Tag Archives: progress

New progress

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The “classical” idea of progress is that human beings should pursue the continuous linear improvement of the human condition through advances in science, technology, and social organization. Progress, as such, is an arbitrary normative teleological judgment – we judge that the purpose of human life is to progress and that its pursuit amounts to a moral imperative.  The social and political prioritization of this pursuit, I have argued in the problems of society – part two, has culminated in “the paradox of progress,” which manifests today as our ecological crisis. The paradox is made in the fact that, through ecological disruption, human progress undermines its enabling conditions.  One could also think of this as a negative feedback cycle.

Negative feedback cycles are generally desirable in complex systems because they are self-regulating. James Lovelock and Andrew Watson’s Daisyworld provides a beautiful example of negative feedback and its homeostatic propensity. In terms of human progress, however, negative feedback ultimately means a regression in our standard of living, which, I assume, most people do not find desirable. But because the paradox of progress is beginning to become obvious in the forms of global climate change, ocean acidification, extreme weather events, hypoxic zones of oceanic proportions, unprecedented biodiversity loss, and global sea-level rise, all of which constitute serious degradations to the natural conditions upon which our economies, our standards of living, and the very habitability of the planet depend, we must quell any absolute aversion to changes in what we believe “progress” to mean.

In response to the ecological crisis of the paradox of progress, the classical version of the idea of progress is undergoing an evolution of sorts. As we approach the cusp of the paradox, norms about progress are adapting. The new take on progress is but a slight change from the classical version. “New progress” is the idea that humans should pursue the sustainable improvement of the human condition through advances in science, technology, and social organization.

The difference is between the pursuit of continuous linear improvement and sustainable improvement. The latter is a far less rapacious pursuit, and because the idea of sustainability is fundamentally concerned with enabling the continued fulfillment of our objective biological needs, a non-arbitrary purpose, new progress, while still normative and teleological, is not an arbitrary judgment, unlike classical progress.

Today we witness the development of a new idea of progress. Since the United Nation’s issuance of the Brundtland Report in 1987, human institutions the world-over have begun to adopt ideals of new over classical progress. Social norms about progress are starting to become intertwined with norms about sustainability; sustainability is, after all, a very natural evolution when faced with the prospect of regress or, in the most radical scenarios, collapse. The capacity of the sustainability movement to overcome the paradox of progress remains to be fully proven, yet an undeniable sense of optimism blooms from projects like those of the United Nations Environmental Programme, 350.org, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Clinton Foundation.

Integral to the success of the sustainability movement will be a shift in global paradigm from anthropocentricism to ecocentricism, for the human-centered worldview is at the heart of our ecological crisis. We can no longer take for granted the capacity of Earth systems to abate our overwhelming pollution as if that were their purpose, nor can we continue believing human beings to be the most important and most significant aspect of the natural world. We must cultivate a sense of love, humility, and connectedness with the Earth and Sun, for they are, in many ways, life itself, and it is in both our rational self-interest and the collective ecological interest that we appreciate and protect the life-enabling natural conditions that together we enjoy and depend upon.

To do this, each of us must learn to be content, to find happiness in the very fact of our existence – a sentiment I’ve seen expressed by Lao-tze, Chuang-tze, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Shunryu Suzuki. We should try to satisfy our deepest existential longings through simplicity, companionship, love, music, sex, creation, and reflecting on the utter connectivity of everything from microbes to the universe and the constantly astounding reality that we happen to be the kind of animals that can consciously ponder our own existence. Of course, there is some room for material luxury in this picture, and there is an undeniably compelling case to be made for the nobility of human power and accomplishment. Even if I thought it were possible, I would not encourage doing away with the pursuit of progress altogether. To temper action with wisdom and proceed with the ecosphere in mind is good enough.

JM Kincaid

The ecological absurd

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When Albert Camus faces one of the most pressing and controversial questions of philosophy, the point of living, his aversion to contradiction drives him from being indifferent to suicide. He juxtaposes human beings and the world in an effort to explain the pursuit of the meaning of life. For Camus, we confront existence and demand of it our meaning, our significance in living. But this, he says, is absurd, for despite our repeated questioning, the world answers only with indifference to our existential struggle. Endlessly we pursue an understanding of the meaning of life, yet find no ultimate answer. And upon seeing the absurdity of our condition, the Sisyphean nature of human existence, Camus concedes that some people might resign themselves to suicide. And so he creates an argument to assuage those distraught with nihilism.

The absurd condition is within the human, not out in the world, he says. And so to commit suicide (or to kill someone else) in reaction to the absurdity is to remove the absurd condition in a simultaneous affirmation and denial of its existence. With the exception of the Rebel, the simultaneous affirmation and denial of our condition is a contradiction, and avoiding contradiction is reason enough to perpetuate the absurd condition, rather than eliminate it. Further, we can find joy in being like Sisyphus through the ethic of quantity, Don Juanism, where we find happiness in life by choosing to eternally roll the boulder up the mountain. We can learn to enjoy the process of experiencing the absurdity over and over again.

In judging human beings to be something fundamentally distinct from the natural world, we create a juxtaposition similar to the one Camus uses to begin his explanation of the absurd condition. Since the European Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of modern science, we tend to be especially confident in our sense of superiority over nature. We feel that humans are over and above the rest of the ecosphere. And so we go about our business, consuming the natural world to an unprecedented extent to serve the purpose of progress.

In doing this, we deny our connection to the ecosphere by acting in such a way that undermines the life-enabling conditions of the planet. Yet we simultaneously affirm our ultimate unity with nature by demonstrating our dependence on its resources – an ecologically absurd condition. Thus we arrive at a contradiction similar to Camus’; our current behavior is a simultaneous affirmation and denial of our utter connectivity to the Earth, and we should strive to avoid contradiction. We should be sure that our pursuit of progress, of meaning, does not undermine the very environmental premises of our existence. Should progress be seen as Sisyphus’ boulder, the pursuit cannot be undertaken at the expense of the mountain. Our pursuit, by the ultimate oneness of human beings and nature, is inevitably bound up in the fate of the ecosphere. So too should be our sense of meaning in life. Is this not just cause for a revision of the classical idea of progress?

JM Kincaid

Progress, simplicity, and contentment

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Progress, “classically” understood, means improving the human condition through advances in science, technology, and social organization. But what, then, should we do if our progress prevents us from progressing? What if progress begins to undermine the very resources that enable it? The solution is to limit progress. But, if limiting progress improves our situation, then, strictly speaking, it would be progress to slow our progress. It would also be progress to improve our technological efficiency, but this merely perpetuates the notion that infinite improvements in material wealth can come from a finite pool of resources, not to mention the rebound effect of efficiency improvements on consumption explained by Jevons’ Paradox. We must remember that the Earth is finite. It replenishes itself, but we have exceeded a sustainable rate of consumption. Our progress stands to preclude our future progress, and so it must proceed within limits. In order to progress, we must limit progress.

This is only disturbing if one judges progress by continuous improvements in material luxury. I challenge we humans of the “developed” world to be content with materially simpler lives. We must reduce our consumption. Where political corruption and incompetence in the United States prevents any real governmental movement toward ecocentricism, we as consumers must simply consume less. Progress is often understood as entailing more consumption, but today we must do the opposite to progress. It would be progress to move toward primitivism, or, less radically so, simplicity. But to see it this way would require a dramatic shift in values.

JM Kincaid

On our cosmic significance

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If human beings have intrinsic value, then so too does every other form of life. To contest this point implicitly assumes that humans are radically different and fundamentally distinct from other animals. It assumes that humans are over and above the rest of the ecosphere. This idea of intrinsic human worth reflects the anthropocentric worldview perpetuated today by Western monotheism, neo-conservativism, and progressive liberal humanism. But Darwin’s evolution levels the playing field of cosmic significance. Human are no more important than any other part of the ecosphere. Either all life carries intrinsic value, or none does.

This line of thought has unsettling implications for the predominate view on human existence. Most people are uncomfortable with the prospect that it’s our very presence, our rapacious and environmentally manipulative human nature, that is the problem. The real problem, utopians say, is that our science, technology, and social organization have not progressed sufficiently yet. Most are adamantly faithful that progress will deliver us from unsustainability. Yet it is precisely this progressive worldview that engenders our ecological crisis to begin. A return to primitive living, however, as romantic or appealing as it may seem to some, would be impossible to sell to the vast majority of people. And we’re largely either unwilling or unable to radically change our habits of consumption or unprecedented standard of living. So the only palatable option is to progress our way out of the problems of progress. We prefer to have faith.

If not for techno-agriculture, the human presence could not have reached this point. Contextually, it’s important to remember that the development of modern agricultural technology has been a secular progressive project. Moreover, we must keep in mind that secular progressivism is a natural evolution of Judeo-Christian millenarianism: intrinsicity is the secularization of divinity. The faith that scientific, technological, and governmental progress can make our highly consumptive way of life sustainable is a secular belief that fulfills the same natural human longing as traditional religions. Both secular progressivism and modern theism serve to satisfy our spiritual desire for cosmic significance, espousing that human life is headed toward a glorious culmination, that we are the most important aspect of nature, and that we have a righteous prerogative to use nature toward our magnificent end. But neither worldview is rooted in the reality of our animal condition.

Curtailing the human presence would be a logical way of mitigating anthropogenic environmental degradation: if our numbers were stabilized and then progressively reduced through women’s education and birth control availability, then resource intensive lifestyles would be less of a concern because demand would likewise diminish, and pollution would dissipate more quickly given fewer inputs. But secular liberal humanism and religious fundamentalism, the predominate social paradigms, both value human life more highly than the totality of the ecosphere despite our utter connectivity to and dependence upon it, and so often they resist even considering routes that might slow our growth, our progress.

Without a moral evolution toward understanding human beings as indistinct from the rest of the ecosphere, despite our technoscientific power, it’s unlikely that people will admit in any significant volume that the human presence is itself the ultimate source of our ecological crisis. Humanity needs such an evolution, for on it rests any hope for a sustainable future.

JM Kincaid

For the next step in this thought process, continue to “Hope amidst the cynicism”

The problems of society – Part two: The paradox of progress

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The problem cluster of interest to me is environmental degradation. The problematic behavior causing environmental degradation is the repeated prioritization of progress and material improvement over environmental prudence. This behavior is prevalent in the West (Europe, Russia, the United States and Canada) much of Asia (China, Japan, India, and South Korea), Central America, and the global South. The arbitrary value judgment underlying this environmentally destructive behavior is that “progress” is good; particularly, progress defined as advances in science, technology, and social organization intended toward overcoming the limits of the human condition and improving material luxury. The pervasiveness of this paradigm is made most obvious by our dichotomizing the world in terms of developed and developing nations. The global norm seems to be to believe that the purpose of human life is to rapaciously improve our material luxury, even well beyond our biological necessities. With a continually increasing population and an unparalleled prioritization of progress and industrialization, it’s easy to see why this value judgment has yielded a litany of environmental problems. But progress, generally speaking, is not a new value. So to understand it contextually, we must trace the idea through the history of philosophy.

The modern idea of progress goes back to European Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, and so on. The influences of these philosophers’ ideas are seen in the foundations of many modern societies and institutions: Locke and Smith in the US, Kant in Germany and the UN, Marx in Russia and China, etc.

But from where did these Enlightenment thinkers inherit their value judgment? For they were not philosophizing in the state of nature. The utopian character of many Enlightenment political philosophies is a secularization of Christian millenarianism.  The Enlightenment project was one aimed at creating heaven on Earth through progressive improvements in science, technology, and social organization.

Yet again, Christian millenarian philosophers were not original in their thinking either. Indeed, Albert Camus, with his 1936 thesis Neo-platonism and Christian Thought, illustrates the common thread that runs from ancient Greek philosophy to medieval and early modern Christianity. The Enlightenment, consistent largely of philosophers educated in dogmatically Christian states, inherited their style of reasoning from Aquinas, Augustine, Plotinus and other Neo-Platonists, who, as Camus shows us and the name implies, were inspired by Plato. Particularly, Plato’s distinctions between the world, the realm of the forms, and the form of the Good. The value of life, the truth of it all, for Plato, is not here in the world, but in the heavenly forms and the form of the Good.

So now it is important to contextualize Plato’s thinking. Plato lived in Homeric Greece where, traditionally, human life was seen to be governed by chance, luck and fate, personified by the many gods. The journey of living was, like other animals, just to make the best of one’s circumstances until death. But Plato rejected this as the human condition. He thrashed against the idea of our cosmic insignificance, pining for humans to be special. So he came up with an idea that elevated our status from that of other animals: Rationality connects human consciousness to the transcendental realm of the forms and the form of the Good. By knowing the form of the Good we can take command of and improve our condition to escape the struggles of Homeric fatalism. Thus the foundation of the modern faith in progress was laid.

Plato’s famous tripartite distinction between the empirical world, the realm of the forms, and the form of the Good was easily adapted to Christian thinking. Augustine, in particular, saw Plato as describing the Earthly realm, Heaven and God, further even unto the Holy Trinity. Then, through the utopian rationalism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment these philosophical constructions were secularized by new thinkers, whose ideas were then looked to for the political foundations of much of the modern world.

Since Plato, the idea that there is some ultimate good has been steadfast. What form in particular the form of the Good takes, however, has changed. It has been reinterpreted and recast by countless scholars and social leaders. In any case, the particular form of the form of the Good is an arbitrary value judgment. It is the seed of society. Today, we judge scientific, technological, and governmental progress to be good. We believe that the resulting materially luxurious lifestyle is synonymous with human well-being. It is from this root valuation that our behavior and thus our problems emerge.

Therefore we must question the goodness of progress. Given the extent of environmental damage the world over and the fact that other problems like social equity, economic disproportionalities, and political stagnation and insolvency are so grave, it should be clear that progress as our root value is problematic. In many cases, our progress has actually exacerbated the problems it aimed to solve. As if in a disturbing screenplay, we see that consequences are looming. Yet we value progress so much that we are unable to deprioritize it. Even at the risk of rendering the Earth uninhabitable.

So progress as our root value has its issues. But we don’t want to cut down the whole tree because revolutions are messy. Besides, there’s nothing inherently wrong with people trying to improve the human condition. This pursuit is a natural human desire served historically by western monotheistic fundamentalism and currently by secular liberal humanism. The drive for progress is going nowhere. So it’s just what we think constitutes progress and the extent to which we prioritize that pursuit over other values that is problematic. It is paradoxical to prioritize progress so much so that it undermines the resources that enable our progress to begin with. Not to mention the inherent irrationality of the idea that we can achieve infinite improvements in material wealth from a finite set of resources.

So, what can be done? How can we fix the tree without completely uprooting it? My suggestion is by no means to do away with progress as a value altogether. That would be unrealistic and undesirable by any account. A return to primitive living would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to sell. And I am a beneficiary of the progress of the anteriority like any other and thus cannot wholeheartedly complain. But if the industrial pursuit of material luxury leads to extensive environmental degradation, and environmental degradation undermines progress’ enabling resources, then we must, if we want to keep progressing, either moderate our rapaciousness or make our consumption environmentally sustainable. Yet our relentless dedication to progress and industrialization, not to mention the heavy entrenchment of the fossil fuels industry in the American political system, prevents either from happening. Progress is so high a priority that it will eventually prevent us from progressing. Hence, the paradox of progress. But the effects of the paradox are not yet at their climax. There is still time to mitigate the damage that has been done and prevent further exacerbation. So, to enable our deprioritization of progress and material improvement when necessary, say, when its pursuit begins interfering with our biological, non-arbitrary needs, then our idea of what constitutes progress must be tweaked. This subtle change is as simple as remembering that human well-being is not necessarily synonymous with constant improvements in material luxury. We must learn to be content. If we cannot, then the paradox of progress will overwhelm our societies.

At its core, this redefinition of progress is a Taoist project. The virtue of contentment as acclaimed by Taoist philosophy, is antithetical to the insatiable pursuit of material improvement. Contentment cannot be attained through the pursuit and fulfillment of desire, but through relinquishing desire itself. For desire and discontent are a funny thing when they work together. They feed into one another. One desires because she or he is discontent, and is discontent because he or she so desires. But utter control of one’s circumstances cannot be seized. Discontentment cannot be quelled in this manner. It can only be overcome by tempering desire itself. Such was Plato’s struggle.

Through Socrates, Plato argues that the soul is just when desire is ruled by rationality. But if he had truly held himself to this standard, then his Republic would have considered the origin of a city, rather than the origin of a luxurious city. Plato’s rationality, and thus the justness of the Kallipolis, fundamentally gives way to the appetitive desire for material improvement when Socrates concedes to Glaucon that the city will not be the “true” and “healthy” city, as described from 372a – d, but one “with a fever.” This concession literally constitutes the historical textual embodiment of the philosophic foundation of the value judgment prioritizing progress over environmental prudence.

However, the Republic may be a sort of proof by contradiction – a sneaky critique of luxurious society. That the luxurious city becomes one of pragmatically impossible social organization may be Plato’s way of subtly suggesting that the true utopia is actually the healthy city. If this is not the case that the Republic is a proof by contradiction, then the contentment argument certainly applies. But if it is the case, then Plato’s true utopia, the healthy city, is consistent with the virtue of contentment. To diminish desire itself is the way to contentment. If one is content with existence, then the answer to the normative question, the appropriate action, is to not act. If we temper our desire for material luxury, we can reduce our environmentally degrading behavior at its source. This is my vision for applying the virtue of contentment to the modern conception of progress. Though this tweak to the idea of progress should not be taken to the Taoist extreme. To argue against action of any kind beyond the fulfillment of non-arbitrary purpose is just silly. A compromise – a middle way – between the two virtues is preferable.

Thus, the overarching question, to which the entirety of this thought process is ultimately devoted is, can the environmental effects of the paradox of progress be mitigated by reconciling the virtue of progress with the virtue of contentment?

JM Kincaid