A Short History of Progress | Ronald Wright | Concise and unabashed review of our "civilized world"

A Short History of Progress | Ronald Wright | so sad

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A Short History of...

	A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright Da Capo Press, 2005 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 39 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Concise and unabashed review of our "civilized world"

A concise history of our world in 132 pages and 50 pages of footnotes? I would have never believed it could be done. But Mr. Wright has done it. He minces no words and carefully uses every word chosen.

My world travels and prior readings/videos has noted many aspects of what he talks about - but he puts it all together concisely and clearly. We keep running the same experiment over and over and it keeps ending in disaster, the only issue now is that the experiment is being run on the entire world now.

I've yet to read Collapse by Jared Diamond, but after only getting half way through Guns, Germs, and Steel (DVD is easy to watch), I'm glad Mr.Wright provides an accessible alternative.

The author's sole recommendation is to state the shift from short term to long term thinking - this sounds great in theory, but has rarely been heeded outside of some indigenous groups and a couple of nations (See below). Perhaps more insightful would be to address an even darker subject - Self Deception. I *highly* recommend - Why We Lie by David Livingstone Smith. Hope and fear arise out of self-deception. Learning about right-brain/left-brain imbalance is insightful too. Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind is another insightful read on this too.

For the DVD minded - I recommend: Globe Trekker - Great Historic Sights (A veritable tour of the graveyards of 'our' greatest cities and societies), National Geographic's Strange Days on Planet Earth, Charcoal People, Atomic Cafe, Orwell Rolls in his Grave (US-300 million and ONLY two political parties?!!), and Persuaders. The fictional movie Rapa Nui with Jason Scott Lee might be interesting too.

For the travel minded - visit Scandinavia and understand their way of thinking - therein lies the answer. - Jante Law - find and understand it on Wikipedia. Traveling to India and China to see how far self-deception really can go is insightful too. Or you could just watch any number of videos on genocide - whether they be Nazis, Rwanda, Cambodia, or any number in between. Or learning about factory farming...

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so sad

author presents a less than hopeful view of humanity's survival unless drastic steps, political and economic,are recognized and embraced. When read along with viewing the recent (summer 2006) movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" I came away discouraged. However, I may just be reflecting an old man's view that, "the world is going to .... etc"). However, I do NOT subscribe to literalist view of biblical end of times theology!

cynicism, and collapse

Following Jared Diamonds work in 'Collapse' this book once again sounds the alarm that chaotic progress and plundering of resources will lead to the end of progress. The idea here is first to question the very notion of 'progress' and to question what is 'civilization' and what is better or worse. The question is posed "who are we to judge what is better" an old moral relativist argument. From there we are told that history is in fact proving that almost all 'progressive' societies failed, such as the Greeks or Easter Island, or basically any high civilization of the past. Since the past is a history of failure, how can we ourselves suceed? We can only suceed by ending capitalism and not destroying the environment. A short, fun book whose premise and conclusions are totally wrong and irrelevant.

Seth J. Frantzman

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Recommended by my dad, a staunch republican

"Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" - Paul Gauguin

Ronald Wright wrote A Short History of Progress to address the last question: "Where are we going?". His answer is that if we continue to repeat our history of progress we will also repeat our history of self destruction; specifically, our culture will consume the resources of our environment to the point of exhaustion in the pursuit of wealth and population growth.

The reader is expected to conclude that if our culture is to escape the calamities of the past our cultural goals must be in alignment with an environment of limited production capability. And because our cultural goals are the summation of our personal goals we must begin by taking action personally.

For example, I can take action by recognizing that spending time with my family is more valuable than acquiring possessions. Therefore, I will have taken the step of aligning my personal goals with environmentally friendly activities, and thus, contributing my small part in aligning our cultural goals with a sustainable environment.

Why only 3 stars?

Because 1) Ronald Wright uses way too many ten dollar words 2) He is more attached to his ideology than his subject, hence, leaving his book void of a practical action plan to avoid the pitfalls of environmental consumption, and 3) His tone of writing shares more commonality with a pompous intellectual than a humble observer of history. The kids of South Park would do a better job of addressing this subject than Ronald Wright did - not to mention more entertaining; A Short History of Progress is as dry as the Sahara in summer...at high noon!

A must read? Only if you must.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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