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No hope, just an awareness of what's being done now and what's been done in the past, is what Ronald Wright will permit in 'A Short History Of Progress', his grim, ammoniacal Massey Lectures, the 43rd in the series.
In five lucid, meticulously documented essays, Wright traces the rise and plummet of four regional civilizations - those of Sumer, Rome, Easter Island, and the Maya - and judges that most, perhaps all, of humanity is making and will continue to make mistakes equally disastrous as theirs. He gives general reasons first for not reckoning we'll pull back from the brink. Important among them is an anthropological observation. As individuals, we live long lives. We evolve more slowly than we should, given our lack of vision and our aggressive, selfish nature. We seem to lack the collective wisdom and the insight into cause and effect to realize the limits to what Wright calls the "experiment" of civilization. What Wright calls natural "subsidies" underwrite civilizations' successes. The squandering of those gifts presages inevitable failure, but with careful, canny stewardship, a civilization can manage to muddle through eons. We certainly have the tools for change and remediation; we also know what our ancestors did wrong and what happened to them. We're faced, our author observes, with two choices: either do nothing - what he calls "one of the biggest mistakes" - or try to effect "the transition from short-term to long-term thinking." His evidence suggests we're taking the first alternative, which will include a swift, final ride into the dark future on the runaway train of progress.
Wright's account tempts one to bet on the rats and roaches.
Special Online Price Only RRP: $25.95
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| ISBN 13: | 9781920885793 |
| ISBN 10: | 192088579X |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Dimensions: | 198 x 129 mm |
| Released: | 01/09/2008 |
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