3 minute read
The French philosopher, Jean-François Lyotard, identified “incredulity towards metanarrative” as a hallmark of postmodernity.1 He’s right. For better or worse, Western society has become characterized by a super skepticism toward these grand, totalizing stories about history, culture, religion, and the ultimate meaning of the human race. People increasingly value subjective and personal micro-stories. That’s why it’s beyond strange that progressives, who are exceedingly postmodern in thought, remain fixated on the Myth of Progress. That math doesn’t add up.
The term myth has two distinct meanings that need to be distinguished. The first is an unfounded or false notion. It’s a claim that’s widely believed but isn’t factually accurate. I use the lower-case “m” myth for this sense of the word. The other refers to a folklore genre of narratives that play an integral role in organizing and shaping society. It’s a traditional story that provides a culture with meaning, purpose, values, and identity. I use the upper-case “M” Myth for this. Whether or not it’s factual is besides the point. The Myth of Progress is a mythology in this second sense.2
The Myth of Progress is the overarching story that the human condition is evolving and our circumstances are improving. It’s the Roddenberry metanarrative portrayed in Star Trek. It’s this sweeping tale that humanity will inevitably embrace love with universal freedom, justice, dignity, and prosperity for all. Dr. King, as an American Baptist minister, framed it in sacred language but even secularists today widely endorse his message that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That is the very essence of the modern West’s Myth of Progress.
Down deep in my soul, I hope Dr. King is right. I truly do. It’s a beautiful Myth with an inspiring vision of the future. I wouldn’t bet on that vision being actualized, though. Suppose the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation overtakes the West to create a new global order a century from now.3 Then we’d probably be headed toward a more authoritarian future. The point is, the Myth of Progress, which underlies the whole ideology of progressivism, seems painfully naive. But, more than that, it’s wholly inconsistent with the postmodern incredulity towards metanarrative.
The original beatniks tended toward subjective narratives rather than grand, overarching stories. As for me, I readily affirm the biblical metanarrative of redemption and reconciliation. While I don’t affirm this view, I also appreciate how the Postmillennial doctrine of the historically White Social Gospel was synthesized with Dr. King’s Black take on proto-liberationist theology to arrive at his idiosyncratic formulation of the Myth of Progress. I can dig it.4 The only thing I truly can’t stomach is the purely secular, and thus baseless, version of the Myth of Progress.5
Author
The man was also a sociologist and literary theorist. He was one of those.↩
This is precisely what postmodern thought abhors. When Lyotard refers to incredulity towards metanarrative, he’s talking about Myths.↩
Other reasonable possibilities: there’s a truly horrific pandemic, a full nuclear meltdown makes a large portion of a continent uninhabitable, a chemical disaster poisons the world’s fresh water supply, mass starvation after the full collapse of bee colonies, A.I. goes full SkyNet, there’s a permanent economic depression world-wide, climate refugees threaten the geo-political stability and that results in rolling waves of genocide that make the Holocaust look tame by comparison, or the Yellowstone Caldera (supervolcano) goes off.↩
Two thoughts here:
First, I don’t presently affirm his theological perspective, but I’m fairly open and sympathetic to Dr. King’s ingenious perspective. The ethical implications of his nuanced eschatological convictions are fascinating. Dr. King doesn’t get nearly enough credit for his brilliant mind.
Second, it’s noteworthy that Postmillennialism’s popularity has a history of ebbing and flowing depending upon the degree of optimism in the world. We haven’t had a world war in a while, so I guess it makes sense that people are feeling hopeful about the future. I suspect it’ll fall again as climate change worsens.↩
I leave you with N.T. Wright’s take on the Myth of Progress:
“We, of all people, ought to know better. ‘Progress’ gave us modern medicine, liberal democracy, the internet. It also gave us the guillotine, the Gulag and the gas chambers. Western intelligentsia assumed in the 1920s that ‘history’ was moving away from the muddle and mess of democracy towards the brave new world of Russian communism. Many in 1930s Germany regarded Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his friends as on the wrong side of history. The strong point of postmodernity is that the big stories have let us down. And the biggest of all was the modernist myth of ‘progress’.”↩
