The Illusion of Progress
During the past 50 years we have witnessed unprecedented growth and prosperity. Initially this new wealth was shared between a relatively small number of the world’s most highly developed nations. Today, the lords of capital in the Global North are individuals who own the technology corporations, and a mere handful of others that have monopolistic control over life's essential supply chains - like food, water, seeds, and medicines.
It's true that our deep and lasting love affair with technology, together with a booming manufacturing economy, have provided citizens with healthier lives, greater material wealth, and less laborious work. Statistically speaking there is less conflict and killing in the world today than at any time in our history. We live longer than ever before and arguably have greater personal freedoms. The elderly, disabled, sick, unemployed and poor are catered for (albeit within the bounds of a fairly unyielding system), and discrimination based on religion, sex and race, has declined markedly. New breakthroughs in medical research hold out the promise of virtually unlimited alleviation of human pain and suffering.
Yet, paradoxically, there are deep levels of malaise within society - a cynicism with present day politics coupled with a palpable fear of what the future may hold. Young people, in particular, display an air of cautious optimism at the same time as feeling frustrated and excluded from creating the future they really want.
A sense of spirituality has gone missing. Meanwhile, two of our most critical domains - the biosphere we have inherited and the technosphere we have contrived - are totally out of kilter. We appear to be trapped in a crisis of our own invention. The earliest signs of this crisis in our civilisation have been apparent for some time. We live in a world corrupted by social and environmental breakdown, from which nearly all intelligible purpose has been erased; a world that has people 'living to work' instead of 'working to live' and an economy that exists for itself, and not for any higher human purpose. Our obsessive enthusiasm for technological gadgets, development for its own sake, the activities of the global marketplace and our descent into triviality, all create an illusion of ‘progress’ where none actually exists.
Industrial civilisation became a global pathological condition during the 20th century. The imperative of economic growth and development infected most societies, irrevocably changing them, but often damaging them. The history of the twentieth century is that of the dominance, predatory nature and annihilatory logic of industrial growth.
Uninterrupted prosperity seems to have become the norm after the War years. It was something taken for granted in Western society. Furthermore, it ingrained itself deeply into the psyche of all Eurocentric nations. Relieved from economic uncertainty, people were free to pursue happiness. Even the spectre of a nuclear holocaust did little to diminish our enthusiasm for the consumption of luxury goods and services. Seduced by visions of a ‘perfect’ society, we imagined an era where all social problems would be swept away on a flood of rising prosperity. We anticipated a society in which workers and families would benefit from rising incomes and stable jobs; where poverty, racism and crime would abate and personal freedom and self-fulfilment would be almost limitless. We not only expected these things—after a while, we thought we were entitled to them.
This heady trust in a continuous boom did more than just distort our view of reality. Governments began to operate on the assumption that resources, if not infinite, were almost so. Far too much was expected of prosperity and technology as a cure for social ills. And the idea of entitlement subtly nullified personal and institutional responsibilities, fostering a tendency for everyone to search elsewhere for solutions to their most perplexing problems. Governments looked to a surging post-war economy to pay for ambitious infrastructure programs; companies looked to governments to prevent recessions; and workers and families looked to corporate and government welfare benefits to guarantee their security and living standards.
The most destructive flaw in this post-war vision was that it rested on a vague concept of ‘progress’ - an assumption that all aspects of life would constantly improve. Yet, with hindsight at least, it is easy to see that some of these expectations of entitlement were inconsistent. It was always too utopian to happen, and the belief in its practicality created the social equivalent of a mythological chimera. It arrogantly presumed that we could engineer a constant economic boom, which we cannot, and that such vigorous wealth would automatically erase all social and personal problems, which it could not. Ultimately, it confused survival with advancement.
The fundamental wellspring of popular disillusion is the fact that this society, with its comforting certainty and order, has failed to materialise. The vision of ‘progress’ that once provided social cohesion has been undermined by the cumulative weight of so many dashed expectations. We are caught between the false promises and hedonistic desires of an empirical past and the insistent, hostile, uncertain social and economic conditions of the fragmenting present.
To this day, politicians still promise things they can never deliver. They continue to frame purpose and practice on the discredited notion of loyalty to empire. Meanwhile, an ingenuous public, embittered by the superficial posturing and ritualistic ideological exchanges, increasingly sceptical of traditional institutions, and fearful of a future from which the reassuring assumptions and securities of the past have been stripped, resorts to maligning those in authority and despairs at its own destiny.
The reductionist political and business processes we have devised respond best to clearly bounded problems and conflicts. Because any problem during the Second World War could be defeated with ample resources, appropriate technology and a suitable strategy, the dominant post-war ideology became that of ‘problem-solving’. This engendered a confidence that any problem could be solved.
But today’s issues are systemic in nature - unbounded, messy and ambiguous - and we have yet to learn how best to think about such dilemmas. Of one thing we can be sure: the thinking that gave rise to such issues in the first place cannot now be used to overcome them.
The complex and uncertain challenges facing Western nations today ultimately demand an entirely fresh approach to designing, organising and managing human affairs - not just more indiscriminate patching up of the current system, but a fundamental renewal of the worldview.