Short History of Progress author say all hope isn’t lost… yet
Ronald Wright is the prophet of doom.
His book A Short History of Progress says that we are progressing too fast for our own good and that it will ultimately lead to our destruction.
Students filled the Kinsella Auditorium last Thursday afternoon to get a chance to ask Wright questions about his book. Most of them were looking for hope.
Wright walked on stage. Everyone clapped then fell silent quickly in anticipation. He’s not the dark and twisted personality you might expect from someone with such sombre theories and questions about the world. His expressive dark eyebrows contrast with his silver hair and his entire face wrinkles as he smiles and laughs – which happened often. He crossed his legs and placed his hand on his knee very daintily when he wasn’t waving it around in the air for emphasis.
“People still expect that everything is going to get bigger and better and everyone’s going to get wealthier as time goes on,” Wright said. “And most people believed that throughout most of the twentieth century. More people are starting to question that now.”
Wright is a leader to those people. We normally think of progress as a good thing, but Wright urges us to see it as dangerous. Overpopulation, environmental destruction, and technological advancements – nuclear war, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology – are things he says we can’t afford to do much longer. These advancements have unforeseeable consequences and Wright says we need to start slowing down.
However, Wright said there is still some hope left, and it lies with young people.
“I don’t think it’s hopeless and I don’t think it’s too late and I don’t think it’s helpful either for people who are worried about the environmental crisis or overpopulation to say it’s too late, that’s not helpful at all,” Wright said. “That’s where young people especially come in because young people are idealistic, they have energy, they are very big picture thinkers and it’s your future. They’re the ones who are going to inherit the mess if we don’t get it together very soon.”
Wright said he doesn’t know what needs to be done specifically to slow down the progress that came to crescendo in the twentieth century, but he knows what is standing in the way.
“It’s going to take a huge shift in economic and political structures of our civilization. I think that shift is starting to happen but of course there are a great number of formidable enemies against making such a shift,” he said.
Wright explained that greed found in large corporations is one of these enemies.
Jane Jenkins, a professor at St. Thomas University, uses Wright’s book in her Science, Technology and Society class. She also thinks the hope of the future lies in the hands of young people.
“I hope that young people question and interrogate science and technology,” she said. “I want students to become more aware of the powerful roles that science and technology play in our world.”
Christopher Sleep is a student who attended the Q&A with Wright. When he read the book, he said he felt weary about the future of the world. But after hearing Wright speak, he feels more optimistic.
“There was a lot more hope in what he told us than there was in the book, which was nice.”
And according to Wright, we can ultimately find hope in the fact than humans tend to take action when it’s their last hope of survival.
“Things are going to get worse before they get better,” he said.
