This document provides a summary and analysis of the concept of progress. It argues that while humanity's ability to question and think critically initially seemed to set us apart from animals, our instincts have remained largely the same. It discusses how the Victorian ideal of perpetual progress is flawed and has led civilization into a "progress trap" by prioritizing unsustainable growth. The document analyzes how civilizations function like pyramid schemes, concentrating wealth and resources at the top in an unstable way. It argues that our current concept of progress primarily serves to generate profit rather than ethical improvement.

1. Introduction to Business and Society
Essay 2: The Fate of Humanity
Name: Sahana Suthan (212 306 734)
TA: Keith
Date: Sunday, February 19th
2017

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The only real ability that sets humans apart from animals, is our capability to ask “why?”
(Surviving Progress 00:12:35), our ability to question, our over-developed curiosity, is what
distinguishes homo sapiens from animals. But our instincts, after 5 million years of evolution,
remains the same. So, what is a human being really implying when they claim they are superior to
animals? How? In what way? Because we have the ability to question humans assume they’re
superior to animals? Or maybe it’s our ability to ‘progress’. But progress towards what?
Civilization? And how far has that really gotten us? Although, our curiosity, and our ability to
question why things happen the way that they do has lead us to believe we are different from
animals, have we really been behaving any different from how animals behave? Have we really
been able to fight our animalistic instincts in the place, the society, that we’ve built for ourselves
as a species? Or, could this so called ‘society’, simply act as a metaphor for what we like to call,
‘the wild’? We call ourselves civilized but we act no different from our ancestors in the old stone
age who ran herds of mammoths over a cliff to their extinction, and called that a feast. (Surviving
Progress 00:07:25) We look at this incident and call it catastrophe, but is that any different from
what we’re doing today? So, the real question is then, have we really progressed?
Real Progress
When we think of the word progress, we may consider everyday meanings of progress,
such as: moving forward; improvement; efficiency; technological advancement; innovation;
growth; better or living better; not stagnant; transformation; learning new things; learning from
our mistakes and learning from past experiences; this idea that, because of these so called
materialistic ‘improvements’ or ‘advances’, that the present is better than the past. – But is it?

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Progress Traps
“A seductive trail of successes may end in a trap” (A Short History of Progress , 5). Ronald
Wright in Surviving Progress articulates the importance of making a distinction between good
progress and bad progress (Surviving Progress 00:03:29). There’s this interesting notion that there
can be too much progress, which eventually leads us into progress traps. The distinction between
progress and a progress trap is really subtle. It has to do with quantity that’s in line with need –
implying that too much progress includes a lot of waste.
Wright provides an intriguing example that allows one to clearly understand this distinction.
“The people who discovered how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made real progress –
but the people who discovered that they could eat really well by driving a whole herd over a cliff
and kill 200 at once, had fallen into a progress trap, they made too much progress” (Surviving
Progress 00:07:25). Wright came up with the term ‘progress trap’ “to define human behaviours
that seem to provide benefits in the short-term but which ultimately lead to disaster because they’re
unsustainable.” (Surviving Progress 00:07:07) The key word here is ‘short-term’. We need to
understand that “things that start out to seem like improvements or progress, are very seductive
and may seem like there’s no down side – but when they reach a certain scale they turn out to be
dead ends or traps” (Surviving Progress 00:06:50). Richard Cummings describes, progress as a
comfortable disease (100 Selected Poems , 158); so comfortable, we could be the death of it and
we wouldn’t realize until it’s too late. This idea of civilization, could be the biggest progress trap
in human history (Surviving Progress 00:31:14) due to the Victorian ideal of progress.

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Victorian Ideal of Progress
Our idea of progress is the Victorian Idea of progress which is “based on the assumption that
a pattern of change exists in the history of mankind…[and] that it consists of irreversible changes
in one direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement” (A Short History of Progress
, 3). One of the key terms in this definition by Sidney Pollard quoted in A Short History of Progress
is ‘changes in one direction only’. This ideology etched into the system of our civilization, implies
that the concept of progress will always move towards improvement. The idea of progress is based
on an assumption and should be taken for granted and is therefore questionable and open to
interpretation. Progress has become myth as our faith in progress has become an ideology, one
that’s blind to its flaws (A Short History of Progress , 4). Through this ideology, as Valclav Smil
points out, “People have been conditioned to think that things have to always get better, if you say
‘limit something’, people think this is not getting better … but it would be.” (Surviving Progress
01:11:50). Our civilization strives off a controversial idea of progress – an ideology – that was
brought into play half a century ago. It’s no wonder we’ve reached a dead end.
Pyramid Scheme
Wright uses the analysis of the physical attributes of a pyramid to describe the functions of
a civilization. He uses “Rome and the Maya [to] show that civilizations often behave like ‘pyramid’
sales schemes, thriving only while they grow…Such civilization is therefore most unstable at its
peak, when it has reached maximum demand on the ecology. Unless a new source of wealth or
energy appears, it has no room left to raise production or absorb the shock of natural fluctuations.

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The only way onward is to keep wringing new loans from nature and humanity.” (A Short History
of Progress , 84). “The more dangerous side of this problem is the individuals at the top of the
social pyramid who are consuming the most.” (Surviving Progress 00:18:04). Since the Roman
Empire, “wealth has always been at the top of the economic pyramid, and that’s what progress has
meant ever since…if society doesn’t realize that if it lets wealth concentrate in the hand of a
financial class, this class is not going to be any more intelligent in the long-term in disposing of
the wealth than their predecessors were.” (Surviving Progress 00:35:40).
The way resources are allocated throughout civilizations all over the World is extremely
uneven and unfair. Those in ‘power’ at the top level of the pyramid, have access to all the resources,
more than they need to survive, and are taking from the poor. The lower level of the pyramid is
again sacrificing their own lives to feed the top, but is this really necessary? Is it not possible to
feed both the top and the bottom?
The amount of money America spends in one week on their military, could end world
hunger (Gucciardi , par. 1). This is the type of irresponsible, disgraceful, unacceptable, idiocy, the
people in ‘power’ do with their privileged access to an abundant amount of resources. People
within ‘developed’ countries have more food than they can eat while people within ‘un-developed’
countries starve to death.
When Marina Silva started in IBAMA, she thought as an inspector she could defend her
ideas, but what she can do is so small compared to what’s going on right now (Surviving Progress
00:49:07). She knows that the people she catches are not those really behind deforestation of the
Amazon forest in Brazil (Surviving Progress 00:52:59). But due to the hierarchical and power-
driven-from-top-to-bottom structure our societies are built on, even those that wish to help with
the environmental issues that we’re facing today, can’t seem to make the difference that is needed.

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Unfortunately, those that have strived all their lives and have put forth their time and energy to
prevent this from continuing, those that are trying to make a difference, are unable to do so, because
the power they are forced to be ruled under, prevents them from taking any action, if it intrudes
with profits from being obtained.
The biggest Progress Trap of History
Progress, in today’s society, has forced us into this endless loop of believing that more of
the same is better (Surviving Progress 00:06:02). “Our technological culture measures human
progress by technology: the club is better than the fist, the arrow better than the club, the bullet
better than the arrow. We came to this belief for empirical reasons: because it delivered” (A Short
History of Progress , 4). Our ideology of progress has strived from this idea that progress should
be based on economic growth. (Surviving Progress 00:28:48)
We have progressed in the sense that we have invented and created these tools and ideas
to allow us to live a fuller more convenient and better lifestyle, allowing us to obtain all the things
we desire. But this is all materialistic. We have strived for convenience since the technological era,
but this idea of convenience has driven us towards an ideology of progress as opposed to progress
itself. A little is okay, in abstract these characteristics are ok, but when it just becomes this limitless
desire where we’re inventing things for the sake of inventing things without a real ethical purpose,
then that means that there’s no end in mind other than to make profit. We’re all brainwashed by
this short-term version of progress. We do everything we can, to obtain all the money that we can,
within the shortest time period possible, in order to pay for things that we don’t even need, and
hardly ever actually use, which all goes to a huge waste anyway, for what? None of us are going

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to make it out of this life alive and when we’re gone, all these materialistic objects won’t matter
anyway. Every rich person has said nearly the same thing while on their death bed. They all
regretted spending majority of their time chasing after money and wished they had instead spent
more time with their loved ones, and paid attention to the little priceless things in life because
those are the things that matter in the long haul.
But people aren’t willing to go back on consumption because they’ve been seduced by the
immensely powerful persuasion of this material culture(Surviving Progress 01:12:33). The belief
that is engraved into all of us by society is that we should be focused on the now as opposed to
tomorrow. Were always pushed towards making more money and obtaining more education and
making the economy better. But we fail to realize that there will be no economy without the World.
Economists say to clear cut a forest, take the money and put it into profit making projects.
“So who cares whether you keep the forest, cut it down, put the money somewhere else. When
those forests are gone, put it in fish. When the fish are gone put it in computers. Money doesn’t
stand for anything and money now grows faster than the real world. Conventional economics is a
form of brain damage.” (Surviving Progress 00:55:09) Economics doesn’t even take natural
resources and the gifts of Nature into consideration. It’s not even a part of the equation when
calculating ‘profits’. She (Mother Nature) is not even considered when she should be put first.
‘Profits’ shouldn’t matter and should be the least of our worries when we have a whole World, our
only home, to protect.
Our way of life and the systems we have built into the way we function as a global essence,
is through capital in the form of money. Water, Forests, Soil, Minerals, Oil, these are all natural
resources produced by Her, they are not man-made. And the fact that conceited people could
actually think they have the audacity to put a price on other human beings, a price on life, a price

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on things they didn’t create and do not own and have no real right to, and a price on that which
never belonged to us…how dare we? Who do we think we are? (Surviving Progress 000:46:24)
It’s an endless cycle of paying each other back and dealing with debt, but what about the
bigger picture? There will be no one to pay your debts, there will be no economy, there will be no
human on Earth to worry about these infinite and materialistic things if there Is. No. World.
(Surviving Progress 00:53:32). Past civilizations didn’t know this would happen, and they had the
option of just starting over or extracting resources from the next country or next piece of land, but
do we? At least we have the ability to see their mistakes and know the outcome and therefore act
accordingly to prevent our fate from become the same as theirs, so what’s our excuse? When we’ve
extracted all of our resources, do we have another World to take resources from? We keep robbing
from our future to pay for our present, but the future only holds so much, eventually reaching a
point where, there’s nothing left to rob, there’s nothing left at all. Our civilization’s operating
system has become incompatible with the elements of life and nature. “We tend to dilute ourselves
that changes always results in improvements” (Surviving Progress 00:03:54), and sometimes
change can be a good thing – but we’ve already tried this, and it’s not working, and we can’t just
keep doing it under the assumption that it will work, we can’t keep burying our fate into ‘advanced
technology’ in the hopes that it will save us all. That hasn’t worked in all the attempts that we’ve
tried, presuming that it still will, is nothing but idiotic.
Blinded by Progress
The myth of progress blinds us of the negative consequences of the ideology of progress…
but how? – The answer: instinct. “Our physical bodies and our physical brains as far as we can

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tell, have changed very little in the past 50 thousand years.” (Surviving Progress 00:08:08). Our
ancestors from the stone age are still within us today, and these instincts have become wedded
within our ideology and way of life.
But we’re more than our instincts, and I believe our instincts can change over time and our
human nature can change over thousands of years. As Salvadori states in Progress: Can We Do
Without It? many people, especially in rich countries, “fear the cost of the effective strategy of
‘sustainable development” (Progress: Can We Do Without It? , 105), and fail to realize that this
irrational fear will only avert us from taking the actions that we must take in order to secure our
survival. We must conquer our fears and our instincts and do what we know we have to do to make
it out alive. It’s possible to achieve this goal of a sustainable planet. “If we can move from non-
consumption to consumption, we can also move from consumption back to non-consumption.”
This is demonstrated through Colin Beavan’s No Impact Project (Surviving Progress 01:15:43).
But can we?
“Joseph Tainter argues that complex systems inevitably succumb to diminishing returns.”
(A Short History of Progress , 92). So, can this trap be avoided? Does this then prove that we, as
a species, are in fact destined to fall into the trap of progress, and let our indiscreet levels of greed
completely take over?
Is there hope or are we doomed?
As Egypt and China have successfully demonstrated, no, we’re not. It’s more than possible
for us to live sustained lives while preserving our resources for future generations (Wright, A Short
History of Progress , 103). Like Erik Assadourian, Tom Prugh and Linda Starke stated in State of

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the World. Some may question if sustainability is even possible at this point. But as they continued
to mention – there’s still hope (State of the World: Is Sustainability Still Possible).
Throughout history, our solutions for progress traps have only created more progress traps.
Scientists believe that synthetic biology is the answer to our dilemma, but synthetic biology itself
is yet another progress trap. (Surviving Progress 01:07:42) There’s controversy of the limitations
of synthetic biology, but that’s not the point. We’re not God. Yes, we can, through science,
understand nature and its abilities, such as discovering gravity, why it rains, the season changes –
but we can’t, no, we shouldn’t control it.
It’s not a matter of whether we can. Everything we thought we couldn’t, and would never
be able to achieve, has been conquered. The point is, we shouldn’t because nature is natural, not
man made, and it has come this far without us and doesn’t need us to survive. We must live within
the limitations of nature (Surviving Progress 01:15:21). We’ve never gotten anything good out of
interfering with nature and natural cycles. We are a system – the entire planet is a system – we
must all do our part to sustain ourselves. Working together with other people and animals and
nature to sustain everyone and everything for the good of all – THAT’S the solution – the only
promising one, that will work, and we need to start now. We can’t just sit here, waiting for science
to figure it all out. We. Need. To. Act. Now.
“We always have been the initiators of this experiment… but now it’s more likely that
we’re going to come to grief because of environmental problems. If we do, then that is really nature
saying the experiment of civilization is a failed evolutionary experiment, that making apes smarter
is a dead end. So, it’s up to us to prove nature wrong, in a sense, to show that we can take control

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of our own destinies and behave in a wise way that will ensure the continuation of our species.”
(Surviving Progress 01:21:43) Without progression for the Earth and nature, there can’t be real
progress. I believe there’s still hope for us and that we can turn our destiny around. We’re not a
lost cause, we can’t be. And Wright seems to agree with that. If Ronald Wright truly believed that
there was no hope left for humanity, he wouldn’t have bothered writing the book in the first place.
Someone with reason once said: You are the result of 4 billion years of evolutionary success.
Act like it.

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Bibliography
Assadourian, Erik and Tom Prugh. State of the World: Is Sustainability Still Possible. Ed. Linda
Starke. Island Press, 2013.
Cummings, Edward Estlin. 100 Selected Poems. Ed. Richard S Kennedy. 1st Evergreen ed. W. W.
Norton & Company, 2007.
Gucciardi, Anthony. "About One Week of US Military Spending Would Wipe Out World
Hunger." 24 June 2013.
Salvadori, Massimo. Progress: Can We Do Without It? Zed Books Ltd, 2008.
Surviving Progress. By Harold Crooks and Mathieu Roy. Dirs. Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks.
Prods. Daniel Louis, Denise Robert and Gerry Flahive. First Run Features, 2011. Film.
Wright, Ronald. A Short History of Progress. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc, 2004.
—. A Short History of Progress . Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc. , 2004.