Rescuing Progress

Toward a myth of Creative Becoming

"Progress is a false god". We hear and see the traditionalist proclamation on a near daily basis if we're remotely tied into the real political discourse happening on social media.

It's unfortunate, really, that those who write their scathing critiques of modernity whip into a frenzy those 90% who scroll past essays, reading nothing but their titles, and take from the works of their authors that progress simply doesn't exist. This isn't the intent of most who critique the modern world by any means. Their works are boiled down to paraphrases and slogans and bastardized as a result. When I read that the modern world has replaced quality with quantity (which is true in so many cases), I don't see a denial that the Human race has made, or is capable of making, progress.

But a large mass of people are swayed to and fro by whichever side of the political debate has the catchiest titles and the most visually appealing AI-generated art. The domain of esoteric thought has grown to encompass all written word, not because it's hidden from public consumption, but because no one is reading it. The domain of exoteric thought, on the other hand, has shrunk to include only essay and book titles, and the visual artwork accompanying them, leading many to come to the most extreme assumptions about what the author says in what are usually far more nuanced works. "Progress is a false god" becomes "reject all innovation because progress does not exist".

If the vast majority of Humanity responds to technological advancement in such a way, by using it as a crutch, decreasing their attention spans and delegating their own intellectual capacities to slogans, essay titles, and visual aesthetic appeal, then we're cooked; doomed to regress into anti-intellectual dogmatism. Such a regression would only feed the narrative of the true, self-proclaimed enemies of progress, the Perennialists. They’d declare it further proof that progress doesn't exist.

Of course, it isn't even that Perennialists disbelieve in progress, truly. Progress to him would be the regression I described; a return to some ancient "golden age". Progress, after all, is just a word that has meaning. It is the result of movement in the direction of the accomplishment of a goal. Every ideology and philosophy has goals, and so they all have a conception of what progress looks like.

So there is no large proportion of intellectuals critiquing progress as a thing that exists. Those who are are a minority coming from the traditionalist right who love to tell modern so-called liberals that just because something is a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't exist or is unimportant. That is, of course, true, but in the same breath they will proclaim the nonexistence of progress because it's relative and often socially-constructed. Utterly nonsensical.

The only true, principled anti-progressives I can think of are the anarcho-primitivists who seek to bring all of Humanity back to pre-agrarian living. Unfortunately for them, all it would take for their primitivist revolution to be reversed would be for one bloodline to have the inkling of a desire to use forethought and planning in order to make life a little easier for their children. Compounded over time we'd get right back to where we are now.

This mirrors the cyclical worldview of the Perennialists and some right-wing traditionalist Pagans who believe history to be a repetition of falls from the ancient golden order and eventual returns. Here is where anti-progressive thinking on the right really finds its roots. Human progress is nothing more than hubristic power-seeking that inevitably fails. It's a futile venture, and it's futile because it's an attempt to improve upon an already perfect order.

As I've discussed in "The Life Affirming Way", no perfect order ever would've collapsed to begin with, and to seek to build a perfect order that would never collapse is to seek the instrumentality of the individual to said order. That is to say, to rob them of their free will, which is a blatant rejection of the Metapurpose and goes against the very nature of the Cosmos as a place of eternal becoming.

The Cosmos being in a state of eternal becoming is evidenced by the fact that it's in motion, both in physical space and in time. It is, itself, progressing toward a future state, and Humans can have a significant effect on what that future state is, but only if they are allowed to use their free will and creativity. The Cosmos is progressing with or without us and to regress into a Perennialist order would be a declaration on the part of the Human race that we've lost our will to continue, at which point it would be a mercy to simply go extinct (and I think that's what would inevitably happen).

Progress, in my ontology, is a declaration of the opposite; that Humanity has more to create, and that we will assist and even guide this Cosmic process of becoming. Toward this end, progress is the expansion of power in the hands of the individual, tempered by the ethical and psychological development necessary for the individual to use said power without destroying his or herself or his or her society. Progress is the expansion of free will.

Anti-progress, on the other hand, is a refusal to play the game and, when politicized, is an attempt to end the game for everyone else, too. It's worse than that. It's the propagandizing to all future generations that their efforts to improve their lives are doomed and evil. It is the most nihilistic way of thinking I can imagine.

I still haven't said much about what rescuing progress entails. It could be expected based on the beginning of this essay that I intend to offer ways to resurrect and reinvigorate progress in the eyes of the masses. Unfortunately, they're not reading this or anything like this. As discussed in "Breakaway Civilization", the Human race is standing at the most consequential crossroad it has ever come across. We choose between a comfortable stagnation and death and the risky path to all possible futures. It's with a measure of despair that I say very few of us will survive beyond the imminent technological singularity in a way that keeps our free will intact, and it is with great hope that I truly believe some of us will make it out the other side freer than ever before.

The Perennialists will say we play with fire. Yes. But rather than stop, I accept the challenge that it will either burn me, or I may learn to bend it to my will. Let those who would consign themselves to the cold darkness, freeze. Let those who would be burned, burn. Let those who would learn to command the flame embrace the Metapurpose, drive back the darkness, and truly live.

In Liberty or in death,

Contingency