A Letter From Dr. Pangloss
Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire's "Candide" was a true optimist: he thought that this was the best of all possible worlds. Is a true pessimist is someone who agrees with him? (OK, it's been said before)
It is unfashionable to be optimistic about the world ( even Americans are a bit flaky on happy endings these days). But you know how the thing you worry about most does not happen? Instead something else totally unexpected comes and hits you on the head.
Mankind, society, whatever, is not a person. Nevertheless it is easier to use personal language, and say that over time mankind has tended to solve its worst problems at the expense of creating others, at least in the political and economic areas. Go back 100 years and the worst problems were arguably the huge gap between rich and poor , even in wealthy nations; rampant militarism and the fear (or promise ) of revolution; and colonial oppression of what is now known as the third world.
Move forward fifty years and certain of these problems have gone, but at horrendous cost in two world wars. The worst militaristic regimes of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had been
swept out of existence in those wars; living standards for the working classes had risen sharply in developed countries, and were to rise even more dramatically in the next two decades; and colonial rule had either gone or was rapidly on the way out. In its place was the shadow of the atomic bomb, and at least until the late 1960s it seemed unlikely, given the human propensity to war, that we could survive without a nuclear holocaust. Moreover fascism might have gone, to be replaced by the equally dire threat of communism (how many, even today, know that Stalin killed even more than Hitler, and as for Mao's victims, we do not yet know the truth).
Third world liberation soon proved to be hollow as the gap in living standards between the first and third worlds became ever wider.
It is unfashionable to be optimistic about the world ( even Americans are a bit flaky on happy endings these days). But you know how the thing you worry about most does not happen? Instead something else totally unexpected comes and hits you on the head.
Mankind, society, whatever, is not a person. Nevertheless it is easier to use personal language, and say that over time mankind has tended to solve its worst problems at the expense of creating others, at least in the political and economic areas. Go back 100 years and the worst problems were arguably the huge gap between rich and poor , even in wealthy nations; rampant militarism and the fear (or promise ) of revolution; and colonial oppression of what is now known as the third world.
Move forward fifty years and certain of these problems have gone, but at horrendous cost in two world wars. The worst militaristic regimes of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had been
swept out of existence in those wars; living standards for the working classes had risen sharply in developed countries, and were to rise even more dramatically in the next two decades; and colonial rule had either gone or was rapidly on the way out. In its place was the shadow of the atomic bomb, and at least until the late 1960s it seemed unlikely, given the human propensity to war, that we could survive without a nuclear holocaust. Moreover fascism might have gone, to be replaced by the equally dire threat of communism (how many, even today, know that Stalin killed even more than Hitler, and as for Mao's victims, we do not yet know the truth).
Third world liberation soon proved to be hollow as the gap in living standards between the first and third worlds became ever wider.
Labels: History
posted by Total Issues at 9:15 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home