RNL
10th July 2011, 20:51
I just finished listening to this series of lectures, based on his book of the same name (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-History-Progress-Ronald-Wright/dp/1841958301/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310327114&sr=8-1), and found them really interesting (and pretty depressing).
He presents a theory of what he calls 'progress traps', whereby, he argues, societies tend to 'fall victim to their own cleverness'. Progress in a particular area continues until a point is reached at which it becomes a problem, dilemma, danger, etc. One such example is the progression from the invention of gunpowder to the invention of the nuclear bomb. As he puts it, "a small bang can be useful, a bigger bang can end the world." His historical/archaeological analysis of the fall of the Sumerians, Maya, Aztecs, Romans, the Easter Islanders, etc, and the 'progress traps' they built for themselves, tends to focus on 'progress' in hunting that eventually led to the extinction of the prey, and 'progress' in agriculture that eventually left the land barren.
"Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 - by driving a whole herd over a cliff - had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century's runaway growth has placed a murderous burden on the planet. "A Short History of Progress" argues that this modern predicament is as old as civilisation. Only by understanding the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated since the Stone Age can we recognise the inherent dangers, and, with luck, and wisdom, shape its outcome."
A few criticisms upon finishing the last lecture. It's amazing from an anthropological/archaeological point of view, but the left-liberal political content seems incoherent/naive to me. Saying, on the one hand, that we need to 'rediscover the notion of the common good', and that we need to take society under rational control, and that we need to limit growth, and that we need systemic long-termism, and then to turn around at the end and say the solution doesn't necessarily have to be anti-capitalist seems ridiculous to me, when the destruction of the commons, lack of society-wide rational planning, compound growth and systemic short-termism are inherent features of capitalist society. Also, he approvingly cites Thomas Malthus in the last lecture, which is weird, given his emphasis on the uniqueness of human culture (how we're shaped less and less by natural selection), which Malthus's theory completely ignores in an effort to demonstrate that poverty is an inevitable feature of human societies. But his population principle is bullshit. Humans don't breed like rodents; in reality, the tendency is for higher standards of living to correspond to lower birth-rates. People can and do choose to limit the size of their families. But of course the notion that poverty in the midst of plenty is an inevitability of nature is very attractive to those with plenty. That's why Marx called him a 'shameless sycophant of the ruling classes'. These lectures on the whole could do with a more explicit dose of marxism, cause his analysis is already pure historical-materialism anyway, his analysis of the emergence of class society around the production and control of a surplus is extremely close to Engels. And the last lecture seems to draw heavily from Marx's work on primitive accumulation. So the weak Keynesian political conclusions seem strange. Maybe he's actually farther to the left, but he didn't want to scandalise all the green liberals in the audience. Although, I dunno why he'd draw from Malthus in that case... and he dismisses Marxism (as an ideology) at the end, though he does probably mean the dogmas of the so-called Marxist states. Overall these are absolutely great though--the stuff about indigenous American democracy before the revolution is very interesting--I plan to read the book (if anyone has a digital copy that'd be awwwesome).
I've uploaded the entire series to YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsPMaGdg_38
They're definitely worth your time.
He presents a theory of what he calls 'progress traps', whereby, he argues, societies tend to 'fall victim to their own cleverness'. Progress in a particular area continues until a point is reached at which it becomes a problem, dilemma, danger, etc. One such example is the progression from the invention of gunpowder to the invention of the nuclear bomb. As he puts it, "a small bang can be useful, a bigger bang can end the world." His historical/archaeological analysis of the fall of the Sumerians, Maya, Aztecs, Romans, the Easter Islanders, etc, and the 'progress traps' they built for themselves, tends to focus on 'progress' in hunting that eventually led to the extinction of the prey, and 'progress' in agriculture that eventually left the land barren.
"Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 - by driving a whole herd over a cliff - had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century's runaway growth has placed a murderous burden on the planet. "A Short History of Progress" argues that this modern predicament is as old as civilisation. Only by understanding the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated since the Stone Age can we recognise the inherent dangers, and, with luck, and wisdom, shape its outcome."
A few criticisms upon finishing the last lecture. It's amazing from an anthropological/archaeological point of view, but the left-liberal political content seems incoherent/naive to me. Saying, on the one hand, that we need to 'rediscover the notion of the common good', and that we need to take society under rational control, and that we need to limit growth, and that we need systemic long-termism, and then to turn around at the end and say the solution doesn't necessarily have to be anti-capitalist seems ridiculous to me, when the destruction of the commons, lack of society-wide rational planning, compound growth and systemic short-termism are inherent features of capitalist society. Also, he approvingly cites Thomas Malthus in the last lecture, which is weird, given his emphasis on the uniqueness of human culture (how we're shaped less and less by natural selection), which Malthus's theory completely ignores in an effort to demonstrate that poverty is an inevitable feature of human societies. But his population principle is bullshit. Humans don't breed like rodents; in reality, the tendency is for higher standards of living to correspond to lower birth-rates. People can and do choose to limit the size of their families. But of course the notion that poverty in the midst of plenty is an inevitability of nature is very attractive to those with plenty. That's why Marx called him a 'shameless sycophant of the ruling classes'. These lectures on the whole could do with a more explicit dose of marxism, cause his analysis is already pure historical-materialism anyway, his analysis of the emergence of class society around the production and control of a surplus is extremely close to Engels. And the last lecture seems to draw heavily from Marx's work on primitive accumulation. So the weak Keynesian political conclusions seem strange. Maybe he's actually farther to the left, but he didn't want to scandalise all the green liberals in the audience. Although, I dunno why he'd draw from Malthus in that case... and he dismisses Marxism (as an ideology) at the end, though he does probably mean the dogmas of the so-called Marxist states. Overall these are absolutely great though--the stuff about indigenous American democracy before the revolution is very interesting--I plan to read the book (if anyone has a digital copy that'd be awwwesome).
I've uploaded the entire series to YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsPMaGdg_38
They're definitely worth your time.