Discuss: High on Progress

Derrick

I agree with you here ” Most people today have not awakened from the Cult of Progress. Even with the world being dismembered before their eyes, nearly all public figures continue to be members of this cult. “

I disagree with the broad stroke of use of word “progress” in next sentence “The same is true for many nonpublic figures—for most of us—as we seem unquestioningly to presume that tomorrow’s progress will bring more good things to life, and will simultaneously solve the problems created by yesterday’s and today’s progress (without then creating yet more problems, as “progress” always seems to do).  “

We are entering the Golden Age.  All these horrible crimes are unsustainable and we will survive it without returning to dark ages.  But we have
to change our thinking, our values, and in my opinion that would be progress, as we are wiser than in past and humanity, all of us, will have
learned lessons from the disaster of industrialized values.

How I say it, is that we have made a huge mistake in looking for happiness outside ourselves in terms of
material comfort.  This bankrupts us spiritually and destroys eco system.  In
Declaration of Independence Jefferson wrote

“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive in rights inherent and unalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness; . .

But happiness was not defined.  With separation of church and state it could not be defined.  That was the loophole, to allow a material
pursuit of happiness. 

So USA and industrial humankind need a more refined definition.  The preservation of life must be our happiness.  They are not separate
items.

Ray Songtree
http://www.kauaitruth.com

Wow.  I’m not disagreeing with everything said here…I too see the the costs of what we call progress. We cost not only the victims but also ourselves in our addition to progress (a well-turned phrase, I might add).  But this article makes me want to shoot myself to rid the planet of the costs I’m bringing by even typing this message on a computer.  Maybe it’s just too early in the morning for me to have such a purely bleak thesis; or maybe I still have hope that as a species we might redeem ourselves AND that not every single change in the world has been caused by our hands.  I’m usually on the same bandwagon as the author, but this was even too much for me to take.  Let me off to take a breath.

Obviously…I typed too quickly and meant addiction to progress, not addition…

Gina,

I hope you had some time to take a breath. I really hear you. After reading a lot of Derrick’s work, I’d find myself fixing something, then looking at the screwdriver, saying “ohcrapohcrap” in my head and imagining all that went into the mining, manufacture, design, marketing, distribution, and so on of that thing.

You are not your computer. You are not any of the things around you, the material objects, the social structures, the mental worldviews.

Yes, you are entwined in them, you probably grew up in them, but you do not need to identify with them. You do not need to blame yourself for them. You also do not need to swear off using them for fear of further damaging the world.

Part of this addiction to progress, and this identification with it, is that it makes us feel huge, makes us feel like we have a huge effect on the world. If I use this computer, if I drive this car, if I pay my mortgage on this house, if I do all the things that my life seems to be composed of, I am part of the system that is ruining the world, I am in fact a big part of it.

This is true, and it isn’t, at the same time. Massed together, yes our personal actions, whether as consumers, coordinators, resource extractors, financiers, distributors, whatever other part we may play, we are doing all this. But removed from all that, we humans are rather small on our own terms. We walk at a certain pace, we need a bit of food and water each day to keep going, we can only yell so loud or step on so many bugs before we get tired. This crack that we’re collectively smoking, call it science, call it what you like, acts more like PCP, numbing us to the damage we cause and urging us to destroy ever more of the world around us, and ultimately ourselves. If we stop smoking the crack personally, the systems we’re entwined in still appear to us, and still are, extremely destructive. However, we can regain a healthier sense of our own personal power, and we can learn not to equate ourselves with that system, to separate our identities from that system.

Your typing a message on your computer to convey your thoughts to whoever’s reading this page might seem like it’s caught up in this same system. But shooting yourself is only the logical endpoint if you consider yourself inextricably bound and identified with the system. Ask yourself if this is indeed true. Ask yourself if this is the only way for humans to live, which means it’s the only way that you or anyone else you know or any other cultures you know could possibly live.

Even if you consider what it would take for you, or you and the people you care about, or you and your whole community, to sustain yourselves totally without support from the system, and decide that’s not for you, that doesn’t mean you’re a horrible person. It doesn’t mean the only thing for you to do is shoot yourself. It means that you have realized how destructive this system is, and can decide for yourself how you can best serve life, given your talents and motivations and particular experiences. Just because you use a computer, or drive a car, or whatever, doesn’t mean that you support the system that produces and encourages the use of computers, or cars, or whatever.

Here’s a way of thinking about that Richard Dawkins quote on science’s claim to truth that I’ve found helpful. Control and truth are not the same thing. So people can invent GPS systems. Does that mean we’re ridiculously amazing and whatever we do is justified? Not really. It means that the world is powerful and magical enough to allow GPS systems to be created. Just as it’s powerful and magical enough to allow Polynesian navigators to sail thousands of miles across open ocean by memorizing stars and reading wave patterns and dead reckoning (remembering where they’ve been). Just as it’s powerful and magical enough for so many other beings to do similarly ridiculously amazing kinds of navigation. Only those kinds of navigation don’t require the production of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic components, don’t require vastly unequal economic systems, and don’t allow a select few to manage and control those navigational systems for whatever purposes they like.

Using a computer to communicate is, in one sense, participating in this culture of control that refuses to consider the effects of its actions on others, but in another sense, it’s just people using whatever means are available to communicate something important.

Andrew

This view of the ‘progress’ of society deals with the many failings in what has been done. However, it is an anthropocentric view. It does not look at what the systems installed by society have irreversibly done to its life support system. It does not take into account that natural forces are in control of what happens. Humans can only make decisions, good and bad. They will inevitably have to come to terms with the fact that the esteemed progress is unsustainable. They will have to cope with powering down as ecological forces exert control.

Derick is correct… it is an addiction, a disease of the soul!

Ever since discovery of the appearance of Homo habilis approximately two million years ago humankind has been defined as toolmaker, technician, and tinkerer.  Whether or not a direct link to Homo sapiens can ever be definitively unearthed is a moot point.  Clearly we humans live and die by our tools.  But, while necessity may be the “mother of invention,” what manner of need could have led to the never-ending flow of new tools and technologies evidenced today?  What of this unyielding pace of technological innovation that seems to be of another, qualitatively different order? 

The Greek techne suggests “craft” or “art,” the practical discipline of making things.  Technology, then, would refer to the results or products of techne – artifacts, devices, tools, and other handicrafts – the artifices of human culture.  This sounds like an old story, about which we can be neutral.  But we are not neutral; we adore our modern technologies excessively.  Is it because they create nice, clean, artificial surfaces, insulating us from the wild and uncultivated underbelly of life, of nature, of our own embodiment? 

With America leading the way, the path charted and engineered by Western civilization has spawned a hegemony that is rapidly overtaking the globe, socially, economically, and culturally.  This unheralded ascendancy has unleashed a domination of values, which unlike political hegemonies of the past, is lightning fast, wide ranging, and spreading insidiously, artfully enabled by those very technologies to which it has given birth.

Engineering and technological sophistication now appear to constitute the religion of a new epoch.  The foundation stones of a nascent techno-theocracy, they march us, hyper-rationally, to a contrived and perhaps apocalyptic Eschaton.  Their dominion is so totalizing that they have undermined our very enjoyment of a more spontaneous life, lived naturally on Mother Earth.  After all, the “virtual reality” they promise seems less messy than the real thing.

With an implacable call for progress in our visually dominated world, it is no wonder we are so enthralled by the steady array of new toys and tools paraded before our eyes.  But why do HDTVs, TiVOs, iPhones, iPods, cell phones, Blackberries, electronic notebooks, and a myriad of other digital gadgets hold such sway, and command our rapt attention?  Some might call it convenience; others would say it’s just the fulfillment of the American Dream-the Holy Grail of our continuously advancing civilization
 
A large part of this digital delight may simply be a function of its visual appeal, the marketing hook that drives our consumerism.  Perhaps it really is all about the spectacle.  Or maybe it’s the continuous enhancement in microchip effectiveness and processing speed, betraying our “end user” mentality – to accomplish more things more quickly so we can buy more toys and move more rapidly into a brighter future.

More pointedly, perhaps, these technologies serve as valuable tools of social, economic, and cultural control.  They encourage and validate our fixation with civilization’s fundamental construct, unilinear time and its underlying implication – the necessity of historical progress.  This insures our continued dependency and our unquestioned faith in a certain path or trajectory; let us call it the curriculum of the West.
All the while, these same technologies distract attention from the inchoate, but developing sense of our own anonymity in today’s digitized, urban landscape.  They signal the arrival of a new world, the global village, where we all share common values and concerns.  But it is an erector set village, artfully crafted from our own infantile dreams of omnipotence – Western domination – now exported around the globe.  These technologies claim to “connect us.”  But, it is a hollow promise aimed at disarming a potential epidemic of cultural alienation that might otherwise expose the tinkerers on the scaffolding propping up the gloss of our blueprinted lives.
 
So our suspicions go undetected and our faith in the curriculum remains intact.  We continue on, accepting as axiomatic that the paths of technological advancement, happiness, and righteousness coincide; in fact, we take for granted that progress is a good in itself – the only legitimate means of achieving happiness and living the good life.  But why can’t we jettison this belief?  Why this insatiable need for novelty?  Why is it we have so little regard for what is primal and founding?  And, why do we attempt to light up every corner of the globe, demystify the naturally chiaroscuro quality of life, making everything one-dimensionally bright?  What is it about the curriculum of the West that is so captivating?
It may be that this race for technological innovation is nothing other than the best efforts of our civilization to ensure that we citizens keep producing and consuming, and remain focused on the future.  We are being led to the abattoir of our own planned obsolescence by a marketing wizardry that locks us firmly onto a path of never-ending progress.  Could this also explain our disproportionate emphasis on free will and unrestrained choice in America?  After all, it provides an unassailable platform from which to produce and market an inexhaustible stream of saleable products and commodities that in turn validates our freedom, again keeping us future-oriented and chasing the ever-receding horizon of our Dream. 

Who could argue with the shrewdness of such an agenda, or its efficacy in herding us into quiet submission?  I was just as susceptible, just as committed to the plan, as were my fellow citizens.  But I also sensed that this driving “will” to consume was not part of my natural constitution.  It seemed to be the result of a story we had all been told about the future, about “making something of ourselves” and “getting ahead.”

Certainly, no one could deny that America had achieved great distinction for its material advancement and its extravagant pursuit of innovation.  Nor did I wish to underestimate the value of specific advances in medical science and biotechnology.  But that did not mean all progress was necessarily good, or even necessary.

Could I let go of my MacBook or do without email?  No.  Not completely.  But, I refused to buy the iPhone, the TiVo, or the Blackberry; and I rejected a host of other gadgets and toys.  I knew that I was being ensnared in a vicious cycle of work-buy-owe, and that I was partly to blame for the entire arrangement.  I was a willing accomplice, collaborating with our clever cultural missionaries.  I had become just another spokesperson trying to sell the Dream to the rest of the world, perpetuating the illusion.
Yet, along with most of my fellow citizens, I could not just renounce all the “benefits” of this way of life without consequences.  The social covenant our ancestors had entered into long ago guaranteed that each and every one of us would come to rely on these tools as a matter of simple survival.  I recalled what Rousseau, perhaps the single most important Enlightenment figure, had written centuries before in his work, On the Social Contract:

“[Civil society] must transform each individual into a part of a larger whole … deny man his own [natural] forces in order to give him forces that are alien to him and that he cannot make use of without the help of others.”

As I now saw things, we had proceeded too far down this road for anyone to turn back.  If I, or anyone else, were to survive in civilized society – and really, one could no longer leave it because our own natural forces had long ago been replaced by civilized ones over generations of indoctrination to the curriculum – then I had little choice but to make use of the tools provided, or perish.  I was in a double bind from which I could not easily escape.  But at least I understood the game, some of the rules, and the potential consequences of playing it.  Such awareness enabled me to develop healthier positioning with respect to the curriculum and its artifices; I no longer permitted them their insidious and unchecked control over my life.

Wade Davis views on ancient culture and progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGYdsVSkgBY&feature=channel

As a gratefully recovering addict, I take exception to Derrick Jensen’s manipulation of the disease of addiction for his end instead of allowing it to make its comment on his ideas.

Addiction is a low grade spiritual quest that provides a gateway to a full spiritual life. 

Our use of our drug of choice is the way that we, addicts, avoid the present, avoid experiencing fully our emotions and feelings.

As Anne Wilson Schaef observed long ago, American society emulates all the same character traits and behaviors that we, individual addicts, have.  Thus, the paradigm of addiction helps us understand our group actions.

Unless we understand the paradigm, it will mislead us as surely as our personal disease misleads us.

It is only when speaking as an addict that I use a false name when commenting.  I do so because the wisdom of our tradition of anonymity also teaches us that it is what is said that is important and not who says it.