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The history of “progress” is the history of how humanity uselessly complicates life.
In the hands of the progressive clergy, the Gospels degenerate into a compilation of trivial ethics lessons.
Nothing is more dangerous today than man’s attitude before his own works. Until yesterday, man regarded every new invention with suspicion, fearing the presence of some diabolical power and demanding a long purgatory to purify these disturbing creations. Today, an excessive optimism, an unleashed faith in a benevolent destiny and the goodness of human nature, induces him to joyfully embrace the fruits of human ingenuity. It is impossible for modern man to believe that a new idea or invenion could be pernicious or perverse; it is impossible for him to reject its use because he imagines that in doing so he would disrespect a sacred obligation.
Reason, Progress, and Justice are the three theological virtues of the fool.
History, for the reactionary, is surely idealized; still, it would have been delicious to live in that fantasy- unlike the terrifying idealized future of our progressive prophets. Even the progressive’s ideal is repugnant.
Progress ages poorly.
Each generation brings a new model of progressivism and discards with contempt the previous.
Nothing is more grotesque than the fashionable progressive of yesterday.
In order to avoid a mature confrontation with oblivion, man raises altars to progress.
The modern Christian feels professionally obligated to act jovial and humorous, showing his teeth in a benevolent smile, exuding a slavering cordiality, in order to prove to the unbeliever that Christianity is not a “gloomy” religion, a “pessimistic” doctrine, morally “ascetic.”
The progressive Christian shakes your hand with the grin of a politician.
The aging progressive is nostalgic, like an old flirt.
It is easier to forgive the progressive for progress than for his faith.
Each new generation, since the Enlightenment, ends up looking with nostalgia on that which appeared abominable to the previous generation.
“Progress,” “Democracy,” the “Classless Society,” excite the crowd, but leave the Muses distant and cold.
The cardinal rule of the progressive is beautiful: the best always triumphs, because whatever triumphs is called the best.
Progressive Christians painstakingly search through sociology manuals for material to wedge into the Gospels.
The periodic reblossoming of what he declares obsolete makes life bitter for the progressive.
The cost of progress is calculated in fools.
It is indecent, and even obscene, to speak to man of “progress,” when every road ascends between funeral cypresses.
The Church, when she pushed the doors wide open, wished to make it easier for those outside to enter, not realizing it made it easier for those inside to leave.
Yesterday, progressivism captured the unwary by offering them freedom; today it is enough to offer them food.
The future that progressives dream of is even more repulsive than the one they inadvertently create.
The future tense is the favorite tense of the imbecile.
Progress is the scourge God has chosen for us.
Nothing is less substantive than the naive identification of what is “new” with what is “good,” nothing so ill-advised as an unbridled confidence in every new idea. Accepting without rule and without principle everything man invents, never meditating on the consequences of these inventions but blindly submitting to them and enduring them without previous consideration, ecstatically welcoming and fostering the embryos of unknown processes, the seeds of unknown circumstances. It is from a resignation of our intelligence, an unthinking submission to our perverse nature that the attitude of modern man is formed.
Those of us who sit unmoved and indifferent to the fashion of the day are never so amused as when we witness the panting gallop of the lagging progressive.
Failing to realize what it longs for, “progress” christens its achievements as having been intended all along.
The progressive believes everything will soon become obsolete, except his ideas.
What was true yesterday is not always error today, as fools believe.
But what is true today can be error tomorrow, as fools forget.
Courtesy is an obstacle to progress.
A progressive defends progress by saying it exists.
But the murderer also exists, and the judge condemns him.
The best reason to renounce progressive and daring opinions is the inevitability with which they are, sooner or later, adopted by the fool.
Nothing cures the progressive. Not even his frequent panic brought about by progress.
The only possible “progress” is the internal progress of each individual.
A process that concludes with the end of each life.
The pessimists prophesy a future of rubble, but the optimistic prophets are even more horrifying when the preach of a future city where vileness and tedium dwell in perfectly ordered hives.
Not only is the price of progress excessive, but most progress is, itself, unpleasant and childish.
The frightened progressive has neither compassion nor restraint.
No one despises the foolishness of yesterday as much as the fool of today.
The new catechists proclaim that Progress is the modern incarnation of Hope.
Progress is not hope emerging. It is the anguished echo when hope has vanished.
A greater capacity for killing is the criterion of “progress” between two peoples or two epochs.
The hope of progressivism only flourishes in dialogue and discourse.
Now more than ever before, man runs after any fool who invites him along on the trip, deaf to the lookout in the watchtower who sees the ruined roads and collapsed bridges.
Progress, in the end, comes down to robbing man of what ennobles him, in order to sell him at a cheap price that which degrades him.
Sometimes I’m troubled by the idea that I ought to agree with the great generosity of leftist or progressive parties. And if that generosity was true, there would indeed by a strong reason to opt for those parties.
However, it seems clear to me that this is only a matter of appearances, a mistake that springs from the nature of time. The past is something concrete, hard, with edges; it is a place with a name. The future, on the other hand, is vague, uncertain, nebulous. It is rich in promise, in possibility. Therefore, whoever defends the past (or the present, which is the same for our purposes) always appears to fight for something specific: a privilege, a situation, a material good. But he who is looking toward the future- even when what he yearns for is the most personal and selfish benefit- can only fight for the common, the universal. And this is not because generosity, selflessness, or genuine zeal actually motivate his actions. This is because the future lacks individual features, it lacks the rough concrete aspect of reality. The generosity of progressive parties seems so apparent because it comes exclusively from some future event that cannot actually be predicted. We do not live in peace except when we understand that no such event exists.
In the end, what does the modern call “progress?”
Whatever seems comfortable to the fool.
The error of the progressive Christian lies in believing that Christianity’s perennial polemic against the rich is an implicit defense of socialist programs.
Humanity is watching with horror as progress becomes incurable.
Progress, for the modern, consists in inventing new “needs” for man that further enslave him.
Among modern utopian notions, it is difficult to detect the most dangerous. However, due to its apparent innocuousness, none are perhaps so fearsome as the naive belief that culture is a luxury activity- a game dependent on rest. A humanity that works a few hours and devotes its leisure to culture- science, arts, literature- in a suburban landscape of popular libraries and hygienic parks: this is the ideal cherished by the progressive of today.
To criticize the present in the name of a past may be futile, but criticizing the past in the name of some future is usually revealed as ridiculous when that future arrives.
Let the priest leave foolish endeavors to the fools. For he is not responsible for dubious “progress,” but for inexorable agony.
The liberal progressive thinks that goodwill can redeem man, at any moment, from the servitudes that oppress him.
For two centuries “progressivism” has not progressed intellectually. Since the 18th century, the progressive has not had a single idea.
The existence of the authentic reactionary tends to scandalize the progressive. His presence causes a vague discomfort. Confronted with the reactionary attitude, the progressive feels a slight contempt, accompanied by surprise and restlessness. In order to allay his fears, the progressive usually interprets the unfashionable attitude of the reactionary as being a guise for self-interest or a symptom of stupidity. Only the journalist, the politician, and the fool are not secretly startled by the tenacity with which the highest intelligences of the West, since the start of the industrial revolution, have amassed objections against the modern world.
The Pope will one day condemn the clergy not so much for heresy as for foolishness.
For the fool, “outdated opinion” and “erroneous opinion” are synonymous expressions.
Modern man calls walking more quickly down the same road “change.”
The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man.
The reactionary does not refrain from acting because the risk frightens him, but rather because he judges that the forces of society are currently rushing headlong toward a goal he despises.
The progressive cleric never disappoints an aficionado of the ridiculous.
The first generation of reactionaries accumulated warnings, the second, only forecasts, the following generations continue gathering proofs.
The “rational” consists of prolonging life, avoiding pain, and satisfying hunger and the sex drive.
Only this definition sheds any light on the discourse of the last centuries.
The failure of progress is not due to the non-fulfillment but the fulfillment of its promises.
To denigrate progress is too easy. I aspire to the professorship of methodical regression.
Note: Dávila was a Colombian political philosopher and in the Latin church. His aphorisms are presented here for the purposes of enjoyment, study, and historical record, but do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this writer. For more information on Dávila, see this introductory post. For information on how to live your life, go to church and read the Church Fathers/Saints.
Featured image: Antique book cover, source unknown.
