The Temeraire and Progress

Instead of the regular "what's going on" post, I'd like to respond to a post put up recently on Raoul's blog about the painting "The Fighting Temeraire."
Here is the painting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Turner%2C_The_fighting_Temeraire.jpg

A history of the Temeraire and other ships named after her is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Temeraire

Specifically this quote: "In our quest to better ourselves, have the things that make human beings human become victims of progress? Are we hollow husks of past glory being towed down a polluted river to our own destruction by the very things we built to better ourselves? May such thoughts disturb you as they did me the day I first layed eyes on Turner's painting."

My response would be, "no, nope, and these thoughts are good, so they shouldn't disturb you."

The Temeraire in itself was a ship. A hunk of wood, manned by the brave men who actually made up the "spirit" of the ship, and made it such a legend. For traveling across the oceans, these wooden ships were unreliable, dangerous, plague ridden, and slow. And these were the finest vessels of the century. Progress killed the Temeraire, yes. And progress replaced it with cheap, mass produced iron steamers which could cross the oceans with less risk of sinking (and killing the crew aboard it), were cheaper and faster to make, and were much faster with less amount of work. While they did pollute, more progress was made, and London is much cleaner than it was in the beginning of the Industrial revolution (no more coal marked sunsets). So the Temeraire was obsolete, and was headed for destruction one way or the other (if the wood was not broken down, nature would have caught up with her one day).

Raoul also ponders: "Sadly, many important and beautiful things are sacrificed in the name of this "progress." Morality. Dignity. Modesty. History. Salience. Intelligence. Wit. Depth. Faith. Hope. Love. All of them, in one way or another, have been called outmoded, outdated, reactionary, or irrelevant by proponents of modern thought and it's constant march towards the next bigger and better thing."
The fact that the painting was even made, and still hangs in a museum contradicts the sacrifice of history, salience, depth, dignity, and wit. In fact the very destruction of the Temeraire that led to the creation of this painting has immortalized it in the cultural conscience. The Temeraire, as a symbol and as a piece of history will clearly live on, long after the wood of the ship has rotted away. As progress marches on, we have to choose the moments in our history that will last, and so far we have chosen well. Little bits of the cultural collective seep through as always through nostalgia, memory, literature, and education. My sophomore year of high school, a young girl in our class made the statement that, "in the future, it won't matter that you know the information, but rather how you get it." It was a rather silly thing to say (especially coming from "my favorite Miracle"... you BTW folks should get that one). Knowledge about particular subjects seems even more important at the advent of the internet. In fact it forces us to learn as much as we can about the particular subject for fear that the internet (a notoriously unreliable source of "good" information) will lead us astray. History, literature, art, and culture are becoming more and more valuable as progress goes on, not less. Notice how forcefully people fight against McDonald's and the perceived threat of globalization for fear of "losing their identity" when in actuality more cultures have been researched, translated, and shared in the last century than any other in history.

As far as dignity, morality, love, faith, and hope. These things aren't related to progress. These are individual choices to make within the world, as the world changes. In fact I think the steam engine had less to do with the decay of morality than modern culture itself, which in some cases also popularizes the halt (or at least pause) of progress to appreciate some idealized past.

Let's return to Don Quijote for a moment. A man who drove himself crazy dreaming of the chivalrous past that never was. Knights were noble, dames were distressed (and in need of saving), villains were clear cut, and magicians used their arts to deceive and manipulate. All masterfully (or not so masterfully) recorded in the caballerias. In some cases, the idyllic dreams of this made-up past were good: such as the case where Don Quijote defends the shepherdess'' right to never marry (if she so decides), calling it the end for which the errant knights strove. In some cases, these ideals went horribly wrong: such as when he released the Picaresque prisoners (whom he believed would never do it again, and he as a knight had a right to free them arbitrarily) only to be beaten, stoned, and robbed by them.
Quijote dies at the realization that his dream, his ideal past to return to, was folly, and that it would not function in the real world. But Cervantes gives examples of when this ideal past is far preferable to the mundane reality. So some things must be held over from the past, and some things must be left behind (and perhaps even forgotten). The past was not a great place. The past was as horrible, ignorant, and wretched than we are today. We just easily forget the bad things back then, and focus on the bad things now.

The Temeraire as a ship was let go of. It was old. It was dangerous to the crews. It was obsolete. The legend that was created out of it however, is evidently on everyone's minds these days (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2005/trafalgar_200/default.stm).

But it is necessary to preserve the good of the past in some record or some powerful image, such as Turner's brilliant painting.

So let us march on to the bigger and better thing. A society where plagues can be stopped, and maybe even cured. A society where cultures are researched and appreciated, as opposed to decimated and left to decay. A society where instantaneous communication can open doors to anyone willing to work and learn. This society has as much possibility for "Morality. Dignity. Modesty. History. Salience. Intelligence. Wit. Depth. Faith. Hope. Love." as any other in history, it is just what we choose to do with what has been given to us.

And as for history:
Cervantes and Turner are still with us. And they will likely outlive us both, and our descendants. That to me, is a comforting thought.

This post was meant to comfort, by the way, and not completely contradict. These are very good thoughts to have, and indeed have led to the preservation of history and culture. But the pessimism in it sounds so depressed, when there really is some good in the world now (at least as much as there was "back then"), even in the unstoppable movement of "progress" which frightens so many.