A lasting delusion

This is a lasting delusion, the delusion that “society” can be changed by human will, or human action in whatever form. In truth, human societies evolve, slowly, through the influence of thousands of variables, not of all of them visible, or readable, by the contemporaries. Societies can be disrupted by violent events such as natural disasters or “revolutions”, such disruption can be fatal, leading to the collapse of the society rather than its change.

Revolutions

Revolutions epitomise the fallacy: they are neither spontaneous, nor expressions of a will to change, but often the results of minority actions that may succeed in displacing a political order. A political change cannot easily translate into a societal change, indeed is more likely to cause a hostile reaction.

So it was for the “French Revolution”, in one interpretation a plot to plunder the Church’s properties, renamed for the occasion national assets (“biens nationaux”) and displace the monarchy in favour of a rentier class (“les acquéreurs”) created by the plunder. In this case not only did society not change, but was prevented to evolve as it normally would have, a direct consequence of the political monopoly exercised by the said class on governance, to this day. 

Coup d’État

The crucial example in the twentieth century is of course the Bolshevik coup d’état in Petrograd, carried out by a small clique of foreign revolutionaries, funded by foreign interests that  did not hesitate to have the imperial family butchered by their assassins in order to make any return to legitimacy impossible. Yet the attempt to force radical societal changes, such as imposing collectivism and atheism by violence, was a complete fiasco, as demonstrated by the return to traditional and spiritual values, and rule by an oligarchy, some eighty years later.

Changes

Assuming this is right, how to enable desirable changes? By “Modern” societies one often implies societies following the western model of “rules” and culture. The influence of the media on western societies is unchallenged. The view of society, as expressed by Guy Debord as the “Société du Spectacle”, that is the control of social life by those media, is widely recognised.

Propaganda, advertising, consumerism and brainwashing technologies have indeed influenced behaviour along a line of least resistance. For many people those changes are not improvements but rather signs of decay, evidence of a decline. Striving for positive changes, requires a long term view, improvements in education, public discourse, true democracy and social peace. Those are not to be obtained either by violence or some miraculous intervention of a providential leadership: this is not the domain of short term decisions, but that of long term planning and engagement of the majority of citizens.

Consensus

However how can those positive changes be identified and how can agreement about them be obtained? How can individual views be reconciled and turned into consensus? I may wish to see children better protected from predators and criminals, but how can this be achieved? There are many such examples, as the challenge here is not so much to identify desirable objectives, such as fairer society, better environmental regulations, more objective information, protection from fraud etc. but rather how to achieve a consensus acceptable to most of us. Without it those wishes may too remain delusions. It may be that those societies that have returned to traditional values and spirituality are on their way to an answer.

Quote

“I feel very tired: during the past seven years in Russia I have seen and lived through so many sad dramas – the more sad for not being caused by the logic of passion and free will but by the blind and cold calculation of fanatics and cowards…I still believe fervently in the future happiness of mankind but I am sickened and disturbed by the growing sum of suffering which people have to pay as the price of their fine hopes.”
Maxim Gorky, 1921