Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Modernity: The Way We Were

  
Those who express regret at the passing of the level-headed, vigorous, hard working countryman of yore have no idea what he was really like-no more, in many cases, than his contemporaries had. As Philip Gaskell observes, of the Scottish Highlander in roughly the same period: "He lived not in· picturesque, rural felicity, but in conditions of penury and squalor that can only be fairly compared with those of a famine area in contemporary India, and that were tolerable only because they were traditional and familiar" .

One of the books which has strongly shaped my interpretation of modern history is, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernisation of Rural France, 1870-1914 by Eugen Weber. The book has won numerous accolades and is considered one of the influential texts of modernisation theory. Weber has a great writing style and the genius of the book is writing it from the perspective of the peasant/worker rather than from the vantage of the upper or intellectual class. Through numerous anecdotal examples of the effect of modernisation on the "little" people, Weber is able to convey the profound changes and transformation of the traditional French way of life that it was able to effect.

I think many of the traditionalist intellectuals who despair of the changes modernity has bought about tend to focus on the intellectual and philosophical developments which enabled the modern degeneracy. But what is often ignored in this analysis is the profound way technology and organisation, morally neutral things in themselves, utterly uprooted the traditional way of life independently of any corruption of ideas. It's not just the ideas but the "environment" matters as well.

Weber, while taking a humanist approach, is not a sentimentalist and his description of pre-Modern France, i.e the France of the recent Enlightenment is pretty brutal, and dispels any notions of a of an idyllic Christendom of milk and honey that is so often intimated by Christian Traditionalists. The life lived by the average man prior to modernity was strictly local...and hard.  Through page after page Weber describes the grinding affect of poverty on peoples lives. Death through overwork, neglect of those who cannot produce, risk aversion--which stifled innovation--and poverty, endless poverty.
Peasants in Upper Quercy began work at dawn, ended late at night, often went to work their own plot by moonlight after having worked another's land by day. "No more rest and no more easel" lamented a landowner near Nantes in 1856. "Everyone scrimps, ... works without care for rest or food, ... to buy a plot of land from some neighbor ruined by usury ."
The more ambitious you were, the harder you worked. Benolt Malon's father, employed on a Forez farm, was free to work his potato patch and his kitchen garden on Sunday after church. He died at thirty-three of pleurisy, which he contracted as he hurried to get to his freshly planted potatoes. As late as 1908 in the marshlands of the Vendee a man farming four hectares with only a spade (thus able to work no more than four ares a day) left home at five in the morning, returned at seven in the evening, and never saw his children. · Hard labor without chains-to which one remained bound by necessity and from which only death could bring release.
The other impression that Weber is able to convey is the sense and primacy  of locality in the Pre-Modern world. For many people, life was lived almost entirely within a circle of ten miles across. Isolation meant that ideas and customs arose endogenously and locally with the result that each region developed its own unique identity. On the other hand, the isolation locked the community out from the outside world and its ideas.

The only "trans-local" institutional presence in these rural areas of France was the Church which usually formed the focus and defacto administrative body of the locality. In essence, given the environmental and technical limitations it had a captive market and over time it developed a symbiotic relationship with its communities. Time, as well as agricultural production, was organised through the Church calendar, knowledge was dispensed by the priests, all significant events such as births, deaths and marriages had a religious involvement. A local public celebrations and feasts were usually Church run affairs. Religion and agricultural localism had become integrated.

But the religiosity of the people was not one of doctrinal purity, instead it was mixed with a strong sense of magic and superstition. And while many of the priests were conscious of the mixture and tried to rid the peasantry of these unwanted additions to the faith, the fact was--as Weber demonstrates through numerous anecdotes--an accomodation was reached whereby the Priest tolerated--and frequently suffered--for these foibles of the faithful.

But what I think Weber conveys quite well is how Pre-Modern society was the way it was because of the interplay--and equilibrium-- between cultural factors and physical constraints. And this is really important, because modernity is not just simply the consequence of "bad philosophy" but its also the consequence of technological advancements which were able to break down many of the constraints of the past, destroying the equilibrium.  Once you recognise this important point you realise that technology is as much of a solvent Old World as are some of the corrupt ideas of certain strands of the Enlightenment.  Christian restorationists, wanting to go "back",  have to reckon not just with bad philosophy but also with good technology,  that point being that any restoration of the Old World is impossible except apocalyptically.

In essence, what Weber's book does is demonstrate to a certain degree, Lewis Mumford's thesis in Technics and Civilisation: namely the key feature of modernity is the increasing integration of the machine into civilisation with the consequent possibilities and transformations that it brings. Mumford also recognised that while the machine was integral to the modern world the direction which the modern world took was a function of the values to which the machine was applied.  Any Western restoration, which in my opinion requires the rebuilding of Christianity, is going to have to stop trying to restore the past but will instead have to rely on the capturing of modernity. 

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

the profound way technology and organisation, morally neutral things in themselves, utterly uprooted the traditional way of life independently of any corruption of ideas.

I'm going to have to quibble with this point right here. If it were so that modernization is morally neutral, then why is it that everywhere it is springing up moral decay follows? Bruce Charlton has spoken numerous times about how the Industrial Revolution could have been a step in mankind's consciousness towards The Good, but hasn't really been.

--Ingemar

Hoyos said...

Related but in the abortive rebellion of the Pilgrimage of Grace, one of the grievances of the peasantry was the loss of holidays, Given the tough, even brutal nature of the work, combined with some of the more humane aspects of feudalism in England (a peasant could never be forced off the land for example, and even the lord of the manor had to ask permission to enter a peasants plot), I think these factors helped ameliorate a very rough existence.

In the quote from the 1850s, post revolutionary France, I believe the brutality of their existence may have been explained by a similar loss of these ameliorations. Prior to technological innovation, life was always frighteningly hard, but it seems this was recognized and there were attempts to compensate as much as might be practical by the overarching Christian society.

Before what follows, there is a excellent old distinction between poor and miserable, Poor is having just enough to keep body and soul together with little if any excess. Miserable is to be in danger of death, through starvation, exposure, etc.

Although our modern problems are not to the same intensity, this is why I turned from more libertarian beliefs. I still believe in a free market but believe that poor men and miserable men need to be looked after. A professional or a specialist may be able to compete in the international arena but expecting poor working men to do so can be quite cruel. Welfare for the truly miserable also makes sense to me.

It’s about benefits and dangers. Because of modernity and technical advancements I have gotten access to knowledge, to books and articles, that have been a tremendous boon to me spiritually and personally. Right there in proverbs, Solomon mentions the spiritual dangers that accompany poverty, and I believe modernity has spared us many of these. The evils of modernity are there, but I’m not sure trying to Christianize Rousseau is the way forward.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Ingemar



I think that one of the things that modernity did is expose is many of the weaknesses of the Church, weaknesses that it has been incapable of dealing with. I'm not sure if a large part of the Old world was Christian by habit and circumstances rather than choice. I think when circumstances changed--as a consequence of technology--the true nature of the faith became apparent. One of the things that you find is that the astute guys recognised that large sections of the community had lost the faith by the time of the early 20th C. Had they lost the faith, or was their lack of faith exposed?

I think a lot of the "traditionalism" of the Church gave many an excuse not to innovate in response to the technological and consequent social changes. Therefore, the direction which technology took was independent of religious thought. The space was therefore left open to anti-Christians who grasped technology in such a way as to lead people away from the Church. Catholics were far more guilty of this than the Protestants. The Catholics wanted to avoid modernity, the Protestants battled with it and tried to Co-opt it. It would be interesting to see where we would be now if the Protestants hadn't suffered doctrinal failure.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Hoyos

I believe the brutality of their existence may have been explained by a similar loss of these ameliorations. Prior to technological innovation, life was always frighteningly hard, but it seems this was recognized and there were attempts to compensate as much as might be practical by the overarching Christian society.

I hope to put some quotes up later but one of the things that Weber brings up in his book is that that many of clergy expected holidays to be devotional days and not days of "fun"and rest. In fact many of the clergy took a dim view of leisure as something conducive to sin and expected people to be either at work or at prayer. Much of the opprobrium directed to the priests by the peasantry was due to fact that they were killjoys.

I still believe in a free market but believe that poor men and miserable men need to be looked after.

Agree, it's both Christian charity and good politics though it needs to be prudently administered.

Solomon mentions the spiritual dangers that accompany poverty

I think that some Christians tend to idealise poverty a bit too much. Voluntary poverty is a totally different thing to an imposed one and poverty and it's this type as Solomon noted that tends to corrupt the soul.

trying to Christianize Rousseau is the way forward.

I don't think you can do it but interestingly Chesterton seemed to be a big fan of the French Revolution.

MK said...

I think you ask too much of the Church. The Church offers a gift of salvation that we did nothing to earn. We can take it or we can leave it; it's not the job of the Church to thwart the free will of free men. It seems most will indeed reject the good; Jesus as much says so. We sure don't need the bugaboo of "modernity" to explain things. Christianity has a narrow door. We can pick up our cross anytime, it's just laying there. QED.

It would be interesting to see where we would be now if the Protestants hadn't suffered doctrinal failure.

This is like saying it would be interesting to see where Amish would be now if they just watched MTV. My point: Doctrinal freedom and chaos is the defining feature, not some bug, of Protestants. They protest, divide, rinse, and repeat ever since Henry VIII needed a quickie.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone out there actually spends time with Prots on an intellectual basis? I have, via ubible studies and whatnot, with wide variety, all the way from generic self-described evangelicals to fundies to JV to Lutheran, and I promise doctrinal chaos is absolutely definitional. How could it be otherwise? Even RC have this bug in America; as I've said before, culture leads, religion follows. As a Christian who could drink a beer with Ignatius I always have far more in common with African immigrants in bible studies than fellow American RC. I could drink a beer with St. Ignatius or St. Paul with no disagreements. Protestants simply cannot.

Hoyos said...

@MK, awesome but the church’s job is to get the gospel out there, I’ve been evangelized in person by protestants and not Catholics. It’s not too much to ask of the great commission.

Your characterization of Henry VIII is grossly unfair and characteristic of the kind of sloppy bad arguments I’ve seen Catholics make of late. If it was about sex, he could and did have mistresses just like the other catholic monarchs. England had undergone savage civil wars and there was a great fear that they would resume if succession got complicated. He wanted a son, not just for himself, he’d already got one albeit illegitimately, but for England. Of course you can’t outsmart God, so I’m mitigating not justifying.

The church has had doctrinal conflicts from the beginning as we see in the New Testament. If Peter and Paul had a conflict we should expect no less. But this chaos is way more surface.

Protestants have to be taken seriously because 90 percent plus of us believe in the creeds. No other “heresy” functions like this. We are also practically united in myriads of complex ways sometimes even with RCs in ways you wouldn’t expect. Billy Sunday for example funneled converts into both baptist churches and Catholic Churches (he was friends with the archbishop of Baltimore). In the Romanian communist prison camps, Christians clanned up along credal not confessional lines, with RC, EOC, Baptist, Calvinist and Lutherans united together, JWs and Mormons were out and SDAs permitted to congregate with the credal group kind of on probation(!). John Wesley, who may have singlehandedly revitalized Christianity in England, didn’t hesitate to read post reformation Catholic divines. At the actual front lines, things get blurry in practice.

I’m not even saying Roman Catholicism is wrong, I’m saying you need to take Protestantism seriously, swanning in like Protestantism is just too silly is not the way forward. It doesn’t behave like a normal heresy, and I think there is merit in Vatican 2 describing them as separated brethren. That’s not just a polite way of saying heretic, but capturing a real distinction. They say Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. We are in different territory than the standard perennial heresies of Gnosticism and Arianism.

Anonymous said...

If what you say here is true, then we are truly headed for the abyss. There is no "capturing modernity". Modernity is already "captured" by the demonic spirit of emancipation and revolution.

The Social Pathologist said...

think you ask too much of the Church. The Church offers a gift of salvation that we did nothing to earn. We can take it or we can leave it; it's not the job of the Church to thwart the free will of free men.

I don't think I'm asking too much from the Church, and that really depends on how you define the Church. The clergy, particularly, are meant to be shepherds and therefore it would imply that they have a duty of care particularly to their sheep, and they've got to go after them if they're lost. A shepherd that sits on his bum and does nothing is pretty useless and a shepherd which drives the sheep away is worse than useless.

My concern is why Christianity collapsed and the standard clergy good, laity bad trope just doesn't cut it in critical analysis. When a general loses all his battles, blaming it on the troops starts wearing pretty thin after a while. The more I look at this the more I think that lay disobedience is a distraction to clerical corruption.

As for Protestantism even a simplistic analysis from a Catholic perspective leads to the conclusion that there must be some good in it. The abolition of slavery, personal conscience, work ethic, etc are all the fruits of a good Protestantism.

Sure, there are bad strains of Protestantism, but our duty is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Protestantism as a system is inherently unstable, but certain ideas developed within certain factions have a lot of good in them.

It doesn’t behave like a normal heresy,

Absolutely correct.

@Anon

then we are truly headed for the abyss

Christ said the Devil will never prevail over the Church, and I believe him. I just think that the victory will come in a form that the Traditionalists are incapable of envisaging.

MK said...

and the standard clergy good, laity bad trope just doesn't cut it

This trope is simply nonexistent where I live, so I reject it and think you project. My clergy are in the "we all sin!" and "whom am I to judge?" camp with the pope plus are on the front page as hypocritical fools. My pastors and bishops are so afraid of their own shadows they won't even consider teaching the faith. I'm not sure where you get your stuff, but I would like to live there :-).

Your characterization of Henry VIII is grossly unfair and characteristic of the kind of sloppy bad arguments I’ve seen Catholics make of late. If it was about sex, he could and did have mistresses just like the other catholic monarchs.

Henry VII is appropriate not because of his silly sin, but because he thought he could change doctrine to match his own beliefs, just like Prots, while Trads conform their own views to the Church.

MK said...

Protestantism as a system is inherently unstable, but certain ideas developed within certain factions have a lot of good in them.

This I can wholly agree with. In fact, I live it out, working with Prots often, because the RC mostly lame. In fact, my own mother was a Prot. And American Catholic bishops could learn a lot from watching how LDS run their church - LDS really have something going in the US at least.

Btw, I know this probably bores you, but I (& many others I'm sure) would kill for another one of your "Heart of Darkness" style of essays. Now THAT is a subject the clergy seem absolutely clueless about, and due to your work you are in a unique position to grok it like you did in HOD. So are priests in the confessional, but as you point out, the theological crisis of the West appears to have blinded them to the sin of Eve.