Three Versions of Human History.

None of these versions of human history has much evidence to back it up. In fact, if evidence were to be produced, it would probably support all three accounts. No doubt, at some point in human history, humans did leave largely leisurely lives. But, equally without doubt, there were times when life was very difficult. Total it all up, however, and it would average out somewhere in between.

Descent.

The idea that human life in the past was better than it is now is one of great antiquity. The ancient Greeks looked back on a lost golden age of leisure, long since replaced by toil. It is also a view which has a modern expression.

In this view, all historical developments are part of a continual decline. When nomadic tribes settled into agricultural life, the first step downwards was taken. The founding of the first villages and towns was another step downwards. The publication of the first laws marked another long step. The invention of money was a particularly long step downwards. The first war, with men fighting men, brought a further plunge. The development of tools and machines continued the slow slide. In this long decline, Auschwitz and Hiroshima are simply the latest bad news.

These are all footsteps that humanity have taken away from the Eden they once knew. Each step takes us further from the heaven of that lost arcadian existence. The ideal world is an untouched arcadia.

This pessimistic account underpins political conservatism. Since all change is change for the worse, all change must be resisted. But the conservatism is tinged with resignation, because, given the inexorable slide downwards, it is known that, sooner or later, barbarity will overwhelm the makeshift defences.

The account also entails a deeply moral view of human life. Those earliest humans - Adam and Eve - could have and should have been content with their Eden. They were free to choose. But it wasn't enough for them. They wanted more. They were greedy. And it was this greed that led them, and all subsequent humanity, downwards.

Humanity, in this view, is incorrigibly morally corrupt. The best that anyone can hope to do is to curb their own appetites and urges, by practising self-discipline. If others do not exercise such self-discipline, then discipline must be imposed on them - they must be kept in check, for as long as possible.

The long descent terminates with the more or less complete destruction of greedy humanity.

The problem for this version of history is to explain occasional reverses in the otherwise continuous process of decline, when, quite inexplicably, men appear to become more virtuous, and life improves. But saintly men are the rare exceptions that prove the general rule.

Ascent.

The idea that human life was worse in the past is at least as old as the idea that it was better. In this view, historical developments are all part of a gradual process of improvement of human life.

When the first nomadic tribes settled to an agricultural existence, they collected hitherto scattered plants in one place, making it much easier to gather them. Life became more leisured. And when they invented hoes and spades and ploughs, these useful tools enabled them to plant and reap the harvest with less effort. So life became even more leisurely. And since in some places it was easy to make these tools, and in other places hard, a trade grew up whereby the tool-makers exchanged their tools for wheat or cattle. And since this trade expanded the geographical areas where these useful tools could be employed, trade acted to make life more leisurely for more people. And when, along the trade routes, towns grew up, with markets and money, the business of trade became simplified further, increasing leisure still further. The Industrial Revolution, and now the Information age, simply continue a process that has been going on for thousands of years.

This optimistic version of human history encourages radical innovation and change. It underpins the conviction of Progress. Every step upwards is a step away from the grim, toiling, miserable existence of our earliest ancestors, and towards a future paradise of perfect freedom.

Since that perfect freedom is assigned to the future, rather than the past, this ascent is seen as driven by necessity, not by human choice. The nomads that settled on farms did so out of necessity, because the natural environment could no longer sustain them. They had no choice but to do this. And because they had no choice, and their actions were driven by necessity, human nature cannot be held as corrupt and immoral. Human impulse is not something to be crushed by discipline, but allowed the most free and liberal expression.

The terminus of this long ascent is perfect freedom in a future heaven of leisure.

The problem, for this account of human history, is to explain murder, war, slavery, and the entire catalogue of evil.

Stasis.

The idea that nothing ever changes is probably the oldest view of all. Throughout long periods of history, the human way of life hardly changed at all, from century to century. Food was gathered in the same way, and people lived in the same dwellings, and life was no better and no worse than it ever had been in human memory.

At its worst, this encourages resignation and fatalism. Things will be as they have always been. No attempt at improvement will make one iota of difference, and no calamity is ever so bad as to leave a permanent mark. The wise man stoically accepts his lot without rancour or regret, whether it bring good or evil.

Nothing ultimately alters the equilibrium of the universe, even if a certain slight oscillation may be allowed. Bad times will be exactly compensated by better times, as the wheel of fortune slowly turns. History repeats itself.

This version of history grows, in part, from universal regularities. The sun rises and sets every day, as it has always done. The celestial constellations present the same unchanging pattern of stars. The moon circumnavigates the sky every month. The cycle of the seasons is repeated annually, and in that cycle living creatures reproduce and grow and die. Human life, with childhood, adulthood, work, marriage, and old age, are part of this endlessly repeating sequence.

In a Buddhist view, human life is bedevilled by desire - by a craving for something better or different. This desire is the cause of all suffering. So the wise man gives up craving, and his life is calm, unruffled.

The difficulty for this version of history is to explain away apparent changes, or fit them into some cyclic account of history.

Shifting Western Perspectives.

Western civilization seems, manic-depressively, to have oscillated between optimism - human history as ascent - and pessimism - human history as descent. It has, in the past 50 years, entered a pessimistic, depressive phase.

Christianity offered an account of history which could be interpreted as either descent or ascent. As descent, Old Testament Christianity ascribed the Fall of man to the Original moral failure of Adam, and all subsequent history as both tarnished by this sin and doomed to repeat it, until a terminal Last Judgement largely consigned sinful humanity to hell and oblivion. As ascent, New Testament Christianity began with fallen man, but held out the promise of Redemption in the impending Kingdom of Heaven.

Subsequent secular thinking was always deeply influenced by Christianity. From the Enlightenment through the industrial revolution, an optimistic belief in Progress, and a willingness to innovate and change in radical ways, indicate belief in ascent.

This optimism was shattered in the 20th century, first by the Great War of 1914-18, and later by Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and the Soviet gulags. The optimism gave way to new and profound pessimism. The belief in progress evaporated. Instead of science and technology being seen as beneficial, they came increasingly to be seen as principally providing weapons of mass murder. The future was nuclear holocaust, or mass starvation, or an impending ice age, or global warming. Human life was in descent.

In a world that had begun to resemble a labour camp, that industry which had once held out such promise for humanity came to be regarded as a curse, an enemy, an oppressor. Environmental movements of every sort set out to restrict its predations, to stop the construction of roads, dams, nuclear power stations. All this, along with the heartless science behind it, was something to be resisted, impeded, halted. And since science and reason had manifestly failed, the way was opened to every variety of non-rational or anti-rational cult.

No longer willing to contribute to a society whose goals they no longer shared, but which they could not change, men and women increasingly retreated into a private world. They became escapists.

This has created a division in Western society between, on the one hand, those who endured and survived the wars with optimism intact, and on the other hand, those for whom those wars and murders were their heritage, and who looked back in despair. The former were largely optimistic, and the latter mostly pessimistic.