I'm cool with space exploration, hell, if I had the opportunity I'd fucking go to the moon! Space colonization is what is nauseating. I'd like to be aboard a spaceship that simply watches. — darthbarracuda

I'm cool too with space exploration, but why would you fucking go to the moon? We already know what it looks like (dry, gray, bumpy, round) Have you been to Vladivostok yet? Milwaukee? Odessa? Aleppo? (Never mind; too late, nothing left.) Pyongyang? (Better book your flight soon; it might be disappearing any day now.)

You probably won't be required to take a dose of Pepto Bismol. It seems unlikely that we will send anybody to Mars more than once or twice, then that will be it for both space exploration and galactic colonization.

I'm cool too with space exploration, but why would you fucking go to the moon? — Bitter Crank

Because I'd like to be able to see something like this.

like this. — darthbarracuda

I can't imagine what seeing that would be like in real life.

If the world has progressed, then what it has progressed to is hopefully not the end point, I hope the present state of the world is not the pinnacle of human progress.

Countries with the highest technological and social development - refer the typical 'best countries to live in' have seemed to have taken a step backwards in some respects. Developing nations wonder if they will suffer the same fate if and when they 'develop'.

The core of the idea of progress is the belief that human life becomes better with the growth of knowledge. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Knowledge is inert; it's accumulation does nothing. It is only the application of knowledge which can improve human life, or not. If the Idea of Progress is valid, only knowledge which improves human life will be applied (or at least it will be applied to a greater measure than knowledge which doesn't improve human life).

This raises two questions:
1) What are the metrics of human life improvement?
2) What types of applied knowledge are required to improve human life?

The OECD's World Happiness Report combines both the evaluation of, and affective reaction to, life experiences in its definition of subjective well-being. If the Idea of Progress is valid, why is there variation in the well-being of nations? Is it because some nations (e.g., Syria, Greece, etc.) have not undergone modernisation?

The development of science, mathematics and technology was subsidised in ancient hierarchical (not egalitarian) societies from wealth produced by the large scale division of labour. Thus, the link between economic prosperity and technological advancement was established. The Idea of Progress assumes that modernization improves human life, when in fact; it destroys indigenous cultures.

The Idea of Progress also assumes that it is only the application of scientific knowledge and technology which improves human life. However, science and technology have had both beneficial and detrimental effects on humanity. How Is it possible that the application of ethical knowledge would not improve human life (especially as it relates to the application of science and technology)?

Clearly, the Idea of Progress is a hoax.

No, it doesn't - it means that it's better on average, which it is... — Wayfarer

There's a bigger picture than a few metrics like life expectancy.

Anthropologists tell us that hunting and gathering was an easy life and that this way of life we have in the contemporary world is comparatively harder.

Ronald Wright points out in A Short History of Progress that before civilization societies were egalitarian, that civilizations are hierarchical, and that the result of the latter is the masses at the bottom toiling for the small elite at the top. He calls the latter "a fool's paradise".

Richard H. Robbins be points out in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism that with the advent of agriculture humans started doing the work that nature already did for us. We replaced the sun's energy with our own energy or energy we extracted (through hard labor). We replaced photosynthesis and animals' natural reproduction with our own labor at the plow and the stockyard.

A few metrics like wealth barely give us one pixel of the complete picture.

There are many aspects of the 'belief in progress' that I think are worth criticizing, but at the same time, what is the alternative?... — Wayfarer

For a riveting account of an alternative view read Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, by Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash. I read the 1998 edition. Their account of The First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism was especially riveting.

Sure, it's not a panacea - people in developed economies are prone to depression, anomie, and many other problems. — Wayfarer

Indeed, a lot of people in the West are taking prescription anti-depressants, abusing narcotics, etc., apparently unable to otherwise cope with our way of life.

But whatever anyone produces, you will simply say that it's not evidence. — Wayfarer

I see evidence of improvements, but not of progress--cumulative, ever-closer-to-utopia progress--being a historical fact.

The Idea of Progress also assumes that it is only the application of scientific knowledge and technology which improves human life. — Galuchat

I would argue, based on what I know about the Enlightenment, that it does not merely call for applying things. Pre-modern / pre-Enlightenment people applied knowledge, like using mathematics for accounting, using knowledge of materials to make tools out of stone, weapons out of metals, etc. Enlightenment progress, as I understand it, is about humans using reason, science, technology, etc. to control the human world and dominate the non-human world to eliminate everything that has ailed humanity.

I have lost faith in the ability of this Enlightenment-style engineering to produce materially and/or morally good results. We are supposed to believe that developments like the legalization of same-sex marriage in the U.S. are proof that such engineering works and that such developments are cumulative and will eventually eliminate all human suffering. We are supposed to reject the idea that such developments occur in a zero-sum game--that one individual or group gaining something means another individual or group losing something; that the costs of any manipulation of the material world, such as air pollution, always equal or exceed the benefits, such as turning coal into electricity. But I have become convinced that anybody who says that such beliefs correspond with reality is either being dishonest or is delusional.

If it is not dishonesty or delusion, where is the conclusive evidence of its truth/reality?

And even if it is true/real, do the ends justify the means? The champions of "progress" seem to be oblivious to most of the content of the means, such as the experience of the indigenous people of the New World since October 12, 1492. Yet, they seem to have absolutely no doubt about the ends being justified--you know ,"We abolished slavery. We enfranchised women. We have reduced violence to unprecedented low levels. Etc. Etc. How can you not believe in progress?"

I agree. I'm increasingly vexed and nauseated by the large amount of different worldviews that all seem to be saying the same thing but which fail to actually fulfill their promises. Not only do each of these worldviews have to see all the other numerous competing worldviews as misguided, but they have to renounce all of history, or re-interpret history has culminating in their specific worldview. It's incredibly narcissistic and short-sighted. These movements and acolytes will never go away. If it's not x, then it'll be y that will finally save humanity. If it's not y, then it'll be z that will finally redeem our condition. After a while it just gets really annoying and pathetically delusional... — darthbarracuda

We are supposed to believe that it is not a zero-sum game.

But they all seem to behave like it is a zero-sum game.

Think about it. If resources (public funding, private funding, publicity, lobbying hours, etc.) are scarce and you are a feminist organization, a good way to get those resources rather than a conservative organization or a men's rights organization getting them is to have everybody believe that freedom, good, justice, etc. absolutely depend on your success.

And that the success of your competitors will set humanity back several centuries.

A non-zero-sum scenario, such as everybody--men and women--benefiting from men's rights organizations realizing their goal of fathers being treated equally in family courts never seems to be on feminist radars. You are either completely in support of their agenda and in opposition of the agendas they oppose, or you are against humanity.

I think it likely that there is a limit to progress. I think we've made some undeniable progress in many places, medicine and hygiene being the most prominent, as well as communications and a general understanding of the world. To make progress in the way these progressives dream of is to fundamentally change the human condition - look at the transhumanists, they explicitly endorse this. If we are to escape the problems that have plagued us since the beginning of time then we might as well just accept that if it will ever happen, it'll only be through a radical change in our nature. So radical that we might not even be recognizingly human. So it won't be humans we save, but rather humans that we replace with something superior.

This is all hypothetical, of course. — darthbarracuda

A pattern that I am noticing is that it invariably seems to be arrogant, privileged elites living in bubbles who are starting and leading these efforts to perfect the world.

It is progress on steroids.

Or maybe common, working-class people have never really bought into or acted on the myth of progress. That seems to be what the late Christopher Lasch said in a lot of his work.

Where are the Mahatma Gandhis and Martin Luther King, Jrs. of today's world?

We have fulfilled the dreams of our futurists and the nightmares of our prophets.

How well each person does in life is a personal thing, we may travel further and meet more people, but we have never fulfilled the dreams of the founders of any great world religion. If we did we would have progressed.

It's an oversimplification to say that there have not been bubbles of progress here and there for certain times, certain communities but these seem to burst. Progress cannot be averaged, but if it were, technological progress yes, spiritual progress: no.