Progress: To Be or Not To Be
Name: _______________________
E. Napp
Date: _______________________
Compelling Question: What constitutes “progress” in a civilization; how can “progress”
benefit or harm a civilization; and should “progress” be the goal of every civilization?
Part I: Reading – Gandhi and Nehru on Progress and Civilization
“The two most influential Indian leaders of the twentieth century were Mohandas K.
Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, representing different generations in the Indian National
Congress. Gandhi, born in 1869, was the inspirational force behind Indian resistance to
British colonialism in the 1920s and 1930s. Nehru, twenty years younger, participated in
that resistance and later led the independent Indian republic as its first prime minister,
from 1947 to 1964.
Both men were influenced by the time they spent in Great Britain. Gandhi sailed to
Britain in 1888 to pursue a law degree, and while in London he was strongly influenced by
cultural trends and by philosophers who called into question the relentless materialism of
late Victorian society. Among them were vegetarians and Theosophists, who emphasized
intuition and mysticism over rationalism and formal theology. He was also influenced by
the American writer Henry David Thoreau and the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, both of
whom celebrated the simplicity of rural life.
Nehru’s British experience was quite different. His father, a famous lawyer and a man of
great wealth, sent him to study at two of the world’s most famous educational institutions,
Harrow School and then Cambridge University. Interacting with England’s elite, the
young Nehru was strongly influenced by the reformist socialism fashionable with the
younger generation at the start of the twentieth century. Such socialists accepted the need
for the economic development that came with capitalist industrialism but argued for a
more equitable distribution of its proceeds.
Gandhi and Nehru, therefore, though close friends as well as political allies, had very
different visions of India’s future. While many Indians have been strongly influenced by
Gandhi’s philosophy over the decades, Nehru’s attitude has been much more evident in
Indian government policy since the country achieved independence in 1947.”
~ Voyages in World History
 Create a Venn diagram titled Gandhi and Nehru – from the reading, cull facts for
each and be sure to note if there are any similarities in the overlapping region.
Part II – Two Primary Sources
Primary Source #1: Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (1909)
“Let us first consider what state of things is described by the word ‘civilization.’ Its true
test lies in the fact that people living in it make bodily welfare the object of life. We will
take some examples. The people of Europe today live in better-built houses than they did a
hundred years ago. This is considered an emblem of civilization, and this is also a matter
to promote bodily happiness. Formerly, they wore skins, and used spears as their weapons.
Now, they wear long trousers, and, for embellishing their bodies, they wear a variety of
clothing, and, instead of spears, they carry with them revolvers containing five or more
chambers. If people of a certain country, who have hitherto not been in the habit of
wearing much clothing, boots, etc., adopt European clothing, they are supposed to have
become civilized out of savagery. Formerly, in Europe, people ploughed their lands mainly
by manual labor. Now, one man can plough a vast tract by means of steam engines and
can thus amass great wealth. This is called a sign of civilization…This civilization takes
note neither of morality nor of religion…Civilization seeks to increase bodily comforts, and
it fails miserably even in doing so.
This civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on the people in Europe that
those who are in it appear to be half mad. They lack real physical strength or courage.
They keep up their energy by intoxication. They can hardly be happy in solitude. Women,
who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets or they slave away in
factories. For the sake of a pittance, half a million women in England alone are laboring
under trying circumstances in factories or similar institutions. This awful act is one of the
causes of the daily growing suffragette movement…
Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English
are at present afflicted by it.” ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi
Primary Source #2: Jawaharlal Nehru, “Gandhi” (1936)
“I imagine that [Gandhi] is not so vague about the objective as he sometimes appears to be
… ‘India’s salvation consists,’ he wrote in 1909, ‘in unlearning what she has learned during
the last fifty years. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors, and suchlike all
have to go…’
All this seems to me utterly wrong and harmful doctrine, and impossible of achievement.
Behind it lies Gandhi’s love and praise of poverty and suffering and the ascetic life…
Personally I dislike the praise of poverty and suffering…Nor do I appreciate in the least the
idealization of the ‘simple peasant life.’ I have almost a horror of it, and instead of
submitting to it myself I want to drag out even the peasantry from it…What is there in
‘The Man and the Hoe’ to idealize over? Crushed and exploited for innumerable
generations, he is only little removed from the animals who keep him company…
The desire to get away from the mind of man to primitive conditions where mind does not
count, seems to me quite incomprehensible. The very thing that is the glory and triumph of
man is decried and discouraged, and a physical environment which will oppress the mind
and prevent its growth is considered desirable. Present-day civilization is full of evils, but
it is also full of good; and it has the capacity in it to rid itself of those evils. To destroy it
root and branch is to remove that capacity from it and revert to a dull, senseless, and
miserable existence. But even if that were desirable it is an impossible undertaking. We
cannot stop the river of change or cut ourselves adrift from it, and psychologically we who
have eaten of the apple of Eden cannot forget that taste and go back to primitiveness.”
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Create a new Venn diagram titled two views on civilization – from the primary
sources, cull facts for each point of view and be sure to note if there are any
similarities in the overlapping region.
Part III: Enduring Issues: Civilization – To Be or Not to Be
Article: Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for ‘irreversible collapse’?
The Guardian, Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, 2014
“A new study partly-sponsored by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted
the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to
unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of ‘collapse’ are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study
attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that ‘the process of rise-andcollapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.’ Cases of severe
civilizational disruption due to ‘precipitous collapse – often lasting centuries – has been
quite common.’
The independent research project … finds that according to the historical record even
advanced, complex civilizations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the
sustainability of modern civilisation:
‘The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and
Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the
fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and
impermanent.’
By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project
identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilizational decline, and
which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water,
Agriculture, and Energy.
These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social
features: ‘the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying
capacity’; and ‘the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or
‘Commoners’) [poor]’ These social phenomena have played ‘a central role in the character
or in the process of the collapse,’ in all such cases over ‘the last five thousand years.’
Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of
resources, with ‘Elites’ based largely in industrialized countries responsible for both:
‘... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been
controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only
allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels.’
The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by
increasing efficiency:
‘Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both
per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy
effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource
use.’
Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come
from ‘increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput,’ despite dramatic efficiency
gains over the same period.
Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharrei and his colleagues conclude that
under conditions ‘closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is
difficult to avoid.’ In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:
‘.... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal
depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume
too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of
society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine
that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature.’
Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that ‘with
a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still
thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites.’
Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:
‘While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an
impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it,
Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long
sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing.’
However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable,
and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave
the way toward a more stable civilisation.
The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution
of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive
renewable resources and reducing population growth:
‘Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of
depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a
reasonably equitable fashion.’
Reexamine the Compelling Question: What constitutes “progress” in a civilization; how
can “progress” benefit or harm a civilization; and should “progress” be the goal of every
civilization?
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So, who was right – Gandhi or Nehru?
Create a thesis supporting Gandhi’s position or Nehru’s position.
Integrate thoughts from the Enduring Issues to support or refute your thesis
Integrate your own convictions in the thesis too