurably helped
by becoming knowledgeable of what Goldberg is getting at. He proposes an argument that, if at all reasonable,
should affect how a civics teacher sees his/her subject matter. This blog wants to review his argument for
this purpose – to encourage that sort of reflection on the part of those
teachers.
Goldberg first
couches his view against the total history[2] of human
existence. One would think that such a
context would take hundreds and hundreds of pages, but it does not. Why?
Because most of that history – he claims homo sapiens have a history of
over 250,000 years – can be viewed as a recurring story. That is, humans have met with brutish
conditions on an ongoing basis for just about all of that time. “Semi-hairless, upright, nomadic apes
foraging and fighting for food. No
change …”[3] over
this extended period. In other words,
human existence – its natural state – was a Hobbesian one.
And what is
that? He describes it as grinding
poverty, horrific violence, and, for the individual, a short life. The estimate is that average life span in pre
civilized times was 35 years and that that brevity lasted way beyond the dawn
of civilization.[4] And he points out that such “advancements”
such as agriculture did not improve things.
It, agriculture for example, limited diet choices and it introduced
strenuous work regimens. Yet today, things
are different. People live longer and work
less strenuously to acquire significantly more enriching things, at least among
people who luckily live in those advanced nations. What happened?
According to
Goldberg, a “Miracle” happened. The next
posting will explain.
[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide
of the West: How the Rebirth of
Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American
Democracy (New York, NY: Crown
Forum, 2018), 5 (Kindle edition).
[2] The term history here is not limited to written history,
but the whole past of human existence on the planet.
[3] Ibid., 6 (Kindle edition).
[4] “Medicine and Health,” Stratford Hall, n.d., accessed May 30, 2019, http://www.stratfordhall.org/educational-resources/teacher-resources/medicine-health/ . Estimates
vary, but one needs to remember the prevalence of disease.
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