A Short History of Progress

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A Short History of Progress
AuthorRonald Wright
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
SeriesMassey Lectures
SubjectSocietal collapse, Civilization, progress trap
GenreNon-fiction
PublisherHouse of Anansi Press
Publication date
October 2004
Media typePrint (paperback & hardcover), Audio
Pages211
ISBNISBN 0887847064 (10) & ISBN 9780887847066 (13) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
OCLC56531474
Preceded byThe Truth About Stories 
Followed byRace Against Time 

A Short History of Progress is a non-fiction book and lecture series by Ronald Wright about societal collapse. The lectures were delivered as a series of five speeches, each taking place in different city across Canada as part of the 2004 Massey Lectures which was broadcast on the CBC Radio program, Ideas. The book version was published by House of Anansi Press and released at the same time as the lectures. The book spent more than a year on Canadian bestseller lists, won the Canadian Book Association's Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and was nominated for the British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. It has since been reprinted in a hardcover format with illustrations.

Wright, an author of fiction and non-fiction works, uses the fallen civilizations of Easter Island, Sumer, Rome, and Maya, as well as examples from the Stone Age, to see what conditions led to the downfall of society. He examines the meaning of progress and its implications for civilizations — past and present — arguing that the twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology that has now placed an unsustainable burden on all natural systems.

Background

Author Ronald Wright, 56 years old at the time of the 2004 Massey Lectures, is described as having a background in archaeology, history, linguistics, anthropology and comparative culture.[1][2] Prior to being selected to deliver the Massey Lectures, Wright had written award-winning fiction and non-fiction books that deal with anthropolgy and civilizations. His 1992 non-fiction book Stolen Continents: The "New World" Through Indian Eyes was awarded the 1993 Gordon Montador Award from the Writers' Trust of Canada[3] and his 1998 novel A Scientific Romance, about a museum curator who travels into the future and investigates the fate of the human race, won the David Higham Prize for Fiction for first-time novelists. The last book he wrote prior the Massey Lectures was the novel Henderson's Spear, published in 2002, about a jailed filmmaker piecing together her family history in Polynesia. It was during this time, just before he developed the lecture manuscripts in 2003 and 2004, that he moved from Port Hope, Ontario to Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, where his wife could work as a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia.[4] Wright traced the origins of the ideas behind A Short History of Progress to the material he studied while writing A Scientific Romance and his 2000 essay for The Globe and Mail titled "Civilization is a Pyramid Scheme" about the fall of the ninth-century Mayan civilization.[5]

Synopsis

The first chapter, "Gauguin’s Questions", poses the questions that provide a framework for the book. Referring to Paul Gauguin's painting of the same name the questions are: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Wright defines progress using the Victorian terms "the assumption that a pattern of change exists in the history of mankind...that it consists of irreversible changes in one direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement".[6] Despite the extended time span of the Stone Age, Wright places the first sign of progress as being the ability to create fire. The competition between Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals is examined with respect to the conditions that allowed one to out-compete the other.

Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilizations which fell victim to their own success. In the fates of such societies — once mighty, complex, and brilliant — lie the most instructive lessons...they are fallen airliners whose black boxes can tell us what went wrong.

 —A Short History of Progress, p 8

The second chapter, "The Great Experiment", continues the examination of Stone age progress by looking at the advancements in hunting. Wright uses the term "progress trap" to refer to innovations that create new problems for which the society is unable or unwilling to solve, or inadvertently create conditions that are worse than what existed before the innovation. For example, innovations in hunting during the Stone Age allowed for more successful hunts and consequently more free time during which culture and art were created (e.g. cave paintings, bone carvings, etc.), but also led to extinctions, most notably of megafauna. As smaller and smaller game were hunted to replace larger extinct animals, the hunts became less successful and culture declined. With agriculture, and subsequently civilizations, independently arising in multiple regions at about the same time, ~10,000 years ago, indicates to Wright that "given certain broad conditions, human societies everywhere will move towards greater size, complexity and environmental demand".[7] The chapter title refers to the human experience which Wright sees as a large experiment testing what conditions are required for a human civilization to succeed.

In the third chapter, "Fools' Paradise", the rise and fall of two civilizations are examined: Easter Island and Sumer. Both flourished, but collapsed as a result of resource depletion; both were able to visually see their land being eroded but were unwilling to reform. On Easter Island logging, in order to erect statues and build boats, destroyed their ecosystem and led to wars over the last planks of wood on the island. In Sumer, a large irrigation system, as well as over-grazing, land clearing, and lime-burning led to desertification and soil salination.

The lesson I read in the past is this: that the health of land and water – and of woods, which are the keepers of water – can be the only lasting basis for any civilization’s survival and success.

 —A Short History of Progress, p 105

In the fourth chapter, "Pyramid Schemes", the fates of the Roman and Mayan civilizations are compared; both peaked with centralized empires but ended with power being diffused to their periphery as the center collapsed and ultra-conservative leader refused reformations. Anthropologist Joseph Tainter's explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire is invoked, that "complex systems inevitably succumb to diminishing returns"[8] so that the costs of operating an empire are so high that alternatives are implemented. Two examples of civilizations that have been sustainable are described: China and Egypt. Both had an abundance of resources, particularly topsoil, and used farming methods that worked with, rather than against, natural cycles, and settlement patterns that did not exceed, or permanently damage, the carrying capacity of the local environment.

The final chapter, "The Rebellion of the Tools", seeks to answer the final Gauguin question, 'where are we going?', by applying these past examples to modern society. Technological advancements in bio-engineering, nanotechnology, cybernetics, amongst others, have the potential to be progress traps, and the global scale of modern society means that a societal collapse could impact all of mankind. Wright sees needed reforms being blocked by vested interests who reject multi-lateral organizations, and support laissez-faire economics and transfers of power to corporations as leading to the social and environmental degradations that led to the collapse of previous civilizations. Necessary reforms are, in Wright's view, being blocked by vested interests who are hostile to change, including American market extremists. Wright concludes that "our present behaviour is typical of failed societies at the zenith of their greed and arrogance"[9] and calls for a shift towards long-term thinking:

Things are moving so fast that inaction itself is one of the biggest mistakes. The 10,000-year experiment of the settled life will stand or fall by what we do, and don't do, now. The reform that is needed is not anti-capitalist, anti-American, or even deep environmentalist; it is simply the transition from short-term to long-term thinking. From recklessness and excess to moderation and the precautionary principle.

The great advantage we have, our best chance for avoiding the fate of past societies, is that we know about those past societies. We can see how and why they went wrong. Homo sapiens has the information to know itself for what it is: an Ice Age hunter only half-evolved towards intelligence; clever but seldom wise.

We are now at the stage when the Easter Islanders could still have halted the senseless cutting and carving, could have gathered the last trees' seeds to plant out of reach of the rats. We have the tools and the means to share resources, clean up pollution, dispense basic health care and birth control, set economic limits in line with natural ones. If we don't do these things now, while we prosper, we will never be able to do them when times get hard. Our fate will twist out of our hands.

— A Short History of Progress, p 131–2

Style

The contents of the book were originally written and delivered as a set of five speeches for the 2004 Massey Lectures; each speech is presented in the book as one chapter. The writing reflects Wright oration style with the use of high rhetoric.[10] Patrick Parrinder notes that Wright sometimes uses "the rhetorical armory of a rationalistic lay preacher".[11] Wright takes a broad, philosophical approach, not focusing on individual people or specific politics or religions, but rather focusing on civilizations including 'the elites and the masses'.[11] Wright's tone was described as "rarely depressing...[and that] he remains surprisingly upbeat and even entertaining".[12] The use of the word progress is intended to be ironic: what is viewed as technological or social advancement have, in the historical narratives he provides, led to the fall of civilizations.[13] Wright coins the term "progress trap" to describe the phenomenon of turning "cleverness into recklessness".[2]

Comparisons were made between this book and Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed which both cover similar subject matter with "a cautious problem-solving approach"[14] and come to similar conclusions. Writing in Alternatives Journal, philosophy professor Kent Peacock notes that "both are well-written" but that Diamond includes examples of societies which had achieved sustainability for centuries, whereas Wright has "a stronger grasp of the dark side of human nature", like impatience, aggressiveness, and obstinacy.[15] Author and journalist Brian Brett described Collapse as "a slow, rich feast" while "the compact A Short History of Progress is an arrow loosed from a powerful bow, a lyric dart into the heart of human behaviour".[16]

Publication and reception

The book, published by House of Anansi Press, was released at the same time the Massey Lectures were being delivered. In early November 2004, one lecture was given by Wright in each of the following cities: Ottawa, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Halifax and Toronto.[17] Their recording was broadcasted on CBC Radio's Ideas during the week of November 22 to 26. The book was named the Canadian Booksellers Association's 2005 Non-Fiction Book of the Year at their annual Libris Awards[18] and short-listed for the first annual British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.[19] A hardcover edition title An Illustrated Short History of Progress was released with a print run of 15,000 copies in 2006.[20]

In The Globe and Mail, Canadian author Paul William Roberts praised the book saying it "is the most important use of printed word and post-consumer recycled fibres I have seen since Jérôme Deshusses's Délivrez Prométhée, 25 years ago." Roberts explains, "[Wright] has such a firm grasp of his goal that scarcely a word is extraneous... You feel you've read volumes, though, not just because of the density of Wright's thoughts, but due to the crushing weight of the burden they carry. In prose that is balefully evocative and irreducibly precise...".[21] On the other hand, in the National Post review, Peter Foster gave a negative review, chiding Wright for "not having the slightest clue about how economies work, or how, by their fundamental nature, markets are both moral and sustainable." Foster ended his review by insulting Wright's intellect, "What really needs some psychological excavation is Ronald Wright's mind, which carries a set of inflated, emotionally based moralistic assumptions derived from the structure of his primitive ignorance about markets and economics."[22]

Other reviews were encouraging. In Maclean's magazine Brian Bethune wrote it was a "an elegant and learned discussion" on the topic.[23] The review in The Times said it was "an eminently readable account...written with an incredible lightness of touch that belies the very serious issues".[24] In the Montreal Gazette, Bryan Demchinsky called Wright eloquent and the book "a brief, trenchant essay".[25] Diane Barlee in Skeptic magazine, said Wright is a "remarkably gifted wordsmith whose talent makes turgid facts not only digestible, but also generates a hunger for more" and commented "A Short History of Progress is an important, well-crafted book, however, I can't promise that it will change your life."[26]

Film

The film rights were sold to Cinémaginaire in 2008.[27] It was filmed as a documentary directed by Mathieu Roy with Daniel Louis and Denise Robert as producers. Martin Scorsese was attached to the project as executive producer.[28]

See also

References

  1. ^ Kirbyson, Ron (November 7, 2004). "Unbridled progress a worrisome thing". Winnipeg Free Press. Winnipeg, Manitoba. p. B.9.
  2. ^ a b Drainie, Bronwyn (December 2004). "As we go up, we go down". Quill & Quire. 70 (12): 23. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
  3. ^ "Stolen Continents wins inaugural award (Gordon Montador Award)". The Canadian Bookseller. 15 (6): 106. June/July 1993. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Firby, Doug (July 30, 2005). "Homo sapiens as repeat offender". Calgary Herald. Calgary, Alberta. p. G.3.
  5. ^ Martin, Sandra (November 6, 2004). "Our last chance to get the future right". The Globe and Mail. p. F.6. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
  6. ^ Wright, Ronald (2004). A Short History of Progress. House of Anansi Press. p. 3.
  7. ^ Wright, p 65.
  8. ^ Wright, p 92.
  9. ^ Wright, p 129.
  10. ^ de Villiers, Marq (May/June 2005). "Voices for change". Canadian Geographic. 125 (3): 127–130. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ a b Parrinder, Patrick (2005). "Book Reviews". Utopian Studies. 17 (1): 267–270.
  12. ^ Sismondo, Christine (November 21, 2004). "If you read one book on impending doom this year, make it this one". The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ontario. p. C11.
  13. ^ "A Short History of Progress". Kirkus Reviews. 73 (4): 224. February 15, 2005. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
  14. ^ Stoicescu, Claudia (May 2006). "The Doomsayers". Corporate Knights. 70 (12): 43–45.
  15. ^ Peacock, Kent (July 2006). "Progress Traps". Alternatives Journal. 32 (3): 38–41.
  16. ^ Brett, Brian (January 1, 2005). "Why civilizations implode". The Vancouver Sun. p. E.15.
  17. ^ Mortin, Jenni (November 6, 2004). "Get it right this time". The StarPhoenix. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. p. E8.
  18. ^ "CBA Libris Awards 2005" (pdf) (Press release). Canadian Booksellers Association. June 26, 2005. Retrieved November 12, 2010.
  19. ^ "One of these outstanding books will be the first". British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. British Columbia Achievement Foundation. 2005. Retrieved November 14, 2010.
  20. ^ "An Illustrated Short History of Progress". AIGA Design Archives. American Institute of Graphic Arts. 2007. Retrieved November 14, 2010.
  21. ^ Roberts, Paul (November 6, 2004). "Do the Wright thing". The Globe and Mail. p. D.6. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
  22. ^ Foster, Peter (December 1, 2004). "CBC Radio's Marxist Masseys". National Post. p. FP17.
  23. ^ Bethune, Brian (November 22, 2004). "Mad, Mad World". Maclean's. 117 (47): 44–46.
  24. ^ "Cradle of civilisation". The Times. London. June 10, 2006. p. 4.
  25. ^ Demchinsky, Bryan (January 15, 2005). "Monuments to neglect". The Gazette. Montreal, Quebec. p. I.6.
  26. ^ Barlee, Diane (2005). "The Progress Trap". Skeptic. 12 (1): 86–87.
  27. ^ Andrews, Marke (April 10, 2008). "Vancouver film production on the money". The Vancouver Sun. p. C.3.
  28. ^ Todd, Douglas (May 22, 2010). "We're evolving, but are we progressing?". The Vancouver Sun. p. C.4.

External links

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