our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed In technology, we make cumulative advances that withstand time. Not so in politics and ethics, argues philosopher John Gray. History and SocietyPhilosophyHistoryEthicsHistorical Narratives The first is the linear story.
The characters start at position A and end at position B, having beaten all the baddies, and married the right person. The real story is about the transformation that happens along the way. This is a story about direction.
Mostly, it’s about progress. We move from naïve to wise, raw to cooked, NPC to hero. In terms of philosophy, the linear-progressive story is best represented by the Hegelian dialectic.
Hegel argued that history is measured by a series of resolvable battles. One side represents red, the other represents blue. The two struggle over days, years, decades, or centuries until eventually they bleed so much they bleed into each other.
Red and blue become purple. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Movement, countermovement, resolution.
And so, for Hegel, we move forward in a constantly improving run. Each battle makes us better and wiser. Over the summer, I spoke with the philosopher John Gray about this idea of “progress,” at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
