Doctor Who and the Crisis of the Progressive Left - Part 1
What the Universe’s favourite Time Lord can teach us about the malaise afflicting the progressive left and its remedies
Note: American readers can substitute the word ‘liberal’ for the word ‘progressive’ in this piece, as the way these terms are used in our respective cultures (American and Australian) are largely synonymous. If American readers can detect any differences in how liberalism plays out in their cultural context compared with what is described here, I would welcome their observations in the comments section.
Confession time: I am a Doctor Who ‘tragic’. Although both the show and I have been through many changes over the years, there has always been something about it that has inspired passionate affection and loyalty in me. I have sometimes wondered why this is: perhaps it is the Doctor’s blend of independence, eccentricity and unshakeable goodness, and the way he always is willing to stand up and fight for the oppressed, but the English way, with intelligence and skill rather than brute force (he almost never uses guns or other weapons). Like most fans, I suppose, my favourite incarnation of the Doctor is the one who I grew up with: in my case, the charismatic, whimsical wanderer Tom Baker with his floppy hat and dangling woollen scarf. Yet there was a slightly earlier period in the show’s history that also had a particular impact on me, the tenure of Baker’s predecessor Jon Pertwee. Pertwee’s version of the Doctor was less lovable, more proud and irascible than Baker’s, yet there was something about the stories in this period, and the part that the Doctor played in them, that has always stayed with me.
In the first three seasons of Pertwee’s role, the Doctor found himself exiled to Earth by his people the Time Lords as punishment for interfering in the affairs of other races (and also ‘borrowing’ his ship the TARDIS from them). Here, he worked as an advisor to a special military taskforce named UNIT that was set up by the British government to protect the Earth against threats from alien races such as the Daleks and Cybermen. The stories from this period are very much close to home for this reason, yet in many ways they also are reflective of a view of the world that has been an important one for humanity, and it is this that I would like to explore here. This is the humanitarian, humanistic worldview that may be called progressivism, social democracy or liberalism depending on where in the world you live; and at this juncture in humanity’s unfolding biography I think it one that is important to reflect on, both for its great gifts and its significant flaws that have equally impacted our culture.
I would like to explore this worldview (or one version of it) by examining a few key stories from the Pertwee era, as I find that stories can often bring into living expression a way of seeing the world in the way that a strictly theoretical text would not. The first story, Doctor Who and the Silurians, concerns a reptilian race who once were masters of the Earth, and who accidentally placed themselves into hibernation for millions of years, before being inadvertently woken up by an underground scientific operation in the south of England. The Doctor tries to convince the Silurians and humans to find a way to share the Earth and live peacefully together, but in the end, prejudice and militarism on both sides wins out, and after the Doctor has foiled the Silurians’ plans to wipe out the humans with a deadly virus (a rather contemporary theme?) the military secretly blows up the entrance to the caves where the Silurians are living – to the Doctor’s disgust – trapping them underground.
Doctor Who and the Silurians represented a new level of maturity for the show, and was perhaps one of its most sombre and profound depictions of humanity’s ongoing struggle with xenophobia, tribalism and fear of the Other. The Silurians ruled the Earth at a time when humans were a primitive primate species, and still assume that they are an inferior, dirty race. When the Doctor is captured by the Silurians, he manages to persuade their thoughtful leader to give his proposal of peaceful coexistence a chance, but the leader is soon assassinated by his warlike second-in-command. Meanwhile, the leadership of humanity is shown in a scarcely better light: the government minister who takes charge of the crisis is portrayed as both xenophobic and a cowardly, self-serving egotist who will readily sacrifice both the aliens and his soldiers to protect his political career.
In this story, and several other stories of the Pertwee era, we are invited to recognise how xenophobia, racism and nationalism are born out of both ignorance of the other and a failure to recognise our shared oneness and sacredness as living beings, what Buddhist teacher Thich Nat Hanh calls Interbeing and the Lakota call All My Relatives). This was no purely academic matter in the Europe of the 1970s: the shadow of two terrible world wars still hung over the continent, both driven by militarism and nationalist imperialism, while the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union threatened the very survival of our planet. Philosopher and mystic Rudolf Steiner wrote that one of the most important challenges for humanity in the 20th Century and beyond was to overcome xenophobia and nationalism, and that our future was in peril if we did not, a view that I think remains critical to this day.
This quality of valuing the sanctity and dignity of all humanity is one of the signature characteristics of progressivism, and one of its noblest qualities. It can be found in the principles of democracy and citizenship that developed in ancient Greece and Rome respectively, with their emphasis on the rights of citizens to equal participation in society and equal treatment before the law respectively (at the time, these rights were restricted to men and members of the dominant culture). It can also be seen in the movements of the last 200 years to extend those rights to women and to all cultures, including the suffragette and anti-slavery movements. When this spirit of reverence and respect is extended beyond humans to all of life, it has given rise to environmentalism and all the diverse movements to protect the wild places of the world. This spirit can also be found in the struggles of the trade union movement for fair pay and conditions for workers, and the movement to ensure access to education and health care is available to all regardless of economic status. This spirit shines through in the words and deeds of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, of Mary Wollstonecraft, Frederick Douglass and Crazy Horse, and of Rachel Carson, Erin Brockovich and Bob Brown.
Another significant feature of progressivism is the impulse towards rationality and reason, and the struggle to overcome ignorance and irrationality. This can also be seen on many occasions during the tenure of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, and often takes the form of him arguing with those who express traditional, magic-based belief systems, such as the High Priest Hepesh in The Curse of Peladon, or the white witch Miss Hawthorne in the Daemons. Being a scientist (unless one is working for evil or misguided ends) is often seen in the show as an indication of nobility, of a person who is both educated and committed to uncovering the truth regardless of personal sentiment or interest. In ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’, the Doctor seeks to win the confidence of a wavering scientist’s assistant who is party to a plot involving the Silurians with the line: ‘I am a man of science. You must trust me and tell me everything you know.’ Here we see the scientist as, not merely a person of superior intelligence, but a paragon of noble, upstanding character, rather like how a priest would have been viewed in earlier times.
Many people reading this would already be feeling uncomfortable about this kind of mindset; however it is worth remembering that the ability to understand and to apply thinking, observation and inference to help make sense of life are gifts that have been granted to humankind, and an important part of enabling us to acquire consciousness of both the world and ourselves. And an important part of our development is to rise above emotion-based thinking that is shaped by sympathy and antipathy, or as Buddhists would say, craving and aversion. If I am to become truly conscious, I need to see beyond what I might like to see so that I can see what is: only then can I know the truth that will set me free. YouTube podcast host Dr John Campbell, who positively exudes this kind of integrity, describes his credo as follows: ‘follow the science wherever it leads’. There have been many instances of false and harmful beliefs born of ignorance and prejudice that we can thank progressives for rooting out, all the way from witch burnings and female genital mutilation to gender-based discrimination in the workforce.
The third significant feature of progressivism that I would like to highlight here is a belief in progress, the capacity of humanity to create better ways of living that reduce suffering and improve our quality of life. This perspective sees the journey of humanity as a steady progression from ignorance and superstition toward a future where we reach our full potential and can live as more or less enlightened beings, in the process eliminating suffering, misery and want and creating a life of plenitude, balance and contentment, even perhaps perfection. New ideas, methods and tools (technologies) are generally viewed as being positive and likely to improve our lot; even though we may be aware that mistakes are possible, the arc of progress is nevertheless seen as trending steadily upwards.
This way of thinking can be also be seen in the third Doctor’s era, particularly in the technological sophistication of the Doctor’s equipment, and of the many alien races, and is generally a feature of both Doctor Who and the science fiction genre as a whole. It is most pronounced and naïve in the era of the first Doctor, whereas by the time of the third Doctor the picture is more nuanced, and there are stories such as the environmentally themed ‘The Green Death’ where technologically sophisticated people are the villains, whilst the good guys are those who are choosing a simpler life in community. Similarly, stories such as ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ depict how society’s leaders can often become corrupt and self-serving, oppressing the ordinary person for power, wealth and prestige. Nevertheless, the development of knowledge during the era of the Third Doctor is generally seen as leading towards the betterment of humanity’s condition, and this betterment is generally seen in material terms (with one exception which I will mention a little later).
So far, I have painted a very rosy picture of progressivism, and to a large extent, this was the belief system within which I was raised. As I hope the foregoing discussion has shown, I believe that the humanitarian impulse contained within progressivism is both a noble one and vital for the future of humanity and our planet. But there are some problems with this worldview, and they are significant ones. Firstly, as you may have noticed by now, progressivism tends to be one-sided. Recall from my earlier writing that virtue is found in balance, the middle path extolled by Buddhists, Taoists and modern versions of the western esoteric tradition such as the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Progressivism tends to overvalue the intellect, reason, and what is abstract and universal, and undervalue the heart, the feeling life and what is local, concrete and particular. Because of this, progressives tend to be vulnerable to ungrounded idealism, and also to the lure of technocracy, the society that can supposedly be perfectly ordered and managed by the educated elites. The progressives’ elites are not motivated by self-interest as those of the feudal order were, but their rule is equally problematic and contrary to the needs of humanity in this time.
This one-sidedness can be seen as having two distinct elements to it. The first is a naïve, ungrounded attitude towards our current stage of human evolution. Where conservatives tend to be unduly pessimistic about humanity, seeing only our flaws that need correcting through the control and punishment of an authority figure, progressives often deny those flaws altogether, and believe that the removal of governmental (or parental) oppression, rules and boundaries will free humanity from bondage and return us to a natural state of perfection and goodness (French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the originators of this type of thinking). Many progressives further argue that society must actively undermine and seek to dissolve all structures that work to inhibit this natural goodness, whether these be the church, the family, the nation state, the culture or those philosophies that underpin these.
While it is true that these and other social institutions can have a stultifying effect on humanity, they also can have numerous beneficial impacts which can be understood by actually looking at humans as we are rather than as we might want to be. For example, they can provide us with a sense of belonging, grounding and connection, along with a shared sense of purpose with those around us. Without these anchors, we tend to be lost and insecure; we need a sense of unique, place-based identity, even as we need to be able to experience ourselves at the same time as more than that identity. This dual consciousness can be helpfully conceptualised through studying the life of a plant. We can observe how its roots burrow into the earth, contracting into density, holding on and locating it in one place, from which it receives the mineral nutrients that will give it structure and form. From here, it grows upward, expanding outward in openness to the life-giving rays of the sun. It doesn’t close itself off, but is open to life, connection and interbeing. Through this picture, we can see how living things need both grounding in place and openness to life and connection if they are to thrive.
Rudolf Steiner’s picture of human evolution can help us to understand why the utopian thinking I described earlier does not meet our current needs. He taught that we are currently moving through a period of evolution he described as the age of the ‘consciousness soul’. This stage is one in which we are learning to develop a conscious awareness of our connectedness with all living things, out of which can arise true empathy and a reverent sensibility for life. Here, progressivism (and the Doctor) is on the right track: we need to move beyond all forms of blood-based tribalism, xenophobia and ‘us and them’ consciousness. As Christ, Buddha and the other great spiritual teachers showed us, we are called to love our neighbour as ourselves, regardless of whether that neighbour be Jewish, Greek, African or Indian, and indeed whether they be human, animal, plant or even stone. But according to Steiner, this stage of consciousness is still in its infancy, and forms of social organisation based on dissolving all particularity and tribal identity are not suitable for us now, because we’re just not ready to live like this. Communism, in particular, Steiner saw as reflecting a way of living that will not be suitable for humanity until far in the future.
The second element of this one-sidedness is another major problem within progressivism that we can recognise in the Doctor’s lofty pronouncements on science and religion: many progressives tend to be strongly materialistic, rejecting the spiritual and sacred and believing only in what can be learned from matter, and generally dead matter at that. Steiner describes materialistic thinking as losing itself in abstraction, and indeed this is one of its chief qualities. As pioneering philosopher and scientist Dr Iain McGilchrist has observed, abstract thinking is typical of the left hemisphere of the brain, which is wired to view life as a simulacrum rather than reality. Its view is also profoundly self-centred, instrumentalist (focused on ‘what can I get’ from the world around me) and disconnected from any sense of empathy or reverence for other living creatures.
Left-brained thinking thus has the effect of taking us away from both connection with others and depth of experience, ultimately disconnecting us from reality and leaving us in what McGilchrist terms a ‘hall of mirrors’. Arguably, the logical conclusion of this kind of splintered, disconnected thinking can be found in the philosophy of post-modernism, which rejects any possibility of discovering shared truths or seeing reality as it truly is. Ironically, the end result of such a view is the antithesis of the progressive credo: a self-centred, hedonistic approach to living that rejects morality, civic responsibility and any form of higher purpose to life (‘Nothing matters so do what you want’, ‘Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ or, in the words of the recent pop hit ‘Bad Touch’ by the Bloodhound Gang: ‘You and me baby, we ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery channel’).
In the midst of a secular world increasingly devoid of beauty and connection, many people nowadays feel a hunger to rediscover a spiritual meaning in life, what Australian academic Dr David Tacey describes as ‘re-enchantment’. Even as the mainstream religious institutions have been declining in popularity in the West over the past 100 years, there has been a growing interest in an embodied, directly experienced spirituality, and this has seen the proliferation of numerous spiritual groups, methods and practitioners, from Zen Buddhism to Native American spirituality, from Taoism to Tarot, from Astrology to past-life healing, and so on. According to Steiner, this reflects the re-emergence of spiritual awareness in since the end of the 19th Century, an awareness that was largely dimmed for several thousand years prior to that except among trained initiates. This period of ‘exile’ from spiritual consciousness was necessary for humanity to develop a sense of self-consciousness and an ability to think, but now it is time to rediscover our spiritual nature, to remember who we truly are – but this time in full consciousness.
Thus continuing going deeper into materialistic thinking is going against the evolutionary needs of our time, and as a result will produce destructive effects. We can see these already in many of the malaises of our time: internally, in the rise of various forms of mental illness and personality disorders, and externally in the destructive impacts of practices that are born out of human cleverness disconnected from reverence for life. These include genetic modification of plants, adoption of electronic technologies without fully understanding their impact on health, the headlong rush into artificial intelligence, medicine that seeks to manipulate the body rather than nurture it; agriculture that seeks to control and exploit the Earth rather than help it to thrive so it will feed us – and viruses created in laboratories for military purposes that are far more dangerous than those found in nature.
As I have described it here, we can understand the problems with progressivism as being rooted in two distinct errors: a one-sided, ungrounded utopianism and an Earthbound materialism. In the second part of this article, I will explore what the remedies for these errors might look like, both for our good friend the Doctor and for all those who follow in his footsteps.
References:
Doctor Who and the Silurians, by Malcolm Hulke, first broadcast in 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_and_the_Silurians
Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon by Brian Hayles, first broadcast in 1972:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Peladon
Doctor Who and the Daemons by Barry Letts, first broadcast in 1971
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_D%C3%A6mons
Doctor Who and the Green Death by Robert Sloman and Barry Letts, first broadcast in 1973: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Death
Website of the American Anthroposophical Society (‘anthroposophy’ refers to the teachings of Rudolf Steiner): https://www.rudolfsteiner.org/
Dr Iain McGilchrist’s website: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/
Dr David Tacey’s Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Tacey
Dr John Campbell’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Campbellteaching