The Cult of Progress

What sort of world are we building for our great-grandchildren? What sort of life will they have and is the nature of our ecosystems being altered by our quest for "progress" to the point of no return, where it shall be unable to susatin life?
Why is the assumption that all technological invention is benign when it so very obviously is not? Why the blind eye turned to the suffering of organic life - plant, animal and human? Derrick Jensen's latest published in Orion magazine address these questions.

"Most people today have not awakened from the Cult of Progress. Even with the world being dismembered before their eyes, nearly all public figures continue to be members of this cult. The same is true for many nonpublic figures—for most of us—as we seem unquestioningly to presume that tomorrow’s progress will bring more good things to life, and will simultaneously solve the problems created by yesterday’s and today’s progress (without then creating yet more problems, as “progress” always seems to do)."
~ Dystopia, at LATOC
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QUOTE In 1970 Lewis Mumford wrote, “The chief premise common to both technology and science is the notion that there are no desirable limits to the increase of knowledge, of material goods, of environmental control; that quantitative productivity is an end in itself, and that every means should be used to further expansion.” Mumford asked the same question that so many of us ask, which is, Why on earth would a culture do so many crazy, stupid, destructive things? His answer cuts through the typical cornucopian garbage: “The desired reward of this magic is not just abundance but absolute control.” Mumford knew—as we all do—that there was no hope in proceeding “on the terms imposed by technocratic society.” He didn’t think change would be easy, saying that it might take “an all-out fatal shock treatment, close to catastrophe, to break the hold of civilized man’s chronic psychosis.” He was not optimistic: “Even such a belated awakening would be a miracle.” UNQUOTE

The rest of the article here: High on Progress by Derrick Jensen from Orion magazine.
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