All the agreeable camouflage

The quotes below are segments of a larger quote from John Galsworthy’s Castles in Spain collection published in 1928. He says that human nature doesn’t change, but the impact of accidental discoveries moulds our collective direction of travel.

The march of mankind is directed neither by his will, nor by his superstitions, but by the effect of his great and, as it were, accidental discoveries on his average nature. The discovery and exploitation of language, of fire, of corn, of ships, of metals, of gunpowder, of printing, of coal, steam, electricity, of flying machines (atomic energy has still to be exploited), acting on a human nature which is, practically speaking, constant, moulds the real shape of human life, under all the agreeable camouflage of religions, principles, policies, personages, and ideas.

Galsworthy was born into the upper middle class which ran the country and still does. He novels reflect his origins and the way he saw events sweeping his social class along with the irresistible evolution of change just as it does with every class. A humane pragmatist, he thought we could make the best of things without all the agreeable camouflage of religions, principles, policies, personages, and ideas.

If we return to the present day, it is easy enough to see that Galsworthy was presenting a useful aspect of what we encounter in our digital world. In spite of political claims to the contrary, there is a strange sense that nobody is really in control. Global communication, vastly more information than we could ever absorb and a far greater ability to select, check and reject any information has eroded the professional ascendency of elites.

After the discovery and exploitation of gunpowder and printing, the centuries stood somewhat still, until, with coal, steam, and modern machinery, a swift industrialism set in, which has brought the world to its recent state. In comparison with the effect of these discoveries and their unconscious influence on human life, the effect of political ideas is seen to be inconsiderable.

We see glimpses of this too. Political leaders and their ideas have become banal, little more than chatter on social media. Impersonal influences have side-lined the political arena and its futile debates. As if governments are partly running on autopilot, the levers of power no longer work as they did and few people want to know why.

For theories arise from and follow material states of being, rather than precede and cause them. British Liberalism, for example, did not give birth to that hard-headed child Free Trade (by Wealth out of Short Sight); it did not even inaugurate the “live and let live” theory; it followed on and crowned with a misty halo a state of long-acknowledged industrial ascendancy

Prussian “will to power” did not cause, it followed and crowned with thorns, the rising wave of German industry and wealth. And outstanding personalities such as Gladstone and Bismarck are rather made outstanding by the times they live in, than make those times outstanding.

The times we live in appear to be moulding themselves into a shape where the main human ingredient is not the political arena but human nature and whatever remains of human cultures.

This is one of two sober truths with which one has to reckon in forecasting the future of civilisation; the other is the aforesaid constancy of human nature. The fact that modern human nature is much more subtle, ambitious, and humane than the nature of primitive man, is not greatly important to creatures who live but three-score years and ten, and who in their mental and spiritual stature are on the whole no higher, and in physical development probably lower, than the Greeks and Romans.

Perhaps those cultures which successfully set aside all the agreeable camouflage are the only ones likely to survive.