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Progress Isn't Natural
“It wasn’t as though people, after millennia of head-scratching, suddenly “discovered” the steam engine, the spinning jenny, and the telegraph, and modernity unspooled. Rather, people’s priorities underwent a sea change with the onset of the modern age, turning to efficiency, objective measurement, and other goals that made such inventions
... See moreAgainst this panorama of nations, morals, and religions rising and falling, the idea of progress finds itself in dubious shape. Is it only the vain and traditional boast of each “modern” generation? Since we have admitted no substantial change in man’s nature during historic times, all technological advances will have to be written off as merely
... See moreWill Durant • The Lessons of History
It’s in the accusation that a viewpoint is “on the wrong side of history”. Apparently, history is headed somewhere—somewhere that can be known in advance. Somewhere better. Such a belief in progress is not a human universal by any stretch. In previous cultures, it was the past that was viewed as better than the present. After all, the past was
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