| I never said anything remotely like "all or nothing". My whole position of moral progress relies upon the idea that we can critique and reshape institutions, practices, and values from within the framework given, in order to seek improvement over time. That is why an objectionable feature of modernity cannot, by itself, constitute a real criticism of modernity over all. We have, for example, traded off a too great preoccupation with sex with a more just attitude towards the participation of women in society. Thus, in comparing earlier times with the contemporary world, we have to contrast the improvement of female emancipation with the rise of libertinism. The two are connected. Do we want to go back to a "duena society", where women are constantly protected against seduction by being chaperoned, and are not free to pursue their own goals, such as a career, or are we willing to tolerate a higher level of sexual experimentation and work towards achieving a better balance over time? Similarly, we can point to things like air and water pollution as problems especially acute in industrial civilization, but how do we balance that against the general rise in standards of living, lifting the mass of humanity out of squalor and drudgery, and affording them leisure to become more educated and pursue their private goals? Pollution cannot be an objection to modernization, rather, it is a motive to address the discrete problem, for example, through improved filtration....... |
