IndiaPost.com - Myth of progress: Are we more advanced than ancestors?

The belief that there is progress and we are more advanced than our ancestors has duped modern generations. It will surprise many to realize that the hypothesis of progress arose only in the nineteenth century, particularly after the Renaissance, when man's attention turned from spiritual to material advancement.

It was unknown to older civilizations. The Hindu belief in a graduated decline through four successive yugas is paralleled by the Greek doctrine of four declining ages of gold, silver, copper and iron.

Arthur Osborne (1906-1970), a graduate of Oxford and a lover of learning, found himself drawn halfway around the world to the abode of Ramana Maharishi, where he spent the later years of his life founding and editing the well-known spiritual journal, The Mountain Path.

He wrote a longer work on the question of progress where he dwelt at length on this myth. In this work, Osborne says, "There is no doubt that Western man has advanced enormously in physical science, both theoretical and applied, in the last three centuries and that in the last century this advance has spread to Eastern countries also; but the word "progress' implies more than that; it carries the implication of general superiority.

It implies that a man who drops napalm bombs on villagers is a superior type to those on whom he drops them. And of this there is no evidence. What kind of evidence would be acceptable? Personally I would suggest spiritual understanding, ethical standards and cultural and artistic achievements.

If we compare violence, there was much of it in ancient times as well as today. Osborne says, "If people have become more sensitive to it, is it because they are more humane or because they go in fear of total destruction? Read the Mahabaharata and their daily papers.

You will find plenty of violence and plenty of dishonorable actions in both; but where will you find the greater preoccupation with dharma and conviction that dharma must prevail? Surely in the Mahabharata.

Just consider one little episode: how the Pandava brothers approached their elders unarmed in the opposite camp at the beginning of the battle of Kurukshetra to do reverence to them, and no one had the bright idea of taking advantage of it to give a quick end to the war.

Can we imagine Hitler paying such a call on Churchill or Stalin or either of them on him and being allowed back unharmed? How about education? Isn't education a symbol of progress? And we are striving for universal education. "Is that progress?", asks Osborne.

"It implies mainly the ability to read, but what is the reading matter of our new literates? Mainly cheap fiction and political propaganda. Does it really elevate them in mind and character? Are they more enriched by it culturally than their illiterate ancestors were by hearing stories from the epics emphasizing the value of dharma?"

"There was a time when Indian handicrafts were such as comprise valued museum pieces today; but are modern Indian manufacturers famous for their quality? Are the literate factory hands who produce them really more educated than the illiterate artisans who produced the museum pieces of handicraft?

"Actually, not only in India but throughout the world, the quality of manufacturers tends to fall, though they become more elaborate as ever new gadgets are invented. Also the attitude of dedication to one's work which used to make work almost synonymous with worship has almost disappeared.

There is no place for it in factory production. Quantity has taken the place of quality as the main goal. "Neither in spiritual understanding nor in art and culture are we superior to the ancients, neither in honesty nor in ethical standard, neither in poetry nor philosophy, only in one thing: physical science with its attendant mechanization.

Then it may be asked, how can we explain this superiority? What has caused it? I believe the answer can be found in Christ's saying that where a man's heart is there will his treasure be also.

At the time of Renaissance modern western man transferred his heart from spiritual to worldly welfare. His world, as his own historians love to boast, ceased to be theocentric and became homocentric."