A Thousand Years of Progress!?

                               In a moment of madness the other day, probably because I was becoming bored with the excitement of twiddling my thumbs, I decided to look up how many days there are in 1000 years. Yes, Dear Reader, it says much about the busyness of retirement that I should be enthused by this piece of trivia. Like most of you I am always impressed by people who intend to make the most of every day. And I know, Dear Friends, that many of you are out carping the diem as I scribble.  Indeed I have heard all too often the comment about life being too short and, of course, recognised the truth in this. But, in my naivety, I have never really recognised the reality. But, Dear Reader, I do now!

                                                                A chiliad = 1000 years = 365,000 days

                   Shock horror, Dear Friends, that is not a lot of days! (Please don’t nitpick me and remind me there should be the adjustment for leap years. This I know.) But as a British schoolboy I grew up ‘knowing’ that the most important date in British History, English History to be more precise, was 1066. Sometime in October that year William the Conqueror landed at Hastings in the south of England from his homeland of Normandy and proceeded to battle King Harold of England on a mound called Senlac Hill. Harold held the high ground, his men were told not to charge into the Normans if they retreated. They disobeyed. Harold looked up at the wrong moment, received an arrow in his eye and was no longer King of England.  William the Conqueror, aka ‘William the Bastard’ as a result of his birth and not because that’s what the English thought of him, then indulged in building works, gave land to his supporters, created a comprehensive census type record called the Domesday Book and created a dynasty in which many of his successors did indeed ‘die nasty’. Any rate here we are, not quite some 365,000 days later and we have made great, great progress. Or have we?

             We have invented things haven’t we, Dear Reader. My Grandfather who was born in 1880 did not see a motor car for all of his youth. There were no aeroplanes. He would have laughed if he was told that humans would be able to fly in machines. He died in 1965, four years short of the moon landing but certainly around to see Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn leave the Earth and venture into space. Back on the ground he did not begin with a telephone, there were nascent radio waves but no TV. It is true to say that there were more effective ways of killing people than arrow, sword or spear. Progress was indeed being made. More and more people were being taught to read. Medicine was increasing life expectancy.  And yet, and yet!

          I have the arrogant tendency to look back on history and feel superior. What have I to feel superior about? I never invented an antibiotic, I do not fully understand how the flush toilet works. If I built a viaduct it would likely not stand for one of those days let alone last for 1000 years and more. I wouldn’t recognise an engine part if I found it in my soup. I can gather but I can’t hunt. Mammoths would still roam freely and in abundance and my clan would be freezing and hungry after another failed attempt to drive one into a pit. I am not a great authority on the ancient writers although I recognise the wisdom in Marcus  Aurelius. Plato had some good ideas and Homer and Vergil wrote really great yarns. I think I understand what spawned the works of Marx and Engels and respect what good they were trying to accomplish. (It’s not their fault that a sequence of tyrannical clowns have warped their ideas). This is a long winded way of saying that many of our predecessors were better, stronger, more innovative, more aware than we are. Technology has advanced in steps. Latterly in leaps and bounds. And, yes, Dear Reader, the tomahawk missile is more efficient at killing than an arrow and in a numbers game as a killing tool it wins hands down. So with this tragic truth I come to where I want to be.  Humankind still kills each other but in a much more devastating way. And that, Dear Reader, brings me to the crux of my argument. In my humble opinion it is very dangerous for human beings to advance technologically when that is not matched in equal advances in human nature and moral compass.

         Women have advanced in the western world but there have been matriarchal societies before. And now there are countries which refuse to educate girls, and do not allow them positions of responsibility. So it would be reasonable to suggest that women in some societies a millenium ago were freer than they are now. So this is my example of lack of progress. And I always seem to fall back on the fate of women the world over. Why? Well, facts speak for themselves. I think that women having an equal say in our lives is so long coming because men are terrified. So many men do not have the attention to detail required to do a good job. They don’t possess the grit to follow through on mundane tasks, work that is boring but essential. They prefer to light the fires and lose interest when it is time to put them out. It is the easiest thing in the world to go into battle, to give your all for a limited time. It is not so easy to barrel through 1000 years of history creating more than we destroy. Men know that women will do a better job than they do which is why they continually seek to undermine them and do their level best to maintain females as second class citizens. And there are no more terrified men than those of the Taliban. And of course it may well have been a better civilization, Dear Friends, if women had been the dominant species for the last chiliad.

  I think, Dear Friends, that adults should be treated like children. They should not be allowed certain toys until they are judged to be mature enough to play with them safely. We are not going to let a five year old loose on a motor bike. No that would be irresponsible. We are not going to allow a 12 year old to put up scaffolding on a building site.  If we did we would have an experienced adult check it. We would not allow children to play with guns and knives.  But weapons have become so advanced, so deadly, so indiscriminate that we allow clowns we wouldn’t allow to make us a cheese toastie to fire them off at people they don’t like. Thus an arrow in King Harold’s eye becomes a tomahawk missile in an Iranian girls’ school.

    Every manager, military leader, teacher, politician should not be allowed to fulfil their ambitions until they have been sequestered in a retreat for a decade during which time they are required to read the great philosophers, study economics, endure character building hardships, have a six month stint cleaning washrooms in a hospital for the mentally handicapped, should have days alone in the wilderness finding themselves and foraging for food and drink. At the end of their time they should have a probation period during which their character should be judged on its empathy, sympathy and kindness. Altruism should be a priority, humility and humble pie should be ever present. If they have hubris they should fail.

Morgenthau said that ‘whoever wants to maintain his moral innocence must forsake action altogether’. But, Dear Reader, we need people to act. We ourselves do not need to be especially courageous. We just need to vote. We just need to read more and use what we have read to discuss and debate. We need to call out evil and self-serving wickedness. We need to be Minnesotan in our street presence, not stand by and watch as idiots and thugs rule the streets.

You are very tolerant of my blogging, Dear Friends, so I will understand if you think I have lost the plot in these current scribbles.  But if that is the case, and I do tend to agree with you,  that the Davidson plot may well be lost, then it has to be said that there are bigger plot losers than me out there and they have started wars!

Thanks for reading.