A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright
I have been reading this book. Its is amazing. I will definitely be rereading this one many times over.
Ovid in 60 B.C.:
earth...had better things to offer -- crops without cultivation,
fruit on the bough, honey in the hollow oak.
no one tore the ground with ploughshares
or parcelled out the land
or swept the sea with dipping oars --
the shore was the world's end.
clever human nature, victim of your inventions,
disastrously creative,
why cordon cities with towered walls?
why arm for war?
Ronald Wright:
Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up...In civilizations, population always grows until it hits the bounds of the food supply, and all civilizations become hierarchical -- the upward concentration of wealth ensures that there can never be enough to go around...Human inability to foresee or watch out for long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the evolutionary social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake:
One of her characters asks, "As a species we're doomed by hope, then?" By hope? Well, yes. Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.
Dave Pollard:
That takes us to the present day, where the "concentration of power at the top" continues to hoard resources, steal from everyone else, ruthlessly suppress opposition, and prospers as the environment and the general populace suffer. And we, strange creatures of our disconnected and self-made culture, cling desperately to the hope and false assurances that we will be saved by our gods, or our ingenuity, that what we are doing to our world is beyond our control, is not our fault, not our responsibility, and is not so bad in the global scheme of things anyway.
The idea that the human race has, under the harsh rules of Darwin, bred compassion out of the gene pool in favour of more 'successful' savagery, and that it is this ruthless and relentless violence, rather than our 'superior' intelligence, that has led to our staggering numbers, is not new. But it casts the lessons of our history in a different, and darker, light. It is serious enough trying to deal with one fatal character flaw -- our propensity to hope things will get better without the need for radical change or the learning of lessons from history. Add a second fatal character flaw -- a preference for murder and genocide over more peaceful and compassionate solutions -- and the outlook gets much bleaker. Perhaps this explains the finding that the best informed people in modern society tend to be the least optimistic. Fortunately, they also tend to be the most determined to make things better. Power struggle, anyone?
None of this was from my mouth. These are all quotes I found, because, other people always say it better.
Ovid in 60 B.C.:
earth...had better things to offer -- crops without cultivation,
fruit on the bough, honey in the hollow oak.
no one tore the ground with ploughshares
or parcelled out the land
or swept the sea with dipping oars --
the shore was the world's end.
clever human nature, victim of your inventions,
disastrously creative,
why cordon cities with towered walls?
why arm for war?
Ronald Wright:
Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up...In civilizations, population always grows until it hits the bounds of the food supply, and all civilizations become hierarchical -- the upward concentration of wealth ensures that there can never be enough to go around...Human inability to foresee or watch out for long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the evolutionary social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake:
One of her characters asks, "As a species we're doomed by hope, then?" By hope? Well, yes. Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.
Dave Pollard:
That takes us to the present day, where the "concentration of power at the top" continues to hoard resources, steal from everyone else, ruthlessly suppress opposition, and prospers as the environment and the general populace suffer. And we, strange creatures of our disconnected and self-made culture, cling desperately to the hope and false assurances that we will be saved by our gods, or our ingenuity, that what we are doing to our world is beyond our control, is not our fault, not our responsibility, and is not so bad in the global scheme of things anyway.
The idea that the human race has, under the harsh rules of Darwin, bred compassion out of the gene pool in favour of more 'successful' savagery, and that it is this ruthless and relentless violence, rather than our 'superior' intelligence, that has led to our staggering numbers, is not new. But it casts the lessons of our history in a different, and darker, light. It is serious enough trying to deal with one fatal character flaw -- our propensity to hope things will get better without the need for radical change or the learning of lessons from history. Add a second fatal character flaw -- a preference for murder and genocide over more peaceful and compassionate solutions -- and the outlook gets much bleaker. Perhaps this explains the finding that the best informed people in modern society tend to be the least optimistic. Fortunately, they also tend to be the most determined to make things better. Power struggle, anyone?
None of this was from my mouth. These are all quotes I found, because, other people always say it better.
posted by InvisibleMonsters at 9:07 PM
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