85 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
85 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
PROGRESS
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Prog-ress n. 1.[archaic] official journey, as of a ruler. 2. historical
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development, in the sense of advance or improvement. 3. forward course
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of history or civilization, as in horror show or death-trip.
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Perhaps no single idea in Western civilization has been as important as
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the notion of progress. It is also true that, as Robert Nisbet has put
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it, "Everything now suggests that Western faith in the dogma of progress
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is waning rapidiy in all levels and spheres in this final part of the
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twentieth century."
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In the anti-authoritarian milieu, too, progress has fallen on hard
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times. There was a time when the syndicalist blockheads, like their
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close Marxist relatives, could more or less successfully harangue as
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marginal and insignifcant those disinterested in organizing their
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alienation via unions, councils and the like. Instead of the old respect
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for productivity and production (the pillars of progress), a Luddite
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prescription for the factories is ascendant and anti-work a cardinal
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starting point of radical dialog. We even see certain ageing leopards
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trying to change their spots: the Industrial Workers of the World,
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embarrassed by the first word of their name may yet move toward refusing
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the second (though certainly not as an organization).
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The eco-crisis is clearly one factor in the discrediting of progress,
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but how it remained an article of faith for so many for so long is a
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vexing question. For what has progress meant, after all? Its promise
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began to realize itself, in many ways, from history's very beginning.
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With the emergence of agriculture and civilization commenced, for
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instance, the progressive destruction of nature; large regions of the
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Near East, Africa and Greece were rather quickly rendered desert
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wastelands.
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In terms of violence, the transformation from a mainly pacific and
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egalitarian gatherer-hunter mode to the violence of
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agriculture/civilization was rapid. "Revenge, feuds, warfare, and battle
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seem to emerge among, and to be typical of, domesticated peoples,"
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according to Peter Wilson. And violence certainly has made progress
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along the way, needless to say, from state weapons of mega-death to the
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recent rise in outburst murders and serial killers.
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Disease itself is very nearly an invention of civilized life; every
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known degenerative illness is part of the toll of historical betterment.
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From the wholeness and sensual vitality of pre-history, to the present
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vista of endemic ill-health and mass psychic misery-more progress.
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The pinnacle of progress is today's Information Age. which embodies a
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progression in division of labor, from an earlier time of the greater
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possibility of unmediated understanding, to the stage where knowledge
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becomes merely an instrument of the repressive totality, to the current
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cybernetic era where data is all that's really left. Progress has put
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meaning itself to flight.
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Science, the model of progress, has imprisoned and interrogated nature,
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while technology has sentenced it (and humanity) to forced labor. From
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the original dividing of the self that is civilization, to Descartes'
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splitting of the mind from the rest of objects (including the body), to
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our arid, high-tech present-a movement indeed wondrous. Two centuries
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ago the first inventors of industrial machinery were spat on by the
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English textile workers subiected to it and thought villainous by just
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about everyone but their capitalist paymasters. The designers of today's
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computerized slavery are lionized as cultural heroes, though opposition
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is beginning to mount.
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In the absence of greater resistance, the inner logic of class society's
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development will culminate in a totally technicized life as its final
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stage. The equivalence of the progress of society and that of technology
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is becoming ever more apparent by the fact of their immanent
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convergence. "Theses on the Philosophy of History", Walter Benjamin's
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last and best work, contains this lyrically expressed insight:
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"A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though
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he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His
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eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how
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one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past.
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Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe
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which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his
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feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what
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has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got
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caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer
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close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which
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his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.
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This storm is what we call progress."
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