World religions and ecology

World Religions and Ecology

The book "A Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright is in fact not primarily a history of progress, but rather a recording of what unmanageable progress can do and how the extraordinary technological and scientific progress may, one day, bring the end of this civilization, just as it has so many others before, unless it is properly controlled and its effects properly managed and countered.

From his perspective, the 20th century brought about an uncontrollable growth in everything ranging from demographics to technology and from urban and economic development to information technology. While all these should have primarily a positive effect and positive consequences on humanity and on the development of the human society, they also impact the environment, reduce available resources and, in fact, threaten the existence of the world.

The danger is, as Wright points out, that the speed at which things are developing may make the navigation more difficult. A more sustainable development is required to ensure that the world is able to avoid the numerous threats that lay ahead: "Our civilization, which subsumes most of its predecessors, is a great ship steaming at speed into the future. It travels faster, further, and more laden than any before. We may not be able to foresee every reef and hazard, but by reading her compass bearing and headway, by understanding her design, her safety record, and the abilities of her crew, we can, I think, plot a wise course between the narrows and the bergs looming ahead"

The subject and thesis of Wright's work is certainly in line with many of the developments we see today in the world. There are more and more voices concerned that the development of society today is done at unsustainable rates and in a rhythm that is likely to have a negative impact on the environment. Putting these elements together, the greatest concern is that, in this rhythm, the destruction of the world will become, at some point, unavoidable.

From this perspective, Wright's work is not only another overview of a problematic that has been so often a subject of discussion and debate nowadays. It is also a signal that the human society should not only look into the future, but learn from the past, from the numerous previous civilizations that eventually disappeared because of the excesses they were subjecting themselves to. As he mentions at the end of his book, "things are moving so fast that inaction itself is one of the biggest mistakes. The 10,000-year experiment of the settled life will stand or fall by what we do, and don't do, now. The reform (…) is simply the transition from short-term to long-term thinking. From recklessness and excess to moderation and the precautionary principle"

The book does follow primarily a historical approach, although it is at times intertwined with philosophical arguments, as would any subject related to the end of the world. As such, the first chapter starts with the mention of Gauguin, which induces the reader to think on what the possible connection between Gauguin, a historical character, and the subject at hand is. The connection is, in fact, given by a philosophical approach: Gauguin is in fact an individual who asks himself existentialist questions that determine the life of an individual: where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

As the author mentions later on, his main focus will be the "where are we going," which means the future developments of the world. However, the other questions are also important pretexts to be used in his argumentation. As such, he first refers to the "where do we come from?" As an important perspective from the past civilizations into the future ones. From there, Wright follows an interesting historical survey of civilization, starting with the Ice Age and Stone Age. It is interesting to note the comment he makes on the interaction between the Neanderthal man and the Homo Sapiens, in which he identifies the Neanderthal man as the first victim of human genocide or, in other words, the first victim of the continuous struggle for survival and progress of which Homo Sapiens is the center.

As always throughout his book, whenever analyzing the past and the events of the past, the focus quickly transfers to the future. When discussing the interaction between the Neanderthal and the Homo Sapiens, the transition immediately goes to looking into the past and in understanding that the human individual is sometimes unlikely to make any compromises in his search for progress. One can also better understand the ruthlessness of the human specie and understand the risk to which other species can be subjected to.

The look in the past also gives very obvious and interesting aspects of civilizations that disappeared because of reasons we may encounter in the future for our own civilization. The Sumerians, for example, disappeared because they had consumed all the resources that were supporting their civilization. One can obviously wonder whether this is not something that could also occur in our own times. With progress, often additional dangers appear and, as the author mentions, the key is often in the rhythm and way with which progress appears and develops: "the devil here is in the scale: a good bang can be useful; a better bang can end the world"

Other civilizations, like the Egyptian one, have, in Wright's opinion, had the capacity to regenerate its environment, both because of a more moderate growth and because of the environment itself. Today, this seems almost impossible, both because of the rhythm of the destruction done to the environment and because of the demographic growth, with the numbers surpassing 6 billion inhabitants.

One of the most concerning problems that Wright identifies is the fact that globalization has made the entire world interconnected. While this has become a mantra of liberal economists, Wright supports the idea that globalization and liberalization will, in fact, increase the rhythm in which the destruction occurs, mainly because the globalized world will mean that problems in one part of the world will immediately impact and be felt in any of the other places of the world to which the respective one is connected and to which that relates. As such, he mentions Joseph Tainter who notes that "collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. ... World civilization will disintegrate as a whole"

As mentioned, the argument follows the historical line in tacitly emphasizing that the human society today needs to learn from the errors of the past and that it needs to monitor and understand why other civilizations failed in order to be able to defend itself from the potential errors that would bring it the same type of downfall. At the same time, the approach needs to be a long-term approach, one that focuses on future consequences as well as on the present evolutions.