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“Our practical faith in progress has ramified and hardened into an ideology -- a secular religion which, like the religions that progress has challenged, is blind to certain flaws in its credentials. Progress, therefore, has become 'myth' in the anthropological sense. By this I do not mean a belief that is flimsy or untrue. Successful myths are powerful and often partly true. […] The myth of progress has sometimes served us well -- those of us seated at the best tables, anyway -- and may continue to do so. […] Progress has an internal logic that can lead beyond reason to catastrophe. (4-5)”
― A Short History of Progress
― A Short History of Progress
“Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.”
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“If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature.”
― A Short History of Progress
― A Short History of Progress
“the most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is in no one's interest. It is a suicide machine.”
― A Short History of Progress
― A Short History of Progress
“Though we became experimental creatures of our own devising, it’s important to bear in mind that we had no inkling of this process, let alone its consequences, until only the last six or seven of our 100,000 generations. We have done it all sleepwalking. Nature let a few apes into the lab of evolution, switched on the lights, and left us there to mess about with an ever-growing supply of ingredients and processes.
The effect on us and the world has accumulated ever since. Let’s list a few steps between the earliest times and this: sharp stones, animal skins, useful bits of bone and wood, wild fire, tame fire, seeds for eating, seeds for planting, houses, villages, pottery, cities, metals, wheels, explosives.
What strikes one most forcefully is the acceleration, the runaway progression of change - or to put it another way, the collapsing of time. From the first chipped stone to the first smelted iron took nearly 3 million years; from the first iron to the hydrogen bomb took only 3,000.”
― A Short History of Progress
The effect on us and the world has accumulated ever since. Let’s list a few steps between the earliest times and this: sharp stones, animal skins, useful bits of bone and wood, wild fire, tame fire, seeds for eating, seeds for planting, houses, villages, pottery, cities, metals, wheels, explosives.
What strikes one most forcefully is the acceleration, the runaway progression of change - or to put it another way, the collapsing of time. From the first chipped stone to the first smelted iron took nearly 3 million years; from the first iron to the hydrogen bomb took only 3,000.”
― A Short History of Progress
Lynne’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lynne’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
30 books
|
8 friends
35 books
|
7 friends
16 books
|
57 friends
11 books
|
28 friends
0 books
|
518 friends
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