Chris Hedges on our cursed mania for hope - and why he's wrong.

Chris Hedges: Our Mania for Hope Is a Curse

Chris Hedges wrote:

The naive belief that history is linear, that moral progress accompanies technical progress, is a form of collective self-delusion. It cripples our capacity for radical action and lulls us into a false sense of security. Those who cling to the myth of human
progress, who believe that the world inevitably moves toward a higher material and moral state, are held captive by power. Only those who accept the very real possibility of dystopia, of the rise of a ruthless corporate totalitarianism, buttressed by the most terrifying security and
surveillance apparatus in human history, are likely to carry out the self-sacrifice necessary for revolt.

Hedges: "The yearning for positivism that pervades our corporate culture ignores human nature and human history. But to challenge it, to state the obvious fact that things are getting worse, and may soon get much worse, is to be tossed out of the circle of magical thinking that defines American and much of Western culture. [b]The left is as infected with this mania for hope as the right."[/b]

Hedges (also) takes aim at the Marxist tradition and claims that the Marxist view shares this naive belief noted above.

Chris Hedges wrote:

The 19th century theorist Louis-Auguste Blanqui, unlike nearly all of his contemporaries, dismissed the belief, central to Karl Marx, that human history is a linear progression toward equality and greater morality

The claim here is simply false. However, others might argue that without some kind of belief in (the possibility of) a better future, despair is the more likely outcome. Despair of a future with no hope. Despair of so many problems that seem impossible to disentangle. The despair of poverty that is never ending, that takes all of one's energy just to live another day. The
despair of a powerful ignorance that can only lash out, hurting those nearest to it, stupidly, clumsily, brainlessly. The despair of living in fear. And despair goes along with activity that is knowingly futile ... or no activity at all. Hedges may have his philosophy clear, but his
psychology and social theory is all wrong.  

Social life, say Marxists, develops and changes as a result of changes in the dynamic of the Productive Forces/ Relations of Production inter-relationship. Morality, ethics, wisdom, all the rest of the derived ideological phenomena, FOLLOW changes in the socio-economic foundation. There's no inherent claim about moral "progress" in Marxism, contrary to these claims of Chris Hedges. In our modern world with the sometimes results of perverted science, we seem to excel especially at killing more of each other than ever before. To me this points to the urgent necessity to solve our many global problems before time runs out.  

Chris Hedges wrote:

Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge deals with the particular and the actual. Knowledge is the domain of science and technology. Wisdom is about transcendence. Wisdom allows us to see and accept reality, no matter how bleak that reality may be. It is only through wisdom that we are able to cope with the messiness and absurdity of life. Wisdom is about detachment. Once wisdom is achieved, the idea of moral progress is obliterated. Wisdom throughout the ages is a constant.... [b]Systems of power fear and seek to silence those who achieve wisdom, which is what the war by corporate forces against the humanities and art is about. Wisdom, because it
sees through the facade, is a threat to power.[/b] It exposes the lies and ideologies that power uses to maintain its privilege and its warped ideology of progress.

Karl Marx's famous predecessor, Ludwig Feuerbach, was perhaps the first modern to elaborate something akin to the popular 1960's conception of the Beatles, i.e., "All you need is love". But this is BS. Better to say, "All you need is struggle", and especially class struggle at that. While it's undoubtedly true that spiritual conceptions, broadly speaking, are essential for any progressive movement (indeed for any developed person), the spiritual conceptions that are important are the ones that inspire people to action. People in motion get things done. Chris Hedges seems to be putting forward the very admirable, but backwards, views of Feuerbach.

That's contemplative materialism, as the Marxists would call it.

Hedges says that myths associated with knowledge keep people passive. Wisdom, he says, is the remedy. But "wisdom" is no antidote to passivity.

What is the source of this wisdom, in any case? And, even more importantly, [b]how can a social theorist take the view that an unchanging core - human nature, human wisdom that defies the ages as Hedges and others outline - be responsible for social CHANGE. How can an unchanging variable be responsible for others that DO change?[/b] And didn't Marx, and others (e.g., Plekhanov in his many excellent works on historical materialism) point this out, even in the time of Louis Blanqui? Socio-philosphical views that premise social change on an unchanging human nature and human wisdom is just bad social theory. It's lousy science.

This is why Marx developed his theory which we now call historical materialism. It was to solve the riddle of social views, like those defended by Chris Hedges here, that use unchanging factors to explain things that do change. Human nature, or wisdom, can no more explain social change than I can lift myself up by my own boots ... while wearing them. 

Hedges: "Only those who accept the very real possibility of dystopia, of the rise of a ruthless corporate totalitarianism, buttressed by the most terrifying security and surveillance apparatus in human history, are likely to carry out the self-sacrifice necessary for revolt."

Only those who are in motion and active against social injustice are likely to develop a clear, big picture of things. Revolutionaries are not born, they're made ... in the course of struggle. I just think this idea that people need to have, already, the characteristics necessary, like wisdom, loosely defined, and other moral qualities is a wrong-headed way to express things. It doesn't take into account how we change based on our actions, our struggles, our reflection on those struggles, etc., it just gets "change" wrong. It's undialectical, in a word. If Hedges wants to get Marx right, he need to read his Hegel. 

There's another angle here. What does it mean to talk of "moral progress" anyway? How would you evaluate it or measure it? If it's not a completely empty concept, how would you compare the moral "development" in one era to that of another? What does it actually mean? And then you see that the whole way the problem is posed is all wrong. Moral relations are inter-personal relations. Ethics. For all we know, the inter-personal relations among the Ancient (slave owning) Greeks may have been "more developed" along the lines outlines by Chris Hedges (beauty, truth, grief, our own mortality, etc.) than ours today. Does it really make sense to compare to a society we can, in any case, never return to? 

But his arguments are interesting. Why they're wrong, in my view, is instructive.