Although well-written, I was glad it was not a long history of progress. This, the 43rd in his series of Massey Lectures, is truly a short history at 130 pages, an additional 50 pages of end notes, and 10 of bibliography. Interestingly enough, the book begins with an examination of Gauguin’s painting, ’Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’ These are...
more Although well-written, I was glad it was not a long history of progress. This, the 43rd in his series of Massey Lectures, is truly a short history at 130 pages, an additional 50 pages of end notes, and 10 of bibliography. Interestingly enough, the book begins with an examination of Gauguin’s painting, ’Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’ These are questions pundits, philosophers, worried parents, and millions of drunken college students around campfires late at night have considered through the ages. Surely, each of us have asked this at least once watching the evening news, passing the 100th beggar that day, or choking on smog. The book asks us to do what we have been advised to do for centuries – try to learn from the past so as not to repeat the same mistakes and ensure a better future. Personally, I despair daily that no one has taken this advice to heart yet. The ancient ruins that dot every corner of our world are ’shipwrecks that mark the shoals of progress,’ and the patterns of decline are alarmingly similar. While Wright touches on different perceived measures of progress; technological, material, moral, he only skims the surface. Perhaps he could have asked what election pollsters ask us every year; ’Are you better off now than you were this time last year?’ Do you have a roof, enough food, clean drinking water, peace, and the ability to send your kids to college? However, the book does not examine how we may better reach these benchmarks or others. Instead, it focuses on ’the runaway progression of change’ and the ’collapsing of time,’ and the fact that the world we enter at birth is vastly different than the one we leave. According to Wright, all big changes since humans left caves have been cultural, not physical. We are ’running 21st century software on hardware last upgraded 50000 years ago.’ ’Most people, throughout most of time, have lived on the edge of hunger – and much of the world still does.’ Annually, both the US and the EU each spend over 1 billion dollars paying farmers not to grow crops, and an additional billion each to buy up ’surplus’ crops in order to keep prices artificially high. And now, multinational companies are copyrighting staple crops. As G.K. Chesterton observed, ’Man is an exception, whatever else he is…If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.’’Progress’ has not been made in distribution, infrastructure, transport, or most importantly, political will. Regardless of the ’progress’ of irrigation, hybrid crops and other technological ’fixes,’ humans still cannot feed themselves and continue to fall into ’progress traps.’ For example, when the ancients in the Fertile Crescent discovered irrigation, they fell into the trap of salination and later, centuries of barren lands. We are ’doomed by the hope of the technlogical fix.’ If we want to reduce our environmental impact and not go the way of the empires of Sumer, Rome, and the Mayas, we must reform society. Until then, we are like lemmings – we know jumping over a cliff is bad for our health, but we do it anyway. It does not have to be a situation where we climb the ladder of change while kicking out the rungs below. Unlike the grim Wright, I believe we CAN say no to GMOs and nuclear power, and we CAN go back an re-embrace renewable energy sources, reusable bottles, and organic farming.For truly life-changing reads on progress, I would recommend Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, and The Story of B, Henry David Thoreau’s On Walden Pond, and maybe Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
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