Opinion | We Know Shockingly Little About What Makes Humanity Prosper

But as more tech folks jump aboard the progress train, I’d suggest that they go one click deeper in illustrating what kind of society we’re hurtling toward. Which technologies they’d like to see in abundance, and which they’d prefer stay scarce. And put away the cyberpunk for a second: What about our relationships to each other? The kind of “good l... See more

Hi Patrick and Noah -- if you don't mind two cents from a humanist, I think there's a key concern that needs to be addressed: whether "progress studies" can be broad enough to include competing definitions of progress. And if not, then whether it should form a scholarly agenda.

do you ever find it weird that as a culture we decided that “progress” just means advancement in technology and numbers on a spreadsheet, and that things like moral advancement, human joy, positive relationships, fulfillment, psychological development, and purpose don’t count?

It should not be surprising that the facts of human progress confound the major -isms. The ideologies are more than two centuries old and are based on mile-high visions such as whether humans are tragically flawed or infinitely malleable, and whether society is an organic whole or a collection of individuals.43 A real society comprises hundreds of

... See more