A wonderful initiative, best of luck with your book, I’m already looking forward to it!
I believe there are two-fold hindrances for wider acceptance and adoption of such progress-positive ideas, which of course come back to things already mentioned in your posts, and in comments to them.
First of all, the 18th-19th century progress movement came on the back of tangible progress on multiple fronts of society, from population growth, technological development, increasing military/political strength vis-a-vis the rest of the world, and broad-based improvements in income and quality of life across the population. All of these things in their own way supported an ideology of optimism, growth and progress; since everything was actually improving, it was quite natural to believe in further and greater progress too.
Yet, most of the same trends today are either stagnant, absent or even on negative, rather than positive, trajectories. In that sense, a generally positive or optimistic outlook is that much harder to come by, even in a more narrow technological or scientific sense, where progress remains clear. In another way, this perhaps means that an optimistic philosophy of progress could also be more valuable than ever, if it should supply reasons to invest and work for the future despite a bleaker outlook.
Secondly, much less importantly, progress or progressivism as words may have certain political connotations among many people, which may in some cases deter interest or adoption due to confusion or association with politics (and in other cases be a positive factor).
Personally I am currently very interested in the way ideas and values can guide broader success and failure of societies—as such this seems like an extremely interesting project! The way I see it one of the key problems in the west presently is a broad lack of positive vision and future expectations, on the back of the troubling trends mentioned. From your post, it obvious you’re aware of the same issues and looking to solve them. A philosophy of progress could be a key part in of amending the situation, thus immensely valuable.
A wonderful initiative, best of luck with your book, I’m already looking forward to it!
I believe there are two-fold hindrances for wider acceptance and adoption of such progress-positive ideas, which of course come back to things already mentioned in your posts, and in comments to them.
First of all, the 18th-19th century progress movement came on the back of tangible progress on multiple fronts of society, from population growth, technological development, increasing military/political strength vis-a-vis the rest of the world, and broad-based improvements in income and quality of life across the population. All of these things in their own way supported an ideology of optimism, growth and progress; since everything was actually improving, it was quite natural to believe in further and greater progress too.
Yet, most of the same trends today are either stagnant, absent or even on negative, rather than positive, trajectories. In that sense, a generally positive or optimistic outlook is that much harder to come by, even in a more narrow technological or scientific sense, where progress remains clear. In another way, this perhaps means that an optimistic philosophy of progress could also be more valuable than ever, if it should supply reasons to invest and work for the future despite a bleaker outlook.
Secondly, much less importantly, progress or progressivism as words may have certain political connotations among many people, which may in some cases deter interest or adoption due to confusion or association with politics (and in other cases be a positive factor).
Personally I am currently very interested in the way ideas and values can guide broader success and failure of societies—as such this seems like an extremely interesting project! The way I see it one of the key problems in the west presently is a broad lack of positive vision and future expectations, on the back of the troubling trends mentioned. From your post, it obvious you’re aware of the same issues and looking to solve them. A philosophy of progress could be a key part in of amending the situation, thus immensely valuable.