Priestess of progress. - Review - book reviews

Public Interest, Wntr, 2000 by Hillel Fradkin

A DISCUSSION has emerged on the Right of our political spectrum about the future and its prospects. It arises from the concern that our future be one of progress rather than regress, of innovation, both technologically and socially, rather than stagnation, stale habit, and reaction. Central to this debate is Virginia Postrel, perhaps the most vigorous defender of what she calls the "dynamist" future. In her recent book, The Future and Its Enemies, [ ] Postrel celebrates human beings as the playful creators of their own destiny; and she believes that, in the aftermath of the Gold War, such a dynamic, playful future is finally possible, if only its enemies, whom she calls "statists," can be defeated.

Postrel also believes that the old distinctions of Left and Right ought to be replaced by a new political distinction between dynamism and stasism, between the future and its enemies. Her book is, or at least claims to be, the first political theory of the new dynamist world. It is also a work of moral theory or ethics, since the dynamist society depends not only on limited government but on the encouragement of certain virtues, like courage and self-reliance.

The enemies of the future lack such virtues, according to Postrel, and are thus partisans of government regulation. These enemies come in two varieties: Technocrats and Reactionaries, and both have left-wing and right-wing versions. The technocrats are not opposed to progress as such; indeed they welcome it, especially technological progress. But they want to determine the character of that future before it arrives, and wrongly believe that they can. Reactionaries oppose the future and want to maintain the status quo or return to what they consider a simpler, more virtuous past.

But the question arises: Why are there such people? If the present, not to mention the future, is as glorious as Postrel takes it to be, why should there be people who fail to appreciate it? Why are there more stasists than dynamists, as Postrel claims? Are today's stasists merely an historical anomaly, products of the past who are destined to disappear as contemporary progress continues? Or do the positions they take, however accidental or even unreasonable, arise from abiding human characteristics and concerns that can be expected to persist in the future?

ONE of the virtues of Postrel's book is that she is aware of such questions and their importance. One of its shortcomings is that her treatment of them is harshly polemical. This is in keeping with the political character of the book and perhaps reflects an intentional rhetorical strategy--to appeal over the heads of the enemies of the future to a public that is still free to reject their advice. Still, the prospects of success for such a strategy rest on how deeply it has understood the sources of resistance to the dynamist future--and specifically, whether the stasist impulse is rooted in human weakness and error or human nature, the very thing that Postrel denies.

Postrel says that the first source of stasism is fear. Many people are made anxious by change, since they fear change may be for the worse. They are cowards. In response to this, Postrel calls upon us to be courageous, to face such fears in a manly fashion and conquer them. Courage then is one of the virtues Postrel means to inspire. In the closing lines of the book, as elsewhere, Postrel asserts that there is nothing to fear, there is no abyss opening beneath us, no inevitable limits or tragedy in human life. The courage Postrel calls for is not some grim duty imposed by the necessity of facing the harsh facts of life, as it might have been in an earlier age. Rather, it is the key to a new world of human fulfillment and happiness. It asks us not so much to put up with risk as to invite it as the condition of human happiness.

Another source of stasist enmity is aesthetic. Stasists cannot stand the messiness of dynamism. The creative processes that define the current and future scene produce a kind of chaos, mixing together all sorts of things in unusual and unprecedented ways. Moreover, many formerly distinct and independent things have their identity submerged and transformed, if not totally obliterated, in this process. This mixing does not respect older distinctions of high and low or good and bad but takes whatever it finds useful for producing something new. Stasists are repelled by this chaos, preferring orderliness and hierarchy. They are snobs or neat-freaks.

IN short, Postrel believes that certainty is an illusion and a hindrance, and that the condition of human happiness is an uncertain, playfully self-created future. (How, one wonders, does she know that the uncertain future will be good rather than horrible?) In part, such happiness consists of a whole array of subsidiary goods: greater liberty in the form of an ever increasing range of choices, greater prosperity, and greater comfort. But Postrel does not limit herself to these. She believes that the cultivation of our distinctly human qualities and powers--above all, our intellectual capacities, our curiosity and love of knowledge, and our capacity to transform and control our world--is the key to human excellence. Such a life provides immense satisfaction, both through its concrete instances, such as the acquisition of some new piece of knowledge or the discovery of some new form of human power, and through the general sense and appreciation of the growth of our powers. And though in part such satisfaction appeals to human pride, it is joined to a sense of humility before the many things we do not yet know and the things we cannot yet do.