The Myth of Progress
The idea of progress is so ingrained in us high achievers and committed activists that you may be surprised by the word myth. Or perhaps you just ignored it. So many of us are motivated to do our best as leaders and good people because we assume that human societies and our species are on an upward evolutionary path, always improving. What would motivate our long hours of dedicated work and our deep longing to create positive change if it isn’t true, as Martin Luther King said, quoting others before him: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”2
Yet the idea of progress is a very recent addition to human thought, appearing in the seventeenth century, reaching full bloom in the nineteenth century, and then severely challenged by the twentieth century’s wars that killed more than 100 million people. Progress as a concept or direction does not appear in other cultures, or even in Western thought, until 300 years ago.
It gained ground in the West because of the advent of spectacular machines and great advances in science. It was also supported by Christianity’s orientation to an end to time, and a misperception of the theory of evolution that confused evolution with progress.3 But every other culture has the perspective of cycles throughout time and history: There are good times then bad times. There was a Golden Age and now there is the Dark Age. Humans cannot alter the seasons—or rush past them with optimistic thinking and hard work.
In spite of its anomalous appearance in human history, progress is the water in which we activist, dedicated fish are swimming ever more frantically, gasping for hopeful air. We want to contribute and the nature of that contribution is toward creating a better life, a better world for our children and perhaps even for seven generations, as indigenous people have taught us. Our work is meaningful because it contributes to this arc of history. We depend on being future focused and take pride in this orientation, rightly critical of those who ignore the future—“future eaters,” as scientist and historian Tim Flannery named them.4
The deceit we are engaged in is that we think we are special, that we can transcend history, alter the seasons, and ignore the arrow of time.
Surrounded by technology that dazzles us with its capabilities and tech optimists who confidently promise more and more wonders, we have come to believe that even if other civilizations failed, ours will not. It cannot because we are so talented and creative and concerned. Look at all these amazing technologies that will soon solve all our problems. Artificial Intelligence (AI); privately funded space travel; artificial foods; farmed fish; pills to make us smart, prevent aging, and prolong sex; medical breakthroughs to grow human organs in animals; neuroscience to fix every problematic behavior—how could anyone deny we’re making progress? Some tech leaders are even promising us the prospect of colonizing Mars and beyond. No matter what happens on Earth, we get a second chance. (Well, only a few of us do.)
This belief in technology to fix the messes we’ve made and to save us from decline has been labeled by Ronald Wright, “The Progress Trap.” It appears in every civilization and is a major accelerator of their demise.5
The very innovations that gave capacity end up destroying the civilization. People fail to notice or blindly ignore what these technologies are destroying and persist in relying on them until it’s too late.
This has been true throughout human history. Animal herds were depleted when early humans discovered they could kill thousands of animals by running them off cliffs (one prehistoric site has the remains of over 100,000 horses killed).6 We continue to pursue industrial production using fossil fuels to give us a higher standard of living, while polluting the air and water that impacts our health and the health of a rapidly heating planet. Artificial fertilizers and seeds were introduced in the Green Revolution to eliminate hunger; as a consequence, we’ve destroyed soil’s regenerative capacities, killed many species, polluted waterways, and caused hundreds of thousands of farmers to commit suicide. And now, who knows what we’re destroying with the ecstatic rush to automation, including self-driving cars, robots, AI in everything, and package delivery by drones.
Technology doesn’t save us. It promises a Utopian future, but, in the record of history, it eventually destroys with its unintended consequences. This is the true arc of history, not upward toward some halcyon future but as dissipative movement along the arrow of time. We believe we can push aside input from the environment and, with intense creativity and innovation, soar off the arrow of time. Meanwhile, the environment we’ve refused to interact with continues its relentless march to greater disorder.
But isn’t all this fabulous, amazing growth in new technologies an example of the fiery creative energy at the start of a new civilization? Aren’t we as innovators and entrepreneurs starting a new world that counteracts the forces of entropy? Aren’t we in the Golden Age, Masters of the Universe, setting a new direction toward evolutionary progress and bright futures?
No.
Lost in the seduction of technical creativity, we fail to see what else is going on. What’s happening in society to relationships, to poverty, to violence, to alienation? What’s happening to our land, our traditions, our people? Why have more than 65 million people fled their home countries and now live as refugees? What’s being done to address our enduring human needs for home, for community, for contribution, for good work, for safe children?
And what about our planet?
Wise leaders are willing to give up the delusion that technology can save us, or that we can master the Universe. We must face the reality of decline and choose actions that support people, not technology. The choice couldn’t be more clear. Or consequential.
Digital technologies, rather than inviting us into the world and encouraging us to develop new talents that enlarge our perceptions and expand our possibilities, often have the opposite effect.
They’re designed to be disinviting.
They pull us away from the world. . . .
The computer screen is intensely compelling,
not only for the conveniences it offers
but also for the many diversions it provides. . . .
Yet the screen, for all its enticements and stimulations,
is an environment of sparseness—
fast-moving, efficient, clean,
but revealing only a shadow of the world.
Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage