We live in a world where the market value of a US smartphone and software provider, Apple Inc., is greater than that of the GDP of the UK. Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing promises a new paradigm in the nature of human endeavour; medical science is delivering healthcare solutions in a fraction of the time it took to establish the efficacy of earlier versions of vaccines, anti-biotics and diagnostic tests; the technologies behind the "green revolution" have already massively reduced the costs associated with the sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar, and of power storage; more people than ever before are going into tertiary education; the world produces more food than it can possibly consume; poverty is increasingly discussed as a relative phenomenon rather than an absolute one; humans have sent probes to Mars and are steadily unravelling the mysteries of the Universe. So why does Britain today feel as if it is stuck in the 1640's, a time marked by constitutional dispute, religious upheaval, profound societal change, and later by civil strife?
Some of the similarities seem obvious. The "union" of Great Britain achieved by James VI of Scotland, the first of that name in England, is challenged today as it was in the 17th century. The Scottish Nationalist Party has appropriated the mantle of the early modern Kirk which defied the authority of a centralising Stuart monarchy and court, as it sought to defend John Knox's revolution against "idolatrous sovereignties". The sulphurous politics of early Stuart church government has however been replaced by the antagonistic promotion of the SNP's divisive "progressive" agenda, a mish mash of secular left wing pieties wrapped in the folds of the saltire. After a brief interlude of fragile peace, the sectarian politics of Ireland are again casting a baleful shadow. Cultural bafflement has crept back into the relations between the two Atlantic states, one a republic of citizens, the other a realm of subjects. In the other direction, Great Britain is cut off from the Continent, its rejection of the supranational authority of the EU an echo of its earlier repudiation of the Catholic model of governance that had dominated Western Christendom for centuries. It is a fragmenting nation, seemingly contra mundum.
The analogies between today's secular neuroses and the religious disputes of the first half of the 17th century are even more striking. Sir Isaac Newton was born on the first Christmas Day of the English civil wars and the scientific revolution was still very much in its early infancy. Political arguments were, more often than not, religious in nature and frequently settled by reference to Scripture. At their heart lay a fundamental question - how was the state to command the loyalty of its subjects if its purposes seemed contrary to the will of God and to the consciences of men who believed that, by God's grace, they were pre-destined to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Those who took up arms against Charles I were as much motivated by their fear of the monarch taking Britain in a "Popish" direction as they were by their desire to gain greater weight in the governance of the nation as men of property. They wanted a state of the Godly, not a democracy.
It was a time when men's worth was measured by their Protestant piety. Puritans were particularly conscious of their status as the "Elect" and some such as Fifth Monarchists, Quakers and Unitarians thought of themselves as more Godly still. Micro minorities came to define the religious and political zeitgeist, all claiming their own version of God's revelation trumped everyone else's. Sound familiar? Today's societal discourse, though framed in secular terms, is also conducted in an atmosphere of intolerance and virtue signalling. Educated elites and those "citizens of nowhere" who dominate high culture and the media seem similarly attached nowadays to certainties which are labelled as "progressive". These form the canon of a new secular "Elect" which appears determined to impose it upon everyone else. Heterodoxy is not permitted by the new Puritans.
As in the early 17th century, the shrillest noises are heard in the universities and, as then, the nature of the debate seems largely untouched by the reason of enlightenment. Modern "Cancel Culture" has a lengthy pedigree and the rage and intolerance of the so-called Twitter-sphere has an analogy in the pamphleteering of earlier times, a form of social networking from which our literate ancestors drew much of their understanding of what was going on in the world. But at least then there was search for truth - faith was placed in the revelation to be found in Scripture, but it was also the era of Descartes and Spinoza. Now the concept of truth itself is under attack, as Post Modernist imbecilities leak from the social sciences into the humanities and literature. Not even the scientific method is safe: on the contrary, it is traduced as a tool of the oppressive patriarchal hierarchy. Who can forget the straight-faced denunciation of Einstein's work as "sexed equations"?
It is a time of great societal change. The advances of technology, the evolution of financial techniques and the steady replacement of human labour by machines are creating huge uncertainty for many as well as opportunity for some. These trends have also enriched an economic elite, the wealth of which has been largely untouched by the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 or the more recent Covid pandemic. An enormous class of graduates and secondary school students whose education has been severely disrupted by government diktat face an uncertain future. The early Stuart state was also confronted by profound changes and as with today's vast political class, was found severely wanting. It was a time of climatic change (it got a lot colder), the displacement of men by the changing patterns of land ownership and usage, and the growth of literacy. Vagrancy was widespread. Unregulated capitalism was on the march, and the weakest were left unprotected by the gradual disappearance of the old feudal ties of obligation. The Leveller movement was as much about the failure of the state to provide protection and justice for citizens as about fundamental democratic rights.
Today, we can gain some comfort from the resolution of disputes by the ballot box rather than by battle. But did not someone also say that those who did not study history were condemned to repeat it?
No comments:
Post a Comment