A point for future reference
Jun. 27th, 2010 07:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbWhen I discuss social and cultural evolution and related matters, I have a tendency to use words that mean or suggest conspiracy. This may be misleading, so I need to make it clear that I do not intend to say that there is ever a conscious agreement or secret deal among parties that work to the same purpose, let alone some sort of freemasonry driving developments. I am not a great believer in conspiracies, and even in areas which are rich in the real thing (such as Italy before 1860) history teaches that conscious conspiracies are inevitably the victims of the human capacity to be ignorant, to bungle, and to quarrel. When conspiracies are attempted, they tend to fail, from the Conspiracy of the Pisones to the Gunpowder Plot to July 20, 1944. Successful conspiracies - like the obscene, liberticidal treachery that the English still call the Glorious Revolution - always owe their success to matters well beyond themselves.
No: what really succeeds, and what I always try to identify, is the convergence of interests, notions, needs, and moods, that leads large numbers of individuals to act, whether separately or together, in ways that drive culture and society in certain directions. When I say that various features of modern society, and especially modern American society, conspired to weaken traditional sexual mores, I don't mean that there is a secret meeting of sworn brothers in the interest of immorality; I mean that there is a climate, there are interests, there are social groups, that tend to promote a certain way of thinking. Or think of the secession of the South in 1860. Nothing could more clearly be the product of deep-rooted popular forces, reinforcing each other with barely the need of conscious management. Yet the impression left at the time was of such coordination, of things falling into place with stunning regularity, that a northern leader such as General Logan felt entitled, after the war, to talk of a Great Conspiracy. There was no conspiracy: only millions of southern whites who thought and acted in the same way. And as a matter of fact, that was what made it dangerous. In the same way, Catholic writers have never quite got over the sense that the tidal wave of events that created a united Italy out of almost nothing and by apparently irresistible force between 1859 and 1860 were the fruit of deep-laid conspiracies. The armies of Victor Emmanuel II or of Garibaldi had barely to appear over the horizon, for national committees to appear out of nowhere, volunteers to step forward, weapons to be distributed, existing administration to be expelled and replaced by revolutionary mayors wearing three-coloured sashes. Surely, say clerical writers to this day, this is evidence of far-reaching, deep-laid conspiracies? No: it is evidence that no politically conscious Italian outside the Church (and several inside it) was willing to tolerate current conditions a minute longer than they had too. As soon as anything that even vaguely looked like overthrowing them heaved into sight, there was an earthquake.
When times are right, facts develop on the ground, with a terrifying swiftness that seems to work out a plan. But human plans never work so well as a development whose time is come.
No: what really succeeds, and what I always try to identify, is the convergence of interests, notions, needs, and moods, that leads large numbers of individuals to act, whether separately or together, in ways that drive culture and society in certain directions. When I say that various features of modern society, and especially modern American society, conspired to weaken traditional sexual mores, I don't mean that there is a secret meeting of sworn brothers in the interest of immorality; I mean that there is a climate, there are interests, there are social groups, that tend to promote a certain way of thinking. Or think of the secession of the South in 1860. Nothing could more clearly be the product of deep-rooted popular forces, reinforcing each other with barely the need of conscious management. Yet the impression left at the time was of such coordination, of things falling into place with stunning regularity, that a northern leader such as General Logan felt entitled, after the war, to talk of a Great Conspiracy. There was no conspiracy: only millions of southern whites who thought and acted in the same way. And as a matter of fact, that was what made it dangerous. In the same way, Catholic writers have never quite got over the sense that the tidal wave of events that created a united Italy out of almost nothing and by apparently irresistible force between 1859 and 1860 were the fruit of deep-laid conspiracies. The armies of Victor Emmanuel II or of Garibaldi had barely to appear over the horizon, for national committees to appear out of nowhere, volunteers to step forward, weapons to be distributed, existing administration to be expelled and replaced by revolutionary mayors wearing three-coloured sashes. Surely, say clerical writers to this day, this is evidence of far-reaching, deep-laid conspiracies? No: it is evidence that no politically conscious Italian outside the Church (and several inside it) was willing to tolerate current conditions a minute longer than they had too. As soon as anything that even vaguely looked like overthrowing them heaved into sight, there was an earthquake.
When times are right, facts develop on the ground, with a terrifying swiftness that seems to work out a plan. But human plans never work so well as a development whose time is come.
