We call this progress?

Making a name for ourselves

What is progress?  Defining it is not easy.  To take a few contemporary examples, many parents in Plano, Texas think that progress is taking their toddlers and youngsters to a Drag Queen show to shove dollar bills into a performer’s bra.  Lots of people in Germany think that having no energy to keep themselves warm this winter is a step in the right direction. There are world leaders who think that the war in Ukraine is a blessing because it will speed up the transition to renewable energy.  Progress?  Lots of other people take issue with these examples of progress and that is the problem.  Whose view of progress is the right one?  The American Heritage Dictionary defines progress as a noun:

1. Forward or onward movement, as toward a destination.

2. Development, advancement, or improvement, as toward a goal.

3. A ceremonial journey made by a sovereign through his or her realm.

From this definition the operative concept is “advancement toward a goal”. The issue is the definition of the goal.  If my goal is not yours then my progress will be viewed by you as retrogressive.  It may surprise you to learn that the idea of “progress” is based on an underlying worldview.  The early 20th century philosopher J.B. Bury believed that the concept of progress did not emerge until the late Renaissance period.  In 1920, he stated that:

In the Middle Ages Europeans followed a different guiding star. The idea of a life beyond the grave was in control, and the great things of this life were conducted with reference to the next. When men's deepest feelings reacted more steadily and powerfully to the idea of saving their souls than to any other, harmony with this idea was the test by which the opportuneness of social theories and institutions was judged….

For the hope of an ultimate happy state on this planet to be enjoyed by future generations—or of some state, at least, that may relatively be considered happy—has replaced, as a social power, the hope of felicity in another world. Belief in personal immortality is still very widely entertained, but may we not fairly say that it has ceased to be a central and guiding idea of collective life, a criterion by which social values are measured? Many people do not believe in it; many more regard it as so uncertain that they could not reasonably permit it to affect their lives or opinions…. 

It is probable that many people, to whom six years ago the notion of a sudden decline or break-up of our western civilisation, as a result not of cosmic forces but of its own development, would have appeared almost fantastic, will feel much less confident to-day, notwithstanding the fact that the leading nations of the world have instituted a league of peoples for the prevention of war, the measure to which so many high priests of Progress have looked forward as meaning a long stride forward on the road to Utopia.

To Dr. Bury writing at the end of the First World War, progress could not be contemplated as a concept until society took its eyes off Heaven and directed them to this life. Understanding his argument requires some deep thought but my goals in what follows are less lofty.  In fact, this is going to be a “cranky old man moment” for which I do not apologize.

When I first worked as a consultant, a geologist colleague was called upon to present the results of his estimation of the tonnes and grade of a newly discovered and incompletely drilled gold project.  His client was a small junior exploration company whose existence hung in the balance of this work.  There was pressure.

When the results were presented, the client’s faces became downcast.  “There is a problem,” said the crusty old president.  “There must be a larger resource.” 

“But sir I have used the modeling criteria that you provided, and all the drill hole data was used to create the computer model of the resource.  This is the result of that work.”

“Nevertheless, there is a problem.  I would like you to print out horizontal sections every 15 meters of the modeled orebody to see where the bulk of the resource is located.”

The printout requested revealed that the computer, for reasons never fully understood, had missed some of the drill hole data in its interpolation and the bottom half of the orebody was not represented in the model.  Although I was not involved in the project, and however embarrassing it was to our company, it was a vital teachable moment.  Computer models and their results can be grossly misleading.

All about me today I hear people extolling the progress that has been made in my generation and I wonder, “Really?  What progress?”  Whatever this progress is, it certainly bears no resemblance to what Dr. Bury had in mind.

“The advent of relatively low-cost computers with word processing and other software is fantastic,” they say.  When I had a properly trained stenographer to type my work, she (yes it was always a “she”) made fewer mistakes than my spell checker, didn’t embarrass me with suggested grammar changes and was able to file the report in a system that almost all companies used and in such a way that it could be called up on demand.  We replaced the stenographer with the IT specialist and turned executives into stenographers who cannot find the memos that they filed.  This is progress?

The average cell phone has more computing power than the computers that landed a man on the moon.  That excites the imagination but how many people are being put on the moon by our cell phones?  Most people use their cell phones to take enormous numbers of pictures that they will never look at again, watch videos of animals doing stupid things, typing messages and texts in truncated sentences that could mean almost anything and, enter calendar data that they forget to check.  Once in awhile they actually use it as a phone. Unfortunately, if the person being called is under the age of 40, the chance of the call being completed is very close to zero. 

Where is the progress then?  We can deliver bombs of increasing lethality in ever faster vehicles, but we continue to use proxies to test the technology.  We have ever more children in school with a decreasing probability of them learning the things that are necessary for “the pursuit of happiness” in the Jeffersonian understanding of that phrase.  We made great progress in life expectancy, but the chart is starting to turn back on itself.  Klaus Schwab would have us believe that we will soon live forever but he defines “we” as just he and his friends.  We built a large and vibrant middle class yet today the top ten percent of the population owns virtually all the wealth.  We have an abundance of food and have not had war or the threat of war for thirty years, yet childhood obesity and anxiety are major health issues.  Where is the progress then?

A very long time ago there existed a society built on even more hubris than ours.  They too believed that theirs was a culture of progress.  They too had an elite that wanted to capitalize on their exceptionalism.  But they did it with bricks.  They built a city and a tower to make a name for themselves.  It was a very progressive idea, and it no doubt excited everyone but those who had to make and carry the bricks.  Whether it is history (my view) or myth, the story can be applied to the events of today.

Today we have competing groups of pigs painting on the barn wall, but the message is essentially the same.  “We are the smart people, and we will make a name for ourselves.  You will have nothing and be happy.”  For people like me, this is bad news.  The good news is that making a name for oneself usually ends up as a train wreck. 

But why fret about technology and progress? For one reason because we are told that computerized central bank digital currencies (CBDC) represent progress. Some people worry about this. They worry because the smart people say that CBDC anchors their plan to make a name for themselves.  The concern, of course, is that this massive data collection and centralized control will lead to a Chinese-style social credit system.  If you are concerned about being kicked off Twitter, wait until you are prevented from buying bacon – or other things that the pigs frown on. 

But note that their plan to make a name for themselves is based on an incorrect notion of progress.  And, from the Canadian perspective, let’s review the recent success of such “progress”.  First, we had the long gun registry which ultimately cost over C$1 billion and didn’t work.  Then we had the ArriveCAN app to enter and leave the country that cost over C$50 million and didn’t work.  In 2015 the federal government introduced a new personnel and payroll system called Phoenix and I recently learned that seven years later, it is still not working.  I have previously mentioned a well-educated group of civil servants who wanted to receive an innovation award for putting paper data onto an Excel spreadsheet. Progress? Other than for the contractors who milk this cow not really. In fact, not at all.

Perhaps the problem is that we are confusing progress with convenience. Computers, cell phones, talking cars, camera peepholes and all the other technological gadgetry that we think is necessary to the pursuit of happiness may not represent progress after all. Ray Kurzweil of “singularity” fame, states that the cell phone has made him much smarter but is that really the case? Perhaps “progress” is a worldview issue rather than a scientific issue. Maybe increasing comfort and convenience is the soma referenced in A Brave New World - the “you will be happy” part written on the barn wall. Maybe this soma brings with it other problems that are worse than the ones we think are fixed by the technological progress. Japan represents, or used to represent, the fount of technological progress yet Japan is reduced to an island of geriatrics supported by a a shrinking cohort of onanistic and demoralized young men and women. Once again; maybe “progress” is a worldview issue.

It turns out that if your worldview results in a faulty understanding of progress then making a name for yourself is very difficult.  And just like at Babel, that is a very good thing. But, by misunderstanding progress, we may become increasingly de-socialized or “hakikomori” and be left with Japan’s demographic problem. And that gives me something to write about for next week.

Having said all this, I could be wrong. What do you think? Leave your comments below and, if you found this interesting, please pass it along to your friends.