It’s pretty commonplace to describe the modern era (let’s just say—for discussion’s sake—the last 250 years) as a time of widespread and accelerating change. The Industrial “Revolution” spurred deep shifts in how people lived and worked. The French Revolution and its progeny spurred deep shifts in how people saw themselves politically and organized their societies accordingly. In our own lifetimes, technology is practically tripping over itself with new things and ways of doing, disrupting industries and lives as never before.
So, naturally, I’d like to take a contrary stance. I’d like to argue that, in fact, the modern era is as marked by as much sclerosis and resistance to change as it is by “new and improved” and other manifestations of “progress.” In a way, this framing is a counterpart to my recent comments on revolutions. Perhaps a geologic analogy would help: a “locked fault” is the connection between two tectonic plates which doesn’t shift because there’s too much friction ‘sticking’ the two plates together. Eventually, the underlying stress builds up and a bigger-than-expected earthquake results when all that stored energy is finally released. Social patterns and relationships aren’t too different. Decades of pressure for women’s suffrage from the mid-19C on made only marginal progress until the shock of WWI loosened the political process here and in Europe. Similarly, accumulating pressure on European metropoles for the independence of their global empires finally cracked due to the changes wrought by WWII and a deluge of new states emerged in the following decades.
Part of the story of progress and modernization that has become conventional historical wisdom highlights the pace and extent of change as part of some self-satisfied triumphalism (never mind that we’ve fallen over the cliff before and our current pace looks alarming in several directions). Such stories downplay how much doesn’t change or, at least, changes much more slowly than we might expect. For example, despite a moderate toning-down of its powers in 1911 (yes, 114 years ago) the Brits still have a House of Lords that only this year no longer includes folks who inherited titles/wealth from some daring military commander in the 16C, etc. Royal families—European, Thai, several spots in Africa—still wield power, attention, and subsidies. Even many nominal republics around the world are led by virtual or actual “Presidents-for-life” or de facto dynasties (the recently-departed Bashir Assad being only one notable example).
More fundamentally, a lot of our institutions (not just organizations) seem to be stuck. I’ve previously talked about how the Dems/GOP are off in their own shared fantasia (we’ll see if the returning resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. can really knock them both off their stoop!). Ditto our venerated US Constitution. Ditto our “belief” systems. Doctrinal trivialities aside (and I mean you Protestants), how many centuries (millennia?) has it been since we had a significant new religion in the world?
I’ve spoken in several contexts about the dysfunction of our global system of states which seems to suck up any effort at a different model of socio-political organization. The configuration of the U.N. is an exemplar. No one thinks of Britain and France as top level global powers (and arguably haven’t been since they leveraged Great Power inertia to get their seats in 1945 or the Suez fiasco of 1956), but there they sit with veto powers in the U.N. Security Council and no real mechanism to get them off (comparable to the rights of Delaware and Wyoming to have the same clout in the Senate as California and Florida). Meanwhile, any number of regional powers and relative economic heavyweights are left among the also rans. At the same time, the Marshall Islands, Monaco, and Grenada (combined population under 200k) have the same vote in the General Assembly as India, Indonesia, and Nigeria (combined population: ~2B!). Incumbents cling to power and bureaucratic processes make dislodging them problematic.
Across the US, few statutes and regulations have sunset provisions, so they live on, without review or updating, leaving the formal structures of most societies dragging around the legal remnants of the past. The current wildfire disasters in LA have highlighted the encrusted hodge-podge of governmental districts and jurisdictions established long before that metropolitan area became the 2d largest in the US.
While the creation of bureaucracy has been considered a hallmark of modernity since Max Weber in the early 20C, prioritizing rationalization and efficiency, its mentalité (as he predicted) has inexorably grown. Rules of behavior, reflecting originally sensible principles have become outdated burdens. Just look at the rules for home building in most developed parts of the world (the less-developed parts of the world could probably use a bit more rule-based bureaucracy in their construction/zoning sectors, however). NIMBY-ism is a great example of how incumbents preserve their power/position. Rules-upon-rules, intermixed with a litigatory environment and legislative processes overweighed with conflicting lobbyists, both cement the rules and deter the thought of adaptation (much less radical re-think). The result is a set of regulatory schemes—health care, telecommunications/internet, energy usage, securities, taxation, etc.—that make living in the real world of today exceedingly difficult.
The private sector is generally better at adaptation since market pressures force change. The fortunes of the leading 20C industrial companies (e.g., GM, IBM) and financial institutions after the 2008-9 debacle are ample evidence of this. In between, the NGO/non-profit sector seems less adaptable since they lack both competitive or institutional pressures to change.
One aspect of the modern era is the way in which tensions between legal/governmental/ bureaucratic stultification and the dynamic pace of technological and market developments have played out in terms of societal benefits and costs. If we hold off on imbibing the mythology (especially regarding the wonders of modern technology and free markets), and assuming that either one is—per se—beneficial or detrimental, then perhaps we can avoid the political moralizing and merely recognize that there are multiple ways to evaluate modern society.
In either case, we need to not only watch out for being overwhelmed by the apparently incessant pace of change, but also by the icebergs of tradition that chill the prospects of moving our society forward.