I seems really unreasonable of me to say this, but I doubt very much that you have no belief in progress. Why so?... — Bitter Crank
The predictable objection is, "We abolished slavery. We enfranchised women. We eradicated polio. We ended Apartheid. We have reduced violence to historically low rates. We increased the amount of leisure time people have. How can you not believe in progress?" — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Still for now, life is better than it was in 1067 or 1867. — Bitter Crank
Building can be (and sometimes are) built so that the stability of the structure depends on a few members at ground level--City Bank Bldg. in NYC. Other buildings (thinking of a very, very big low-rise building like the Pentagon) aren't going to collapse all at once -- indeed, can't collapse all at once. Philosophical systems can be more like the pentagon. or they can be like a City Bank Bldg. One won't fall all at once, the other one could (theoretically--given the right stresses). — Bitter Crank
I don't think history is cyclical, nor is history following a course -- like, toward ever more progress. One event follows another, and this event leads to that event, and if sometimes the result is pleasant, at other times it is not. — Bitter Crank
Building can be (and sometimes are) built so that the stability of the structure depends on a few members at ground level--City Bank Bldg. in NYC. Other buildings (thinking of a very, very big low-rise building like the Pentagon) aren't going to collapse all at once -- indeed, can't collapse all at once. Philosophical systems can be more like the pentagon. or they can be like a City Bank Bldg. One won't fall all at once, the other one could (theoretically--given the right stresses). — Bitter Crank
Progress is relative. We aim to make things better in the foreseeable future than they are now, and to maintain the improvements we have over the past.Would your worldview, philosophy, etc. implode if progress is an erroneous idea? — WISDOMfromPO-MO
human nature has remained essentially the same across recorded history. — Galuchat
Debatable. — Banno
Better for who? — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Would your worldview, philosophy, etc. implode if progress is an erroneous idea?
. Some suggest that all historical civilizations can be interpreted in the analogy of birth, childhood, maturity, old age, and death.According to this theory, each dynasty rises to a political, cultural, and economic peak and then, because of moral corruption, declines, loses the Mandate of Heaven, and falls, only to be replaced by a new dynasty.
Some suggest that all historical civilizations can be interpreted in the analogy of birth, childhood, maturity, old age, and death. — Cavacava
The error is not in thinking that human life can improve. Rather, it is imagining that improvement can ever be cumulative. Unlike science, ethics and politics are not activities in which what is learnt in one generation can be passed on to an indefinite number of future generations. Like the arts, they are practical skills and they are easily lost” (Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions, 3-4) (emphasis mine). — WisdomfromPOMO
Progress is relative. We aim to make things better in the foreseeable future than they are now, and to maintain the improvements we have over the past... — andrewk
Sometimes we fail... — andrewk
That's life. It's not a reason not to try, else nobody would ever try to do anything... — andrewk
From time to time civilisations may collapse, and periods of bloody anarchy ensue. That's life too. But again not a reason not to do anything. And from the desperate low point of that anarchy, perhaps civilisation will one day again start to emerge - relative progress... — andrewk
And in the end the universe will die a long slow heat death.
But if we do our best to be kind to one another in the meantime, perhaps there will be more happiness and less misery across the broad sweep of spacetime then there would otherwise have been. — andrewk
EVERY SINGLE PERSON... — Wayfarer
On the whole, you and every one you know, is much less likely to die of a preventable disease, be imprisoned by an autocrat, or suffer malnourishment... — Wayfarer
My dear departed father was deeply involved in population control initiatives in the developing world. IN the 1960's he was convinced that India was heading for economic collapse and mass starvation. But he didn't foresee the 'green revolution' or the technological boom that lifted hundreds of millions of Indians out of rural poverty into middle-class incomes... — Wayfarer
That said - I too believe that the prospect of the collapse of the current economic and political order is possible, even likely. I don't believe there will be a nuclear apocalypse, resulting in the extinction of life on earth, but a collapse of the world's economic systems, brought about by a catastrophic war, is a definite possibility... — Wayfarer
Gray is notoriously pessimistic, by the way. — Wayfarer
Yes. I could too, but I don't see that that amounts to a mound of beans.I am not armed with evidence right now, but I bet if I had the time and other resources I could find a lot of evidence of horrible things done in the name of "progress — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Yes. I could too, but I don't see that that amounts to a mound of beans... — andrewk
Somebody doing something harmful 'in the name of X' is no reason at all for anybody else to remove X from their aspirations... — andrewk
What matters most is what is done, not what people say it is done 'in the name of'... — andrewk
What are you actually trying to argue?... — andrewk
Or are you saying that people should not try to improve the lot of their fellow creatures? — andrewk
I am a big fan of many enlightenment thinkers, and am tremendously glad that the Enlightenment happened.the Enlightenment progress narrative is false, delusional, dangerous — WISDOMfromPO-MO
EVERY SINGLE PERSON (is better off than they were in 1067 and 1867)..
— Wayfarer
How do you know? — WISDOMfromPO-MO
But a simple, quick Google search — WISDOMfromPO-MO
I have no idea what 'The Enlightenment progress narrative' is. It's certainly not a phrase that I ever use. — andrewk
From various sources. It is a fact that life expectancy, overall health and even overall wealth have increased significantly since those times, even despite the massive ballooning of human population. — Wayfarer
That's about par for the course with you, I suspect. — Wayfarer
It might be of relevance that Auguste Comte, who is recognised as the founder of the social sciences, coined the term 'positivism' to denote the progression of culture from primitive superstition, to religion, then to metaphysics, and finally to science, as the logical culmination of the human quest for knowledge. That is one of the sources of 'the enlightenment progress narrative', which indubitably exists. — Wayfarer
Just because aggregate measurements such as life expectancy and health increase does not mean that life is better for every single individual. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
But whatever anyone produces, you will simply say that it's not evidence.The failure of anybody to provide evidence here that progress is real seems to confirm the latter. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Admit - for it is true, - that this age of which materialism was the portentous offspring and in which it had figured first as petulant rebel and aggressive thinker, then as a grave and strenuous preceptor of mankind, has been by no means a period of mere error, calamity and degeneration, but rather a most powerful creative epoch of humanity. Examine impartially its results. Not only has it immensely widened and filled in the knowledge of the race and accustomed it to a great patience of research, scrupulosity, accuracy - if it has done that only in one large sphere of enquiry, it has still prepared for the extension of the same curiosity, intellectual rectitude, power for knowledge, to other and higher fields - not only has it with an unexampled force and richness of invention brought and put into our hands, for much evil, but also for much good, discoveries, instruments, practical powers, conquests, conveniences which, however we may declare their insufficiency for our highest interests, yet few of us would care to relinquish, but it has also, paradoxical as that might at first seem, strengthened man's idealism. On the whole, it has given him a kindlier hope and humanised his nature. Tolerance is greater, liberty has increased, charity is more a matter of course; peace, if not yet practicable, is growing at least imaginable. Latterly the thought of the eighteenth century which promulgated secularism has been much scouted and belittled, that of the nineteenth which developed it, riddled with adverse criticism and overpassed. Still they worshipped no mean godheads. Reason, science, progress, freedom, humanity were their idols, and which of these idols, if idols they are, would we like or ought we, if we are wise, to cast down into the mire or leave as poor unworshipped relics on the wayside ? If there are other and yet greater godheads or if the visible forms adored were only clay or stone images or the rites void of the inmost knowledge, yet has their cult been for us a preliminary initiation and the long material sacrifice has prepared us for a greater religion. — Aurobindo
I am not armed with evidence right now, but I bet if I had the time and other resources I could find a lot of evidence of horrible things done in the name of "progress".
The removal of Native Americans is probably one example. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Better for who? — WISDOMfromPO-MO
The beneficiaries (are better off now than they would have been in 1067 and 1867).
How do you know?
— WISDOMfromPO-MO — "Bitter
Nobody ever seems to acknowledge it or own up to it, but a lot of thinkers, it seems obvious to me, filter everything through a faith in a perpetual improvement in the human condition with our tool that can make or fix anything, our trump card in our game against the entire universe: reason. Scientists. Feminists. Objectivists. Progressives. Transhumanists. Neoliberals. Republicans. Democrats. Libertarians. Almost all of academia in the West, dissenting postmodern theorists notwithstanding. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
For those of us who are not scholars of the Enlightenment, but just celebrate it and enjoy reading Hume, Paine and Voltaire, where is this 'Doctrine of Progress' specified, in order that we may read it and decide whether to assent to it or not. I cannot recall encountering it in Candide.Every scholar I have encountered who is looking at the Enlightenment and modernity says that a central feature of theirs is belief in science, reason, free markets, democracy, etc. yielding ever-increasing freedom, material well-being, etc. It is better known as progress, the Idea of Progress, the doctrine of progress, etc. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Where I'm really critical of progress, is the idea that 'the next step is outer space'. It's total bollocks, in my view, and dangerous bollocks. We have a vessel, equipped to carry vast populations through space for millions of years - it's called Earth. And we have to look after the one we have, otherwise the human race won't live long enough to build any kind of 'starship'. — Wayfarer
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