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A Short History of Progress Kindle Edition
Ronald Wright
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From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Review
Review
PRAISE FOR RONALD WRIGHT AND A SHORT HISTORY OF PROGRESS
“I don’t care if you have never read and will never read any kind of book at all, but you must read this one.” — Globe and Mail
“A compelling work of distilled wisdom . . . Wright is a pungent phrase-maker and a penetrating thinker. His learning is historical, anthropological and cross-cultural.” — Times Literary Supplement
“Provocative . . . Already a bestseller in Canada, Wright is now making his biggest mark since his debut novel (A Scientific Romance, 1997) attracted wide attention… illuminating and disturbing, and expansively documented.” — Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“In this short, superb essay, Wright succeeds at impressing on his readers how fragile the remarkable experiment we call civilisation really is.” — The Liberal“Wright sifts the findings of archaeology and anthropology with thoughtful grace to build a potent argument.” — Guardian
“Impressive . . . for the evidence Wright assembles from his authoritative grasp of history, and for the skill and clarity with which he imparts information. He makes history, ecology, anthropology, and political science easy to read.” — Associated Press
“Ronald Wright, one of this country’s intellectual treasures . . . takes his readers on a sweeping educational tour of history and every continent’s previous civilization . . . This excellent book should be required reading at the White House.” — Quill & Quire
“An elegant and learned discussion of what the rise and fall of past civilizations predict about our own: nothing good.” — Maclean’s
“Rarely have I read a book that is so gripping, so immediate and so important to our times. Jared Diamond will be jealous!” — ABC (Australia)
“A beautiful tract on the plight of humanity and how we always tend to spoil our nest and why we need to learn from that.” —Sydney Sun Herald
“[Ronald Wright] is an historical philosopher with a profound understanding of other cultures.” — Jan Morris
Review
PRAISE FOR RONALD WRIGHT AND A SHORT HISTORY OF PROGRESS:
“Wright sifts the findings of archaeology and anthropology with thoughtful grace to build a potent argument.” — Guardian
“Impressive . . . for the evidence Wright assembles from his authoritative grasp of history, and for the skill and clarity with which he imparts information. He makes history, ecology, anthropology, and political science easy to read.” —Associated Press
“Provocative . . . Already a bestseller in Canada, Wright is now making his biggest mark since his debut novel (A Scientific Romance, 1997) attracted wide attention… illuminating and disturbing, and expansively documented.” — Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“I don’t care if you have never read and will never read any kind of book at all, but you must read this one.” — Globe and Mail
“An elegant and learned discussion of what the rise and fall of past civilizations predict about our own: nothing good.” — Maclean’s
“In this short, superb essay, Wright succeeds at impressing on his readers how fragile the remarkable experiment we call civilisation really is.” — The Liberal
“Rarely have I read a book that is so gripping, so immediate and so important to our times. Jared Diamond will be jealous!” — ABC (Australia)
“A beautiful tract on the plight of humanity and how we always tend to spoil our nest and why we need to learn from that.” —Sydney Sun Herald
“A compelling work of distilled wisdom . . . Wright is a pungent phrase-maker and a penetrating thinker. His learning is historical, anthropological and cross-cultural.” — Times Literary Supplement
“[Ronald Wright] is an historical philosopher with a profound understanding of other cultures.” — Jan Morris
“Ronald Wright, one of this country’s intellectual treasures . . . takes his readers on a sweeping educational tour of history and every continent’s previous civilization . . . This excellent book should be required reading at the White House.” — Quill & Quire
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.About the Author
RONALD WRIGHT is an award-winning historian, essayist, and the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction published in sixteen languages and more than forty countries. His 2004 CBC Massey Lectures, A Short History of Progress, was a #1 national bestseller, won the Libris Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year, and was the basis for the Martin Scorsese–produced documentary Surviving Progress. His other bestselling nonfiction books include the BC Book Prize–winning history What Is America?; Stolen Continents, which won the Gordon Montador Award; and Among the Maya. His first novel, A Scientific Romance, won the 1997 David Higham Prize for Fiction and was a Globe and Mail, Sunday Times, and New York Times book of the year.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Product details
- File size : 1651 KB
- Publication date : March 17, 2009
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Print length : 224 pages
- Publisher : Da Capo Press (March 17, 2009)
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Not Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Language: : English
- ASIN : B001JAHG98
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#781,845 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #679 in Ancient Early Civilization History
- #1,171 in History of Anthropology
- #1,661 in Cultural Anthropology (Kindle Store)
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Climate change is one of the "progress traps" Wright is talking about. Progress does not inexorably lead to the betterment of humans. Nor do growth economies, including Capitalism. Wright helps readers see the big pictures of how humans have interacted with the Earth in ways that destroy civilizations and threatens to ruin our host, Earth.
The Myth of Progress by Tom Wessells is another good book about progress.
Ronald Wright’s intention in this book is to examine how and in what ways in which civilizations have ‘progressed’ and what their outcomes have been. His contention is that by examining the historical evidence of who we are and where we have come from, we might be better placed to determine how well we are faring and towards what end we are ‘progressing’.
The author writes simply and directly basing his arguments on ample evidence.
He points out that while our future is in our own hands, we must trust not in unfounded optimism but rather be sensitive to the information that we possess, both that passed down from history and that presented to us from our understanding of morality and insights presented by scientific investigation.
‘Progress’ neither in the affirmative or its obverse is guaranteed without our making sound decisions.
While you may question his references about the nature of animals and man in past centuries, one only has to read the newspapers or watch TV new broadcasts to reflect on the possibility that we are NOT the most advanced form of human life.
It was an amazing success for a story contrary to our most holy cultural myths. Wright believed that the benefits of progress were highly overrated, because of their huge costs. Indeed, progress was approaching the point of becoming a serious threat to the existence of humankind. "This new century will not grow very old before we enter an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all the dark ages in our past."
He pointed out that the world was dotted with the ruins of ancient crash sites, civilizations that self-destructed. At each of these wrecks, modern science can, in essence, retrieve the "black box," and discover why the mighty society crashed and burned. There is a clear pattern. Each one crashed because it destroyed what it depended on for its survival.
Wright takes us on a quick tour of the collapse of Sumer, Easter Island, the Roman Empire, and the Mayans. He explains why the two oddballs, China and Egypt, are taking longer than average to self-destruct. The fatal defects of agriculture and civilization are old news for the folks who have been paying attention. It has become customary for these folks to believe that "The Fall" took place when humans began to domesticate plants and animals.
Wright thinks the truth is more complicated. What makes this book unique and provocative is his notion of progress traps. The benefits of innovation often encourage society to live in a new way, while burning the bridges behind them as they advance. Society can find itself trapped in an unsustainable way of living, and it's no longer possible to just turn around and painlessly return to a simpler mode. Like today, we know that the temporary bubble of cheap energy is about over, and our entire way of life is dependent on cheap energy. We're trapped.
Some types of progress do not disrupt the balance of the ecosystem, like using a rock to crack nuts. But our ability to stand upright freed our hands for working with tools and weapons, which launched a million year process of experimentation and innovation that gradually snowballed over time.
We tend to assume that during the long era of hunting and gathering our ancestors were as mindful as the few hunting cultures that managed to survive on the fringes into the twentieth century. But in earlier eras, when big game was abundant, wise stewardship was not mandatory. Sloppy tribes could survive -- for a while.
Before they got horses, Indians of the American west would drive herds of buffalo off cliffs, killing many at a time. They took what they needed, and left the rest for legions of scavengers. One site in Colorado contained the carcasses of 152 buffalo. A trader in the northern Rockies witnessed about 250 buffalo being killed at one time. Wright mentioned two Upper Paleolithic sites I had not heard of -- 1,000 mammoth skeletons were found at Piedmont in the Czech Republic, and the remains of over 100,000 horses were found at Solutré in France.
Over time, progress perfected our hunting systems. Our supply of high-quality food seemed to be infinite. It was our first experience of prosperity and leisure. Folks had time to take their paint sets into caves and do gorgeous portraits of the animals they lived with, venerated, killed, and ate.
Naturally, our population grew. More babies grew up to be hunters, and the availability of game eventually decreased. The grand era of cave painting ended, and we began hunting rabbits. We depleted species after species, unconsciously gliding into our first serious progress trap.
Some groups scrambled to find alternatives, foraging around beaches, estuaries, wetlands, and bogs. Some learned how to reap the tiny seeds of wild grasses. By and by, the end of the hunting way of life came into view, about 10,000 years ago. "They lived high for a while, then starved."
Having destroyed the abundant game, it was impossible to return to simpler living. This was a progress trap, and it led directly into a far more dangerous progress trap, the domestication of plants and animals. Agriculture and civilization were accidents, and they threw open the gateway to 10,000 years of monotony, drudgery, misery, and ecocide. Wright says that civilization is a pyramid scheme; we live today at the expense of those who come after us.
For most of human history, the rate of progress was so slow that it was usually invisible. But the last six or seven generations have been blindsided by a typhoon of explosive change. Progress had a habit of giving birth to problems that could only be solved by more progress. Progress was the most diabolically wicked curse that you could ever imagine. Maybe we should turn it into an insulting obscenity: "progress you!"
Climate scientists have created models showing weather trends over the last 250,000 years, based on ice cores. Agriculture probably didn't start earlier because climate trends were unstable. Big swings could take place over the course of decades. In the last 10,000 years, the climate has been unusually stable. A return to instability will make civilization impossible.
Joseph Tainter studied how civilizations collapse, and he described three highways to disaster: the Runaway Train (out-of-control problems), the Dinosaur (indifference to dangers), and the House of Cards (irreversible disintegration). He predicted that the next collapse would be global in scale.
Finally, the solution: "The reform that is needed is... simply the transition from short-term thinking to long-term." Can we do it?
We are quite clever, but seldom wise, according to Wright. Ordinary animals, like our ancestors, had no need for long-term thinking, because life was always lived in the here and now. "Free Beer Tomorrow" reads the flashing neon sign on the tavern, but we never exist in tomorrow.
The great news is that we now possess a mountain of black boxes. For the first time in the human journey, a growing number of people comprehend our great mistakes, and are capable of envisioning a new path that eventually abandons our embarrassing boo-boos forever. All the old barriers to wisdom and healing have been swept away (in theory).
Everywhere you look these days; people are stumbling around staring at tiny screens and furiously typing -- eagerly communicating with world experts, engaging in profound discussions, watching videos rich with illuminating information, and reading the works of green visionaries. It's a magnificent sight to behold -- the best is yet to come!
Richard Adrian Reese
Author of What Is Sustainable
Top reviews from other countries
Nowadays, globalization means that humankind has the power to wipe out the whole of itself, not just small populations living on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. This also thanks to neoliberal capitalism, which degrades nature into "ecosystem service" and the concept that "everything can be seen in terms of economics".
Unfortunately, it looks like the monkeys already started destroying the lab and nobody will stop them...
We all need to be made more aware that many great civilisations have collapsed before.
This book says it all. They have all died out due to overpopulation and overconsumption of their limited resources.
Sadly. If this "global civilisation" of ours goes down, we will probably take the whole planet down with it!
With over 7 billion humans on this finite planet already, collectively consuming at the rate of over 1.5 planets, and with around 75 million more human consumers arriving every year, this seems increasingly likely - unless we change our ways PBQ!
The quest for ever more economic growth must cease. A steady state economy must become the new norm.
This little book ought to be compulsory reading. particularly by politicians and world leaders, and above all economists - who seem to think think continuous economic growth (i.e. ever increasing consumption by ever increasing numbers of people) is possible on a finite planet!
"Sustainable development" and "sustainable growth" are complete and utter oxymorons on a finite planet!
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