Our Industrial Heritage
Progress and ecological grief
It seems we are back where we started. We all have the freedom to do what we want but now we face an existential crisis caused by money, the economy and the ever present thrills of progress. Our climate is changing and those most acutely aware of it experience ecological grief at this situation. This wasn’t what technological, industrial and social progress had promised all those years ago.
What then is progress? If we look back over the last two hundred years of progress and human development we can look at how humanity has indeed grown, but also how we haven’t. Whether we look at these as missed opportunities or things yet to come, we know we are at the threshold of a breakthrough in our ways of thinking. Maybe, one would be inclined to think we are not but that serves no purpose for two reasons: it is a pessimistic thought which inspires not hope, but despair.
The second reason, if we really look at the ways humanity has progressed, stagnated and then advanced again, we can see that in reality we are always at the cusp of something new. It is only later that it becomes evident or visible. Some may notice it as it emerges and the many may notice it as it becomes normalised and they would compare what is now with ‘what it used to be’.
Historical perspectives: From Rome to the Industrial Revolution
Our industrial heritage in many ways is how our societies and economies operate and do business with each other. It underlies the morals with which we treat employees, the hidden thinking behind contracts, mergers and large business empires. It could very well be that Imperialism never died but rather simply changed hands—from the aristocrats to the bourgeoisie.
It’s interesting to consider why industrialisation came about in the 17th century and not during the Roman Empire. For in both eras, there was ample wealth and resources to fund these activities that would create business and opportunities for all. Empowering the poor and multiplying the wealth of the rich. But why did Rome not take this course of action?
There are several theories. In Roman society, labour was not seen as something very positive but rather as something that slaves did. It was enough for the aristocrats to employ slaves and get the things they needed done to be done. Slaves were cheap and easy to ‘manage’. Why then would they bother building machines that would reduce labour and increase output? With large hordes of slaves arriving from conquered nations, the problem was probably putting them to work.
Another factor was a lack of laws favouring commerce among aristocracy with some laws expressly forbidding them from engaging in trade or commerce. This limited large private efforts to succeed. In contrast large public efforts like aqueducts, roads, harbours and so on were managed well largely because the government backed these projects and allowed for work to be contracted to many small groups.
However, Rome did show periods of economic growth and the costs of doing ‘business’ were lowered to make commerce viable. Archaeological evidence from sites across the Roman Empire reveals sophisticated mining operations, particularly in Britain and Spain. Excavations have uncovered extensive coal mining operations dating from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE, with remnants of advanced ventilation systems and drainage technologies. The discovery of slag heaps ( a hill made from waste material, such as rock and mud, left over from mining) and metallurgical waste suggests large-scale industrial production, while recovered artifacts indicate standardized manufacturing processes. These three hundred or so years were remarkable for growth of Rome and its people, however it was still not even close to what was happening in Britain on the verge of the industrial revolution.
In ancient Rome there was no culture of invention and discovery. Intellectual property was not patented and innovations needed to be guarded and kept secret. Thus when Rome fell a lot of great ideas went with it. However, during the renaissance the patent ensured someone’s intellectual property was safeguarded and encouraged innovation.
According to the majority of economic historians, innovations were key to modern economic growth. Economist Mark Koyama says that there have been three large groups of people who believe specific factors were crucial for the burst of the modern economy. The first group favour market expansion as the major cause for sustained economic growth. The second group favour the view that colonialism and its empires used natural resources, like coal for example, to crucially fuel modern economic growth. The third group favours innovations—both economic and cultural. Economist and historian Dierdre McCloskey mentions the latter reason as more influential in her book: “Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World”. She says ideas, not capital, were the oxygen of the Great Enrichment in the 1800s.
Particularly noteworthy was the development of proto-capitalist systems in Italian city-states, which managed to maintain their traditional social structures while pioneering new economic methods. Cities like Venice and Florence created sophisticated banking systems, maritime insurance, and complex trading networks while preserving their cultural institutions and social hierarchies. This unique blend of innovation and tradition would later influence the development of modern capitalism across Europe.
The transformation of economic behaviour
The bourgeoisie, representing the middle or upper middle class in the 18th century, were the ones most to benefit in the rise of industrialisation. The difference was key as they emerged in the 11th century in central and western Europe in cities dedicated to commerce. They further formed guilds, self-organised groups that consolidated their power as well as informed their activities. They were seen as being below aristocrats but by the 20th century that changed and the term bourgeoisie, in a capitalist society, is synonymous with the ruling upper class.
This transformation has social and psychological factors that had similarities and differences in Europe and ancient Rome. The aristocrats of both societies were engaged in, what Erich Fromm calls, radical hedonism. The premise is “defined as the satisfaction of any desire or subjective need a person may feel.” Philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century started to voice very similar ideas. Thomas Hobbes said happiness (cupiditas or desire) is the continuous progress from one greed to another. As the aristocrats would engage in the pursuit of pleasure, now so too would the bourgeoisie and they had the resources and means to do so.
Fromm notes a change in the eighteenth century that allowed for the emergence of capitalism. In medieval and primitive societies, “economic behaviour was determined by ethical principles.” So economic behaviour emerged from natural tendencies of exchange already present in human behaviour. It was guided by ethics, social norms and cultural cues that applied to humans in the contexts and environments they lived in. However, during the rise of capitalism, economic behaviour detached from ethics and human values. The “economic machine” became a system that was to run by itself and according to its own laws. In time, the economic machine started to dictate human values and even replace social norms in many societies, small and large.
This transition, in its emerging stage, was significantly impacted by Protestant ethics, as Max Weber theorized. Religious values did not disappear entirely, but were rather reinterpreted to align with capitalist ideals. The Protestant work ethic transformed traditional Christian virtues into economic essentials. The virtues of diligence, which in modern terms we see as productivity, and frugality, which today is simple ‘being smart with one’s money’, started suggesting to people that worldly success could be a sign of divine favour. In other words, God helps those who help themselves. Which suddenly turned religious values into an exercise in selfishness. This transition bridged the gap between traditional religious morality and what later became common capitalist practices.
The emerging merchant class developed sophisticated frameworks of ethics that tried to reconcile profit-seeking with traditional moral values. They created elaborate justifications that depicted commerce as a form of public service, arguing that the pursuit of profit, when conducted honestly, contributed to the common good. This hybrid ethical system allowed them to maintain their social respectability while engaging in increasingly complex financial operations. It was a natural transition where economic activities had started becoming attractive and people needed to find existing concepts to describe this emerging profession.
The result of this was a drastic turn in viewing events caused by economic activities as akin to those occurring by natural law. Even the word “profit” departed from meaning “profit for the soul” or essentially what is good for our well-being, psychological and spiritual. Profit was simply material and monetary profit and this period was where the “middle class threw away not only its political shackles but also bonds of love and solidarity.” The empowerment of the individual took center stage.
Questions that governed economic growth were not “what is good for human beings?” but rather “What is good for growth of the system?” and everyone started to assume what is good for the growth of the system is good for human beings.
Where do we go from here?
Yes, prosperity led us down a comfortable path but what were the costs? For if nothing comes free then we must have paid for all this economic and material progress with psychological and spiritual deterioration. One does wonder. Our industrial heritage, alive and kicking today now shows the worst possible outcome we could have imagined—the possibility of a mass global extinction.
Should we aim to address this problem then we must first understand it. Treating it like a issue we can solve overnight will only lead to the ever fallible strategy of ‘treating the symptoms rather than the cause’. If we endeavour to understand that we put economic growth higher than environmental protection then we may see a very basic conflict in action. To the gatekeepers of economic and global activity, I would ask: Are you willing to sacrifice economic growth for natural protection? I can only imagine the hesitant reply: “Is it not possible to have both?” Maybe not anymore.
Where then does this take us as a person who deems themselves to be a ‘cog in the wheel’, a person who thinks they have little to no power and cannot make global change happen. A person that believes the only people that can save us now are the policy makers and environmentalists. I would urge such a person to remove the blinders from their eyes and see how even if one is a cog in the wheel, they are an indispensable part of the wheel. If we imagine a wooden cogwheel working inside intricate machinery and we are each individual cog. Now, if a single cog removes itself from the mechanism, the cogwheel will skip in its rotation. Then the other cogwheels attached to it will skip. If another cog removes themselves, then we will see the whole mechanism shake and stumble. This is the power of a cog.
‘If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.’ —Dalai Lama XIV
The power we as individuals can express comes from a flow of power that pervades all of society. Rather than using the word ‘holding power’ I choose to use the flow of power for the reason that we can only truly have power if we express it and not if we hold it. Society is made of individuals and individuals are influenced by society. It is a cyclical process that seeks no end but rather expression. Indeed, there are people who hold more responsibility than others. The inseparable relationship between power and responsibility make us realise how, even in small ways, we are accountable for our actions.
Many revolutions have been started by people from lower classes who thought they had no power until they took it into their own hands. It is not something we can all do, but we can start somewhere.
When we think of what we can do, how we can express ourselves I would point to one thing: Education. That we learn about what others have thought of this issue and how we can apply it in our current context. Education comes not only through reading or university but also through discussions and dialogue. We educate ourselves not by mere memorization of information or facts but also through contemplation of what we are learning. When we attempt to relate the material we are learning to experiences and situations in our lives, we gain a better understanding of it. Thus we are poised with new connections in our minds and an updated map to navigate the world.
If we do not educate ourselves we risk acting from our old patterns. In crafting new solutions we risk falling back on outdated thinking which lie at the basis of what doesn’t work in our current context.
We need to relearn our thinking models. Our contexts and our situations will keep changing and where we would be conveniently inclined to say ‘we need to catch up’, I would also say ‘we need to participate in this change’. For in the latter statement there is no ‘falling behind’ or ‘getting ahead’ rather an involvement in the process.
If we are involved in the process of how our societies evolve and grow (or not) then we are constantly changing as well. Thus we are more competent and able to deal with issues that will inevitably come up in any generation. Thus, we will not give into the anger of our powerlessness but the passion of our desire to participate in the process of change. Thus, we will be the change we want to see in the world.