May 22, 2025

Mahākāla (महाकाल)
Protector of the Dharma
Thursday:
My views on the reign of quantity – May 22, 2025

In modern times, it seems quite natural for people to take for granted that any expression or any feature apparent in the world should necessarily be improved with time or "progress", as many people label it. This sentiment seems to be true in people's perception of the moral domain in particular; as if things just magically become better because some period of time has elapsed.
    To provide an example: because something that is expressed today was considered immoral in the past but has come to be considered quite moral, and if not moral at least morally neutral, in the moral domain it has to be taken as a sign of progress, moral progress. This assumption of some kind of omniscient and inevitable improvement of the human condition—based on the seemingly arbitrary rule that what is considered morality should be extended or expanded—as a mere function of time is the result of the confluence of two distinct, yet abstract, features of the modern world: namely egalitarianism and the reign of ever greater quantities, often at the expense of qualities.
    Take yet another example of this confusion: modern wars are often fought with armies consisting of mass mobilized mobs that are swung into battle until every last man has died in either one or both of the armies, and the overall war can seemingly only be won once entire civilizations have been exhausted in the war effort. This is because today, the "war effort" has been democratized in the name of egalitarianism and nationalism. That means that wars may no longer be fought with highly professional soldiers that earned their noble rank, but have to be fought by every citizen in armies consisting of enormous numbers of combatants, but crucially lacking any great depth of quality. This has come about because of the assumption that egalitarianism is something quite normal or even inherent to the human condition, and because the nation-state (great quantities), which is a rather recent construct, has taken up the mind of modern man. What is considered normal today, to fight for one's country, would have been considered completely insane in the, not so distant, past: partially because people understood that anyone cannot and should not perform the function of a soldier, and partially because people had no concept of nation, instead their loyalties were far more parochial in nature and closer to Earth.
    This meant that people did not engage in genocidal campaigns of aggression in the Middle Ages and earlier, and wars were fought by the people primarily concerned with them, often for resources and power. War in those times as a result also had far fewer casualties, both among the soldiers and the civilians. Since people did not have a concept of belonging to a certain nation in the past, they often did not notice whether the King changed from one to another. Today people are far, far removed from the parochial and the small qualities that otherwise would seem essential to a fulfilling life.
    Crucially, modern people should then, in light of this history, ask themselves how the world is better today, or how it is that they think the world has progressed today, compared to the past? This would not be for me to answer, since I reject the concept of moral progressivism and moral relativism, a topic I will cover at another time.

Reginald Drax – May 22, 2025.

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