High on Progress

High on Progress

What will be left when we finally come down?
by Derrick Jensen

Published in the May/June 2010 issue of Orion magazine

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In a lot of cases, progress is good for some and bad for others. For the perpetrators of the Nazi Holocaust, the technological progress that made possible more efficient ways to kill large numbers of human beings was “good,” or “useful,” or “helpful.” From the perspective of the victims, not so good. For the perpetrators of the United States Holocaust, the development of railroads to move men and machines was “good” and “useful” and “helpful.” From the perspective of the Dakota, Navajo, Hopi, Modoc, Squamish, and others, not so good. From the perspective of bison, prairie dogs, timber wolves, redwoods, Douglas firs, and others, not so good.

In 1970 Lewis Mumford wrote, “The chief premise common to both technology and science is the notion that there are no desirable limits to the increase of knowledge, of material goods, of environmental control; that quantitative productivity is an end in itself, and that every means should be used to further expansion.” Mumford asked the same question that so many of us ask, which is, Why on earth would a culture do so many crazy, stupid, destructive things? His answer cuts through the typical cornucopian garbage: “The desired reward of this magic is not just abundance but absolute control.” Mumford knew—as we all do—that there was no hope in proceeding “on the terms imposed by technocratic society.” He didn’t think change would be easy, saying that it might take “an all-out fatal shock treatment, close to catastrophe, to break the hold of civilized man’s chronic psychosis.” He was not optimistic: “Even such a belated awakening would be a miracle.”

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. 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).

For those who benefit from it, progress is about improving their material lifestyle at the expense of those they enslave, steal from, or otherwise exploit. For everyone else, it is about loss.

Progress. In vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean, there is forty-eight times as much plastic as phytoplankton.

Progress. One million migratory songbirds die every day because of skyscrapers, cell-phone towers, domesticated cats, and other trappings of modern civilized life.

Progress. A half million human children die every year as a direct result of so-called debt repayment from so-called third-world countries (the colonies) to so-called first-world countries (the nations that have undergone progress).

Progress is polar bears swimming hundreds of miles to ice floes that have melted away, till finally they can swim no more. Progress is nuclear weapons, depleted uranium, and “drones” piloted from an office in Florida to kill people in Pakistan. Progress is the ability of fewer and fewer people to control more and more people, and to destroy more and more of the world. Progress is a god. Progress is God. Progress is killing the world.

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said that science’s claim to truth is based on its “spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command.” Anthropologist Leslie White stated that “the primary function of culture” is to “harness and control energy.” Quite simply, this culture is about enslaving everyone and everything its members can get their hands (or machines) on. What is another word for making someone jump through hoops? Enslavement. In this culture, progress is measured by the ability to enslave, to control, and to do so with ever-increasing efficiency. The ultimate goal is to control everyone and everything.

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Progress is hot showers (which require mining, manufacturing, and energy infrastructures). Progress is computers (which require mining, manufacturing, and energy infrastructures, and are used far more effectively by those in power than by us). Progress is the internet, which allows for instantaneous communication with distant loved ones (and which requires mining, manufacturing, and energy infrastructures, and is used far more effectively by those in power than by us). Progress is supermarkets, which require industrial food production (which in turn requires mining, manufacturing, and agricultural, chemical, and energy infrastructures, and is controlled by ever fewer giant corporations).

All other things being equal, I’d rather have a nice space heater to keep my toes toasty warm. But all other things aren’t equal, and I’d rather have a living planet.


www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5505/

Backwards Progress.

It all looks so cool. It is cool. So cool it is hot. It is hot because we are burning everything we can.

Burn, baby, burn. Control, baby, control.

Imagine what 'they' would do if they could control, say, the moon.

Beyond Prosecution too.

Gawd, it is hard to take, and is why this great thread will sink.

The rest of mankind, huddled in the few remaining natural corners of the world, call us termites.

Nature is going to force us to make a choice. It will be less painful if we start thinking about it and working towards it now. It is hard to take.

a global media outlet to run with it for a news cycle or two.

I enjoy your thoughtful posts. I hope this kind of thinking gets picked up more and more. Or at least thought about.

I'm sick of this "we must be back to living like peasants to save the planet" garbage.

This planet can't support the number of people it has. The only way it can even begin to is if the have mores (and that includes you and me) decrease our lifestyle to allow an evenness to occur.

BTW, Save the Planet is a misrepresentation. A better one would be Save the Humans. Really, the planet would be better off without us and unless we begin to interact with the planet appropriately, we will be one of the species that goes in the current mass extinction. The planet will continue on just fine, changed yes, but hardly destroyed.

High speed rail. High-density development instead of suburban sprawl. Super-efficient nanotech-based manufacturing instead of mass-production. A rejection of consumerist wastefulness. Discouraging having more than 1 kid. An attitude that we are part of nature and not "above" it.

This is not just a "wish list", it is already starting to happen.