I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this ever since I read Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History”, wherein he brings up “techno-pessimism” as something that exploded during the 20th century on account of both world wars. You could probably trace it back to Romanticism, but I haven’t gotten that deep into the rabbit hole.
What captured my attention about anti-progess is how pervasive this meme is. Subjectively, it appears to span countries, cultures, political ideologies, and age brackets. I know people who flinch away progress because it destroys family traditions. I know people who flinch away from it because all it does is produce pollution, surveillance, drones, etc. The older people in my life complain about the speed of change and the destruction of values. The younger seem to focus mostly on the destruction of the environment.
I think the part the worries me specifically is that this feels like such a utopian view. That if we only “went back” to an earlier stage, all would be good. Or if we somehow got to keep our ipads, but switched to hunting wild game instead of eating processed meat. But all of these seem to ignore how complex and deeply rooted progress is and how reverting a few larger pieces may involve the premature ending of hundreds of millions of human lives.
I’ll follow rootsofprogress as I’m curious about the broader pro-progress landscape.
That’s very interesting, I didn’t know that this was covered in Fukuyama or that he also identified the world wars as a turning point. Will have to bump that up in my reading list, thank you.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this ever since I read Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History”, wherein he brings up “techno-pessimism” as something that exploded during the 20th century on account of both world wars. You could probably trace it back to Romanticism, but I haven’t gotten that deep into the rabbit hole.
What captured my attention about anti-progess is how pervasive this meme is. Subjectively, it appears to span countries, cultures, political ideologies, and age brackets. I know people who flinch away progress because it destroys family traditions. I know people who flinch away from it because all it does is produce pollution, surveillance, drones, etc. The older people in my life complain about the speed of change and the destruction of values. The younger seem to focus mostly on the destruction of the environment.
I think the part the worries me specifically is that this feels like such a utopian view. That if we only “went back” to an earlier stage, all would be good. Or if we somehow got to keep our ipads, but switched to hunting wild game instead of eating processed meat. But all of these seem to ignore how complex and deeply rooted progress is and how reverting a few larger pieces may involve the premature ending of hundreds of millions of human lives.
I’ll follow rootsofprogress as I’m curious about the broader pro-progress landscape.
That’s very interesting, I didn’t know that this was covered in Fukuyama or that he also identified the world wars as a turning point. Will have to bump that up in my reading list, thank you.