On Progress

A Lunatic in the Work sense is someone who thinks he can "do", that he - alone or with others - can change the world for the better; that progress exists and can be imposed from the outside. In the Work, we know that true progress, whether spiritual or social, can be achieved only when we become more conscious. Society as a whole will not progress until mankind has become more awake.

Politicians make their living from trying to persuade us otherwise. And how we want to believe them! We forget that life, as Gurdjieff reminds us, is a pain factory. Pain is built into the system, as it were. We become more conscious only through struggling with sleep; in order to overcome the inevitable pain of living, we must accept real suffering as our lot, while striving to overcome the mechanicalness which leads to so much unnecessary suffering.

But nobody wants to hear this message. We want to believe in a quick fix, an immediate solution to mankind's many problems.

And when it comes to the suffering of others, who can blame us for wanting to relieve it as quickly as possible?

It's true that in many relatively simple situations, such as natural disasters, efforts to help those in distress can be swift and effective. But what of more complex matters? Can we really believe that progress exists when we see the state that society is in today?

When I was young, I believed that society was unfair, and that by changing our laws and improving the physical conditions of the poor, suffering would be alleviated and everyone could be set free from poverty to enjoy life to the full.

I wish that were true! If only! But in my own lifetime of 70 years I've seen no real progress at all.
Yes, in some groups within society there is noticeably less material poverty today than 50 years ago. But in the spiritual sense, Western society in the 21st century is more impoverished than ever.

As the world is structured today, the illusion that continuous growth is possible must be fostered. Giant corporations need to constantly stimulate our appetites for unnecessary and harmful "stuff". We must be manipulated into feeling anxiety, fear, envy, greed and lust, all of which - advertising tells us - can be assuaged by buying the right products.

We are fed "bread and circuses", exactly as were the Roman populace, to lull us further to sleep.

Spirituality is pushed into the background, or made disastrously "relevant" by churches' adopting the standards of the day. Greed is good. Don't think about the afterlife; don't turn away from the treadmill and speculate about your soul. This life is all there is. Progress is unending. You might live forever.

But it's lies, all lies. Some groups have seen their physical state improved, others have not. Yet others are descending further into entropy.

If you think I'm being unduly pessimistic, let me show you what has happened in one small area of society where reformers believed they were making things better.

I'm going to take the example of single parents, since it's one I've followed closely since the 1970s. And it's a state I know well, because I was - much against my will - left a single parent when my children were still very young.

Before the 1970s, if a young woman had a child outside marriage the baby was generally given up for adoption. In the worst extreme, an illegal abortion might be sought, and all too often this killed the mother as well as the unborn child.

Today, abortions are legal for every woman in the West. If babies are brought into the world, it's because the mother actually wants to give birth to a child. But in the 1970s, before the UK legislation was changed by a well-intentioned government, being a single parent meant bringing up a child in poverty.

At that time, women were rarely single mothers by choice. That state was imposed on them by an irresponsible boyfriend, or a deserting spouse, as in my own case, or by the death of the husband. Generally, everyone believed the best environment for a child was to have two parents, a mother and a father, married to each other, because marriage was, and is, a far more stable situation than cohabitation. And that was the ideal for which most people strove.

The most recent studies support this view. Children raised without one of their parents, or raised in same-sex households, suffer more bullying, are more confused about their identity, have lower self-esteem and do less well in school and in later life than those brought up with a mother and a father.

Until recently, moreover, there was undoubtedly a stigma against illegitimacy. Clearly, this was unfair to the child. The mother's sheer bad luck or irresponsible behaviour, however the situation had come about, was not the child's fault, and the child should not have to suffer the consequences. So, gradually, the idea of birth outside marriage became more acceptable. It was seen as less than ideal, but not a catastrophe, either.

The government of the 70s wondered next what could be done to make sure that children raised by single parents could be free from grinding poverty.

And our British lawmakers had a wonderful solution: give the mothers money for each illegitimate child they bore. More than that, give them their own flat! Then the child would be raised in better circumstances, the mother would not be forced to give her child up for adoption, and society would benefit. Progress!

Now, in the 21st century, we are seeing the results of that "progress".  Being a single mother has become a career choice for many young girls who want to drop out of education and are disinclined to look for a job. Far from being an exception - albeit an exception tolerated and supported by society - this state has become a way of life. You have only to visit any housing estate to see the results this shortsighted, "progressive" policy has produced.

Hundreds of thousands of children are being raised without a father in the home. Deprived of this most basic right, they grow up undisciplined and semi-feral. Not all of them are reduced to this state, of course. Sometimes a single mother will eventually find a partner; sometimes she will marry the father of her child, or children; sometimes another male family figure will fill the role of guide and mentor, and supply the discipline that the overworked single mother simply has no time to impose.

But many more grow up with the idea that society owes them a living, and that criminal behaviour is acceptable. Without anyone to give them boundaries and inspire them to achieve, what else can they do? Gangs often take the place of the family as children grow up, and with no moral guidelines they are prey to drug dealers and pimps. Nobody has told them this is wrong. Nobody has set limits.

Many single mothers do an excellent job, working hard to provide for their children and teaching them moral standards as well as giving them love and support. We all know mothers who've raised children in these very difficult conditions, and who deserve praise and respect for the tremendous efforts they've made. Their children grow up to be loving and responsible citizens, Good Householders in their turn.

I was once a single mother, as I have explained, and I struggled to provide a happy and loving home in the absence of the children's father. It was incredibly difficult. I cannot imagine choosing such a situation - those who do so can have no idea of what such a life is really like, or how their children will suffer because of it. Nobody would choose to handicap their own or their child's life in this way.

 But it is not entirely the fault of the mothers that they are raising children in this difficult situation; society has encouraged it by rewarding them for their behaviour.

So progress has not been achieved, and children raised without fathers still suffer. And society as a whole suffers from the behaviour of these fatherless children, whose mothers could not cope.

I mention this as only one example of how well-meaning legislation has not brought about the effects it sought to impose - in this case, the relief of poverty and of suffering. If we encourage people to abandon the attempt to live as Good Householders, what else can we expect?

Think of the truly ridiculous policies recently pursued by Western governments; from toppling a cruel leader in a foreign country only to see him replaced by the murderous fanatics of Islamist State, to compassionately but very stupidly inviting in an unlimited number of unchecked, unknown foreign migrants amongst whom we now know there were groups of terrorists, rapists and criminals. And then we wonder why our so well-meaning, so generous policies bring nothing but tragedy.

These are the politics of lunacy, created by Lunatics.

Yes, a certain degree of material improvement has taken place between our times and the Victorian age, when children were made to work in factories or sent up chimneys, and huge numbers of single or deserted women were forced to become prostitutes or die of poverty. The legislators who brought an end to these conditions were acting from the highest motives. Some progress has taken place in this respect.

But spiritually, we are in a worse state than ever.

What the world needs in order to make real progress possible is that more conscious people should exist at any given time. The Talmud says that there are always 36 hidden saints living among us, unknown even to themselves. If they should ever suspect their sainthood, they immediately cease to be one, and another takes their place.

Some Sufi traditions have the same idea; as well as the hidden saints, they say, there must be a sufficient number of relatively conscious people below them in the hierarchy of spirituality, to support the existence of the saintly ones.

In the Work, we accept that the only true progress is spiritual. But if, say, 200 conscious people existed in the world, then the consciousness of the whole of human society would be increased, and real progress could be made in every sense - spiritually and physically.

Only people with objective consciousness are able to change society for the better. Only they can foresee the results that will follow from changes in the law. Without such knowledge we are worse than blind - we are doomed to create more and more entropy.

While compassion demands that we must all, as individuals and as a society, relieve the suffering of others as well and as quickly as possible, we must always keep in mind that the best effort we can make is to struggle constantly against sleep, against mechanicalness.

Our own individual efforts to grow more conscious will, in unimaginable ways, benefit the whole of humanity. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to others - and to God.

The need is urgent. We have no time to waste, either for ourselves or for mankind.