“Incremental Progress is Best” Fallacy
Incrementalism or gradualism is a social construct and a historical façade.
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The main reason incremental progress is best rings false has to do with our selective memories, and historical flattening. It is like saying humans are the greatest animals that evolution could have produced merely because we are the most advanced hominid species that survived. Modern progress occurs in various spurts and starts, leaps or lurches forward, retries and redos, and backpedaling. The Middle Ages for western culture was a stalled era in many ways, and a backward move in others. Going further into the past, there have been five mass extinctions since life began on earth, and before humans arrived on the scene. For evolution, often considered a gradual process, this means — in the most profound sense — it is the survival of the survived. The concept of fittest, as most think of it today, is stripped of all its proportions and importance, once you introduce a seven mile-wide asteroid to the mix, and mash. While blazing pell-mell into the future is problematic, the slow-go, status quo flattens history’s waves of change, and by sleight-of-hand, whitewashes down its leaps forward, to sanctify, and satisfy their own selfish purposes.
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Change, not being their area of expertise, incrementalists (or gradualists) down play certain stretches forward, or ghosts them. They fear change so millions become trapped in their papal states, Middle Ages, slave chains, and Jim Crow epochs. We must utilize African slaves because they are the only ones who can cultivate in harsh and hot climates.Ingenuity and technological change dries up in such a status-quo stagnant framework. The elimination of imagination and historical truth, especially in social and economic improvement and our wrong turns, is the incrementalists’ stock and trade.
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Incrementalism is inevitable, destiny, and a religious faith so say John McWhorter, Edmund Burke, and its other uncritical conservative believers.
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Protesters and do-gooders are catalysts for change, from my parents to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Frederick Douglass, Pat Maginnis, Fred Fay, Larry Kramer, and Sojourner Truth. The problem with history is we have no idea what we could remove, and still have the same results, or even better results. Therefore, we create a mostly flat tapestry of where, why, and how things ended up as they are. Additionally, we cannot fully gauge today what elements are determining or influencing proper change. Counterfactual inserted do-gooder people or occurrences, in one instance or another could have improved our nation a lot more, or not.
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For example, shuffling through three less skilled, and not as charismatic, MLK’s over his decade plus of activities could have diminished the change that did result. Or what about having no Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, or Ruby Nell Bridges (Hall) in the equation? On the worst side of the spectrum: J. Edgar Hoover could have sidelined the entire Civil Rights movement with his crazy investigations, and police-state tactics, or Bull Connor violent insanities. Yet we cannot know what these counterfactual scenarios, and others, may have had on the outcomes. What’s more, we cannot say that most of the positive results would have occurred no matter what because they were destined to happen.
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Now consider Einstein’s thought experiment, Measuring Light From a Moving Train, and the way it altered how we consider time, space, and motion, but in this case, as it tangentially relates to historical memory. Basically, think about how we consciously, ignorantly, purposefully, and unconsciously stretch, condense, and otherwise edit our memories and history. Looking back on a half century, or longer stretch of history, which absolutely no one can fully experience in real-time, we are not seeing the exact value of certain progress-inducing events, policies, or actions by people, or in true comparison to others. We ignore, or oversell the necessary roughness, or required repercussive force of various societal disturbances, or the lack of effective agitators, stick-with-it individuals, and good long term government policies, and the inadequacy of non-profit organizations.
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Historical data can compress everything together, flattening the blips, bumps, and major booms that were required to make the changes we have now. Therefore, many of the biggest bumps and largest booms are eliminated from the sweep-of-advances throughout history. Although some want to believe they know what is needed, it is impossible for us to know when doing the same old, same old is better for keeping things progressing for another 18 months. Or whether doing much more non-gradually is required right now, and for another a year, and a half to keep the gains we have, and make future gains possible. We likely need to do the latter because various kinds of gridlock, stalling, or pushback are always occurring. No one can legitimately say today which approach will bring about the changes desired now, or hoped for soon.
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Remember, most changes desired by the incrementalist today were likely achieved in the past, during a time when their ideological ancestors were against those changes occurring at any future time. Incrementalists live in a future-present-past paradox of what is desired, or good change. Since they are hardly ever seeking societal or economic change with an equality angle, such progressive change will always look as good as it can get now, or they will say it was better in the past.
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For example, compare the incrementalist of 2022 with the 1922 and 2122 version. By the time 2122 comes around some number of changes pushed for the next 100 years by progressives will become part of the incrementalist status quo forever law code. Even though almost every change was fought by previous generations of gradualists, as if the world was ending. In 1922 incrementalists were bemoaning and grumbling about the aggressive tactics of the suffrage movement. Women do not really need to have the right to vote, etc. They are not calling for a return of slavery, but segregation now, and forever is planted firmly in their craw. Yet today their status-quo progeny generally does not affirm these same rights’ degrading beliefs. That said, every small advance, when allowed, comes in a begrudgingly belligerent manner. Their incrementalism algorithm is a pandemic bug in the system. Social and economic progress for the marginalized is usually discouraged and denigrated by incrementalists, no matter the time or the speed at which change arrives.
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Was the Revolutionary War a go-it-slow move? Did the Constitution move us too fast? Was slavery abolition just around the corner without violence? In every case there were heated and threatening arguments from both sides, even violence perpetrated. Maybe the British would have given the nation over to the founders after another few decades of just nonviolent protest. Maybe slavery would have ended at the same time if we quieted zealot abolitionists, and only talked nicely to zealot slavery southerners during those seven plus decades after our constitution was ratified. Disturbances during the 1960s’ Civil Rights and anti-war movements maybe could have been avoided by letting the status quo do their slow-mo work for just another five or ten decades? .
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Could we have all the progress we have now if we had avoided the following anti-incremental actions:
- Our Revolutionary and Civil war: neighbors, fellow humans are killed? .
- Patriot mobs rampaging in the lead up to the American Revolution? .
- Our atrocities during the Revolutionary War? .
- Shays’ Rebellion in 1786 and similar mob activities into 1787 that lead to the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. .
- Springing a new Constitution on the population after less than 15 years of another agreement? .
- Deportation and slaughter of natives? .
- Hundreds upon hundreds of murders, home burnings, forced evictions by vigilantes, riots, and lynchings by Whites? (Much smaller and comparatively few riots by Black Americans?) .
- Multiple assassinations of presidents and agitators for justice? .
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The above examples present a mere sampling of the historic situations where the sanctified theory of incrementalism went out the window, which allowed the status quo to delay, or destroy full rights-for-all progress. Those actions are completely antithetical and fully detrimental to the incrementalism theory. Yet, those same (White male) incrementalists will, or must, point to many of these instances for providing them with the advantages they have today. The examples above prove incrementalists are misleading us. They also make clear that gradualism is as relativistic as any theory about how governments should proceed, or how rapidly social and economic progress should move ahead.
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What if people today, who are marginalized, see similar harms and threats as our founders detailed in the Declaration of Independence, should they be as impatient as those White male originalists? No, the marginalized should wait centuries for cork-up-their asses White conservative male (Tory) incrementalists to get on with it. This kind of horribly ironic, double-standard philosophizing, coming from the America Worst sort cohort, is titanically foul flatulence.
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The delusions, deceptions, or denial that must be introduced to legitimize gradualism is farcical. The murderous peasant revolts and rebellions in the later Middle Ages and during the Reformation are additional examples of historical craziness that is similar to the French and American Revolutions. The French went about revolution in a flurry of terrible and scary, while Americans did much of their lobotomized horrible in a latent, and elongated manner via native elimination and deportation, and nearly a century of slavery.
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To say of the violent disruptions just noted that one was good, and one was bad, is like saying a mass shooter killing fifty people in one day is worse than a serial killer that murders the same number over decades, or vice versa. However, there is no way to determine which decade, or epoch of horrible made us a better, or worse nation, or people. Without the epoch of Reformation, we could still be ruled in Papal States. Without the peasant revolts in England, we could still be serfs. Therefore, any change event can potentially engender benefits decades or centuries in the future.
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Picking and choosing our events from the past, as bad or good in a future benefit sense, means we flatten other events that may have actually been the turning point for the benefits we now enjoy. Slavery in every form, and warring merely to kill, or get an imperialist advantage, are all abhorrent. That said, the events and circumstances surrounding or causing all violent incidents, or horrific perversions are an important area to study if the positive (or negative) elements of change are to be determined.
- Did the French Revolution utterly fail, or was it necessary to expand our ideas about freedom, or should it have been anticipated due to previous actions, and missed opportunities? .
- Did Whites require slavery because it was the only way to be economically successful, or were they pathetically unimaginative, slimy individuals blinded by easy money, or were they merely after the most spoils they could get, while being as lazy as humanly possible? . (The last two.)
- Did the English and German peasant revolts of 1351, and 1524 and the sack of Rome in 1527, give more Whites the ability to achieve their even greater liberties in the late 1700s, or would the kings and nobles have made those benefits available when it was incrementally appropriate? .
Let us concede that incremental advancement is the best way to proceed with social or economic change. To that end:
If only gradual change was the order of the day since the year 1000CE, when would we have gotten to democracy as it was envisioned in 1787 by the American founders? Maybe 1887, 2087, or 2587? .
When would chattel slavery have ended in America if only incrementalists had even more control from 1619 on? Maybe 1965, 2165, or 2965? .
Where would we be if the rantings of the French philosophes had been curbed or smothered more by the status quo, slow-mo clan from 1650 on? .
Would our constitution have been written as a mostly religious document if incrementalists were in charge of more of our future from 1700 on? We could have been a Baptist, or Anglican, or Calvinist nation. .
If the anti-incrementalist Reformation would not have happened, wouldn’t the constitution, if it ever was allowed to happened, likely have been heavily guided by the papacy? .
Where in those five questions (above) do you strip out the violence, or the massive disruption like the Black Death, and get as far as we are in 2022? .
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I am not suggesting we need disruptively bad policies, a popular revolt and other mayhem, a full-on revolution, or a pandemic that kills 40% of the population to achieve more than incremental change. I am saying we cannot ignore or underplay the influence of historical violence, devastation, and other disruptions just because we believe violence can be avoided now, and that there are better strategies today. How do you stop violence perpetrated by the dominant, incrementalist to maintain their status? Realize that violent maintenance includes mass incarceration and voter suppression. Do you go decades more merely debating it, since you are comfortable enough your (White) self to wait indefinitely? .
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In addition, the reality is that the incrementalist faction will always push against change, violently if need be, to hold everything in its current self-interested disequilibrium. The status quo prefers debate, argumentation, and legislative activity (or simply, blah, blah, blah gridlock) because those approaches on their own almost never achieve more than gradual change. This rock and a hard place paradox is a complicated dilemma to escape.
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Going beyond those conversational approaches reaches into the confrontational zone, and are often sanctioned by the status quo. Peaceful protesting and nonviolent civil disobedience are the middle ground, but it is most effective with the very largest display of national participation up to that point. Anything less can be ignored longer by the status quo. Does a Daniel Shays’ get the same results by a few peaceful protests and resolutions with the Articles of Confederation in place? We can never know. But at the time all those former Revolutionary War soldiers who participated in the back payrebellion were considered merely mobs.
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Ironically, the founders and framers who called Daniel Shays’ a mob leader in 1786, were called a mob by the Britishfrom 1765 up to, and passed 1776. None of this suggests that mobs or violence is condoned for any political reason, but that the status quo always decides when it is, even if their actions are similar to anything they condemn. Such is the paradox and hypocrisy of incrementalism and violence in the pursuit of political advantage.
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That said, violent confrontation as well as non-violent confrontation, for an actual good reason may not keep you from punishment. John Brown found that out, and mid 20th century civil rights protesters did on the nonviolent side of the civil disobedience spectrum. The January 6th insurrectionists convinced themselves that their incomprehensible conspiracies and other mentally scattered ideas, were worth acting out violently, and many are also paying the price of those unhinged convictions. Change is disordered and twisted like that because the status-quo is both unhinged from the daily reality of anyone but themselves, and hinged to many bigoted ideas, and worn out, private charity-based policies. That failed policy strategy is related to their — uninsured, underinsured, under-housed, and barely getting by poor — problems must always be with us ideology.
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The status quo also does not necessarily involve only conservatives. The stagnation goes beyond ideological boundaries including all who feel comfortable where they are. Unfortunately, those who would benefit most from change may also place themselves in this comfortable group. The disruption versus stay at your current comfort level battle is usually won by the dominant (comfort) cohort, no matter what change is on the other side. Even if a disruption only had a small chance of making things worse for a short time, change will be avoided.
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Labor unions were put in this paradoxical vice many times in the late 19th century, and until the middle of the 20th century. Whether violent or nonviolent, management or plutocratic governance could pull the net out from under unions at any time. Yet pushing things to the brink did achieve enough results overall to move the ball forward after many decades of gradual upward movement, but some way down defeats, rinse and repeat, and finally, a near reversal of union power. Of course, not even gradual benefits would have been possible without going to some of the violent and nonviolent extremes unions did. As to violence, it has not worked as effectively in the last century or so for positive change in America. Unfortunately, the current 21st century nonviolent replacements are less likely to be feared sufficiently by the status quo powers-that-be.
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The stick of fear is a bigger catalyst than many want to admit, to achieve positive equality, or anti-equality. From what maybe as innocuous as peer pressure and the cost in loss of prestige and acceptance, to voter rights suppression, to something as drastic as violent intimidation. Yet one fear inducing event or threat is never enough, a long term, consistent fear is required to achieve effective results, or conformity. Without some kind of proactive fear of a cost function, our inability to equalize rights would increase, and so would general societal nonconformity. Much like a complete lack of inhibitions would cause more injury, or too many inhibitions would paralyze us, we must find the best equilibrium.
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That means properly moderating apprehension-based warnings to achieve positive conformity is integral. Yes, we will change because of George Floyd’s murder (societal peer pressure, etc.) does not automatically mean any change will occur, let alone deep or long term change. Such a unifying event requires maximal levels of post-event participation to insure effective enforcement of the good will that transpired during the moment. On the other hand, the carrot of logical argumentation by itself will not thwart, nor turn around, a near complete majority of those who are bent on halting progress. They hide in this majority, gridlocking minority, supported by a clannish culture, reinforced by peer pressure, demagogic narratives, and ideological whitewashing.
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Conversely, a utopian outcome — where we find legitimate compromise on every issue — is only possible when no one is introducing unyielding obstacles, and open mindedness is continually updated. Obviously, there is zero likelihood of one occurring, or more absurdly, both occurring for any length of time.
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The open minded today may not be that on the next issue, or a few decades later on the same issue. While many issues are more relative than we may accept or realize, everyone has a stopping point. Some small faction will also suggest or make demands that will never lead to compromise or consensus. With these parameters understood, and when an issue becomes effectively salient for a majority, the shit will hit the fan, and something must and will be done to advance that issue. As a nation, our most contentious example was slavery. Eloquent and passionate argumentation, legislative actions, attempts at consensus, compromise, and peaceful protests over 80 plus years did not turn the tide.
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The fear of total annihilation was the only way to wrest slavery away from the South. Of course, few issues will ever have the same evident gravity and blatant human suffering, but there must be a societal, financial, or legal penalty cost to those who continue the ruination of other peoples’ rights. Otherwise, those benefiting from the disequalization of rights can simply continue in their comfort position for as long as possible, never forced to act. Becoming woke is often derided by conservatives, but they heap praise on our founders who woke up the British to their need for independence. As we can tell from the malignancy of slavery and Jim Crow, our nation had much more to be woke about as well. There is also no reason to believe we have nothing left to learn, or no rights’ trampling practices to end.
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Why have White (male) privileged historians been the only ones to determine: What too much change is? What the definition of incremental change is? When violence is not incremental? When violence or protesting is part of their supposed incremental past, yet horribly non-incremental when done by marginalized others? Is the only way forward for the good to do good, and not listen very closely to those who want to slow us down, or impede progress? The incrementalists are hooked on their own flattened and whitewashed view of history that is beneficial to them, especially today or yesterday, which is the default they are anchored to, versus progressive liberals, who always have a sail open to catch the positive winds of change.
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Lamentably, a substantial portion of the (White and-or male) population has never joined in consistently to catch that sail, nor in consecutive generations. The inconsistency of societal anger, disgust at the status quo, passion, and commitment make comprehensive change, or complete change in a specific area, nearly impossible. Energy to sustain and protect changes already achieved petered out (in White politicians especially) a decade or so into Reconstruction. The Civil Rights movement (particularly involvement by Whites) diminished after the 1960s due to the loss of many movement leaders, post Vietnam War melancholy, and political apathy after Nixon’s debacle. The changing of the (White) liberal guard in the 1970s also undermined the movement towards equality, in the economic arena especially. After suffrage was won for (White) women, the E.R.A. was pushed in the 1920s, but failed quickly, then again in the 1960s and until the E.R.A. lost much steam in the early 1980s, and other causes throughout our history.
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In general these are not flaws in the causes, or the strategies implemented, but a problem with generational transference, separate and-or connected to the fatigue of the fairly comfortable, i.e. mostly the dominant (White and-or male) cohort. Again, everyone is affected by this fatigue state, and a certain comfort level, like the devil you know. However, the recalcitrance to push for change that such comfort breeds lasts longer in the dominant culture, since it is less affected by the negative aspects of delaying change.
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The status quo benefits from the fatigue and the paucity of generational transference. Their argument for incrementalism is made logical with those limitations active. Otherwise no consistent reality of gradualism’s value and success could be conjured up. They are able to successfully deflect the opposition by battling, bruising, and barricading the agitating do-gooders for a generation or more, using whatever methods are required: KKK marauders, lynching sprees, black codes, massive, violent riots, crushing unions to racially biased drug wars, abusing Senate norms to cordon off Supreme Court nominations, dishonest whittling away at abortion rights, voter suppression, and capitol insurrections.
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Conclusion.
Incremental or gradual progress is not preferable, and it is not how things actually work. It is a prejudiced take on historical reality. Those promoting incrementalism as our best hope, and part of some natural law, are not explaining a historical fact, but are pushing a status-quo deception. Ebb and sometimes stormy flow, flash flood and flank, fresh air squalls and hot air backlashes are better descriptors of how change does, or does not, occur. Belligerent delays, and bigoted displays have kept complete equality from being achieved; there is no innate, gradual process. Throughout history, revolts, rebellions, and riots have occurred because of some group’s lack of individual or economic rights. Shutting off the valve of rights equalization caused our Civil War, and almost every riot, violent persecution focused on specific Americans, or violent reaction by the persecuted persons, we have ever had.
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Recently, a blockade by supposed leftwing anarchists, encouraged the city of Portland, Oregon, to help a family buyback their home after an eviction was ordered. This required almost two months of negotiations, giving disturbances fuel and instigators political cover, as outside funds were being raised. Yet the entire incident could have been avoided if the city, and the nation were genuinely and effectively looking out for its residents, and citizens including protecting and providing basic housing.
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The festering problems of inequality are not the cause of every violent interaction in society, but their presence makes it very difficult to untangle where problems are part of human nature, or part of humans delaying the benefits of full rights equality, and societal equity. Conservatives will say I am implying or promoting perfectly mirrored equality, and socialist style, financial equity. More graphically, everything a liberal or progressive suggests is supposedly a vortex to totalitarian hell. Those exaggerations are the trapdoors that solutions-focused debate, and argumentation are erroneously set upon today.
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No, I am not suggesting socialism, but We The People solutionism. If we want to end mass social strife, we cannot simply punish people for being poor, sick, unable to find housing, out of work, as well as getting in financial trouble due to economic models that scam Americans, and undermine our future. These badly thought out, managed, or policed economic models include very low to zero-interest rates for decades (housing bubble), low capital reserves for banks (2008 crash), high credit card interest rates, payday loans, and for-profit (online) schools. Must people take personal responsibility? Sure. If that is what they actually mean. But shouldn’t all Americans also have equal rights, and not get caught between a rock and a hard place more often than not for reasons beyond the control and capacity of their personal responsibility? .
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Calls for personal responsibility are voiced much more than half the time without considering the consistent societal degradation we could correct. Corrections that would not create the infamous, and mostly erroneous dependency outcome many social responsibility avoiders deploy as a racist and classist cudgel. Most conservatives employ the term personal responsibility not as a legitimate critique, but as an epithet to denigrate many Americans, meant to distract many (White) Americans from problem solving.
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Social engineering is disparaged by conservatives to ghost our previous socially engineered horrors and hinderances. Those include skin-color, gender, and economic caste policies and precedents of the distant and near past. Casteengineering has been our problem not the engineering of equal rights and social equity. Congruent, consistent, and compassionate rights and equity are the more perfect union elements we failed to begin this democratic experiment with, yet early on many such elements were contradictorily self-evident to the enlightened.
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The French philosophes, and our founders did not get it all done. Their prejudices, ignorance or ill-conceived policies, and badly managed outcomes held them back, or sent them plunging forward into horrible atrocities. We must find a better way to navigate our future.
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Yet first we must sever our ideological and teleological umbilical cord to incremental change. That severing is especially important in achieving equal rights for all, and developing economic equity to the point where individual health, and accomplishments are not undermined by getting, via chance, the short-end of the economic stick. We should have donebetter, faster on both counts; but now we can do a lot better, much less begrudgingly, and much less slowly.
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