The Inevitability of “Progress”—and Collapse

This blog post is not a book review, but it is based upon a novel that I first learned about from Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs. The book in question is How Beautiful We Were (2020) by Imbolo Mbue. 

Author Imbolo Mbue was born in Cameroon (in 1981), educated in the U.S., and became an American citizen in 2014. She now lives in New York City with her husband and children.

Mbue’s debut novel is the award-winning Behold the Dreamers (2016) and was selected by Oprah for her book club. I am currently reading that intriguing book.

But soon after learning about How Beautiful We Were, I was able to check it out on Kindle from my local library and to read it in a few days. It is the poignant story of the people who live in Kosawa, a small village in a fictional African country.

On July 28 (see here), Anton cited what Yaya, the old grandmother, said about Christian missionaries who had come to that part of Africa when she was a little girl. She was troubled by what the missionaries said—and even though I was a missionary for 38 years, I found their talk troubling also.

But Mbue’s book is not anti-Christian. In fact, in “Acknowledgments” at the end of the book, she thanks her aunt “for making me go to Bethel Baptist Church, Kumba”—and says that “that led me to become the person of faith I am today” (p. 364).

The pivotal issue of How Beautiful We Were is corporate greed, which caused a severe environmental crisis in Kosawa and the surrounding area. Paxton, an American petroleum corporation, began working in that region, and their oil drilling operation led to massive pollution of the land and water.

An increasing number of children in Kosawa die from pollution-caused disease, and the once peaceful life of the Kosawa villagers is increasingly thrown into disarray.

The main struggle against Paxton is led by Thula, the most precocious child in Kosawa, who ends up spending years getting an education in the U.S. before returning to Kosawa to continue the fight against Paxton. There are often signs of apparent improvement, but the struggle ends tragically.

The novel begins in 1980 and concludes in 2020, the village of Kosawa gone, the descendants mostly working for Paxton in Africa or even in the United States. The older people still left in their native country woefully say,

Sometimes we ask our children about the cars they drive. The cars seem to be bigger than they’ve ever been, needing more oil. Do they think about it, about the children who will suffer as we once did just so they can have all the oil they want? (p. 358).

“Progress” seems inevitable when considering industrialism or capitalism. Rather than people maintaining their traditional way of life, the lure of money to buy those things that make life easier and, supposedly, more enjoyable is irresistible. And corporate greed is insatiable.

But as I have already written repeatedly this year, such “progress” leads to overshoot and the inevitability of the collapse of the world as we know it. As Thinking Friend David Nelson remarked earlier this week, “Uncontrolled capitalism is cancerous.” That is a primary reason collapse is inevitable.

When the collapse will come is not known, and action taken now can either hasten or delay the collapse. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act signed by Pres. Biden on Aug. 16 happily postpones the inevitable—but it does not remove the inevitability.

Someone anonymously posted (on Aug. 10) this comment on my blogsite: “We are always looking for an alternative to the only true solution—a radical change in how we consume everything—by consuming far, far less.”

I think that is certainly true—but highly unlikely to happen. The desire for upward mobility, which includes greater consumption, is boundless; the willingness to embrace downward mobility is rare—in spite of Henri Nouwen’s correct insistence that it is “the selfless way of Christ.”**

Sadly, as Jesus declared, “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:14, NIV)

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** See Nouwen’s The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (2007). I last read that book in Jan. 2021, noting that it is “a small but quite profound book that could/should be read often.”

Is Progress Observable?

My previous posting was “In Praise of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” and this posting is being made on what should have been his eighty-first birthday instead of his birthday anniversary. I wonder what Dr. King would be thinking and doing if he were a healthy and active 81-year-old senior statesman, such as, say, Jimmy Carter, who is still quite productive even though he was born more than four years before King.

I can’t help but think that Dr. King would be dissatisfied with many of the problems African-Americans still face in this society but that, at the same time, he would acknowledge that significant progress has been made since 1963, the year about which he wrote in Why We Can’t Wait. It seems to me there is a world of difference between the situation all across the South (and the rest of the nation) today from what it was in “Bull Connor’s Birmingham” that King wrote about so vividly in the third chapter of that book.

Thinking back over the last 150 years in the U.S., hasn’t there been significant progress made for African-Americans (abolition of slavery, suffrage, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, etc.), for women (suffrage and significant gains in many ways since the woman’s liberation movement of the 1970s), for senior citizens (social security, Medicare), for the poor (welfare provisions at different levels through the years and now the impending health care bill), and maybe even recently for Native Americans?

I write “even recently for Native Americans” not just because they are one Thinking Friend’s primary concern but because they are a segment of society which has been most oppressed and mistreated during the last 150 years. But even though it was not a U.S. action, it is significant, I think, that in 2007 the U.N. General Assembly passed the “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” affirming, among other things, that “indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples.” Sadly, though, this U.N. Declaration has received little publicity and probably as yet has not been greatly helpful to Native Americans and other indigenous peoples of the world.

In comments made on my previous posting, another Thinking Friend wrote, “What are the areas of injustice that we should be standing for these days in our community and in the greater global community?” Or, we might ask, where are the main areas in which progress still needs to be made?

For the nation as a whole, perhaps the treatment of Native Americans remains one of the greatest areas of injustice. But to my knowledge, most of us do not live in communities where that is a local problem. So, I wonder if the primary area of injustice in the communities most of us live in is not that of gays and lesbians. Perhaps more than any other group in our communities gays and lesbians are now victims of the greatest prejudice, discrimination, and lack of civil rights. And much of that injustice, unfortunately, is due to attitudes that many Christians have and support.

This is a subject to which I will probably need to return. But I wonder what other area(s) of chronic injustice you see in contemporary society and especially in the community where you live.

For the Common Good

One Thinking Friend (Craig D.) wrote (and doesn’t he write eloquently!) in response to my previous posting about the “struggle over the definition of ‘progress.’" I think he is right. Communication is often difficult, because words and concepts are not understood by everyone in the same way. So let me say a little more about what I mean by progress.

I certainly do not think that all change is progress. But all progress involves change. That is my problem with a cyclical worldview; it understands the world in terms of repetition (like the seasons) rather than in terms of change. Sure, there is change from one season to the other, but it is the same every year; there is never a new (a fifth and then a sixth) season.

“Do we have any choice other than to look for progress?” Craig wrote. Well, not looking for progress (at least on earth during one’s lifetime) was the position of most of the people of India for centuries (or millennia). The best example of a circular worldview is that of traditional India, which was basically a view of accepting what is with little thought of or effort toward effecting societal change or progress. The only choice, it seems, was accepting the situation (caste) into which one was born.

Certainly there were some Asian Indians who sought change. Gandhi is the best example. But before he began to work for change (progress) he studied in England and was, by his own admission, greatly influenced by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Tolstoy, and John Ruskin, a British artist who was an advocate of Christian socialism.

Another good question from Craig: “Can we define progress in such a way that it furthers peace and justice, life and hope, rather than just measuring acres of trees cut down?” Yes, we can and we must, I believe. As I wrote in the last paragraph of the previous posting, “Our challenge is to join with all people of good will to work for progress so that at the end of this new year the planet and those who dwell on it, especially those who are suffering the most, will be better off than they are now.”

True progress is that which enhances the common good—for the planet and all who dwell on it. Progress on this earth is seen where, and only where, shalom is expanded. Progress is seen in material things only to the extent that they better provide the necessities of life for everyone: food, clothing, shelter, and (can’t we say) health care.

Progress is seen when chronic hunger and starvation are eliminated, when the sick are increasingly cured and diseases dispelled, when those who have been enslaved, abused, oppressed, and/or exploited are freed from such treatment, and when there is, truly, liberty and (social) justice for all.

Is Progress Possible?

Progress doesn’t have as good a reputation as it used to. There was a time when it seemed evident to most people in the Western world and increasingly in many other parts of the world, perhaps particularly Japan, that progress was a goal worth striving for. But now there seem to be more and more people who question the idea of progress.

Those who spoke so enthusiastically for progress throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early years of the twentieth centuries often did so on the basis of their belief in the power of science and technology to improve the quality of human life. This enthusiasm was often accompanied by an optimism that saw everything getting better and better “every day in every way.”

But beginning way back almost one hundred years ago now, World War I shook the widespread (Western) belief that progress was inevitable and that human reason and science would conquer all the problems of the human race. And even though the idea of progress continued to be a prevalent idea through the past century, increasingly people seem to have grown skeptical about the possibility of progress. And, certainly, it has become quite evident that science can be used in destructive ways as well as in constructive ones.

But, I still believe that progress is possible and that pursuing progress is good and important. This belief is closely related to my affirmation of a linear worldview. We humans can learn from the past in order to improve the future. A quote alluded to in comments made about my previous blog posting comes from George Santayana (1863-1952). In The Life of Reason, Or,The Phases of Human Progress (Vol. 1, 1905), Santayana wrote, “Progress . . . depends on retentiveness. . . . Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In other words, we need to remember the past in order to change the future for the better.

A linear world view does not mean that progress is inevitable, nor does it mean that human history moves ever upward. As another Thinking Friend commented, a wheel can move backward as well as forward. There have been times in human history that the world has seen regression (or retrogression) rather than progress. But, still, progress is possible and striving for positive progress is imperative.

A circular worldview tends to lead those who hold such a view toward passivity, toward acceptance of what is, toward fatalism. Such a worldview also uses the image of a wheel, but the wheel is seen as spinning horizontally (on its side) rather than vertically. Progress is possible only when the “rubber hits the road.”

We humans can, and do, help create the future. Our challenge is to join with all people of good will to work for progress so that at the end of this new year the planet and those who dwell on it, especially those who are suffering the most, will be better off than they are now.