Wednesday, January 24, 2007
the myth of progress
Belinda Carlisle sang passionately, 'ooooh heaven is a place on earth' and for much of the 19th and 20th century this was the fabled myth that was promised to those who toiled and laboured in the fires of industry. Heaven being that utopian state where humanity needs and lacks for nothing and where hard toil and labour are no more, and earth being where the former came about - no need to pop off to some heaven in the sky just hang around a century or two and it will arrive here in blighty. This was the premise upon which much of the frenzied period of invention and industrialisation were predicated.
Yet is this not some strange myth? A capitalist invention to keep the money flowing (into the right pockets no doubt) and to keep us sedated by an ever increasing amount of technology that drowns out any objections about the environment or the suffering of those in the majority world.
Last week I met with the directors of A Rocha UK, Dave and Anne Bookless - two fantastic people who have a passion for helping people to reconnect to our immediate environment, and helping people to understand in practical ways how they can make a difference to climate change (in a positive way).
Dave outlined the way that many of the economic and social models of development had been critiqued in the last 10-20 years by green thinking people - yet this myth of progress is one that seems to have been left unchallenged. As we talked it seemed obvious that things in the UK as they stand really do not need to get much better - that the tipping point between living comfortably, with the minimum of hassles and stress, and the affect that ongoing research and technological development has on the environment, had been reached - maybe even 40 years ago.
So are you happy as things are? What does need to get better? What don't we need? Why not redirect the billions spent on research and development into projects in the majority world that will allow development to happen in a greener way?
Of course I am no economist - maybe if progress stopped everything would stop. Maybe our whole way of life would crumble. Maybe this myth of progress is intrinsic to the capitalist free market economy we exist within.
I need to do some more reading I think...
Yet is this not some strange myth? A capitalist invention to keep the money flowing (into the right pockets no doubt) and to keep us sedated by an ever increasing amount of technology that drowns out any objections about the environment or the suffering of those in the majority world.
Last week I met with the directors of A Rocha UK, Dave and Anne Bookless - two fantastic people who have a passion for helping people to reconnect to our immediate environment, and helping people to understand in practical ways how they can make a difference to climate change (in a positive way).
Dave outlined the way that many of the economic and social models of development had been critiqued in the last 10-20 years by green thinking people - yet this myth of progress is one that seems to have been left unchallenged. As we talked it seemed obvious that things in the UK as they stand really do not need to get much better - that the tipping point between living comfortably, with the minimum of hassles and stress, and the affect that ongoing research and technological development has on the environment, had been reached - maybe even 40 years ago.
So are you happy as things are? What does need to get better? What don't we need? Why not redirect the billions spent on research and development into projects in the majority world that will allow development to happen in a greener way?
Of course I am no economist - maybe if progress stopped everything would stop. Maybe our whole way of life would crumble. Maybe this myth of progress is intrinsic to the capitalist free market economy we exist within.
I need to do some more reading I think...
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