For this lunar cycle, we’ll dissect the narratives told to us by modernity, and how they falsely shape our expectations for navigating the modern world. First up: progress, and its vital role in the mythmaking of empire.
One of the most popular, powerful, and pernicious myths of the dominant culture is that of perpetual progress. Watch any car or electronics advertisement, and you’ll be pelted with appeals to ever-improving technology. Listen to any politician, and amongst appeals to nationalism and exceptionalism, you’ll get flooded with appeals to past progress and promises that this particular politician is best if we want to keep advancing. Read any report on the stock market, and you’ll be invited to celebrate or assured we’ll soon resume the perpetual upward growth of the economy. Progress is used to justify cultural and technological colonization, economic expansion, and political power grabs. The myth of perpetual progress (shortened to MPP by some authors like Chris Ryan) permeates the dominant culture and most nations’ self-understanding: we’re all advancing, moving forwards, away from a dismal past that’s best discarded and forgotten.
But is the narrative of progress at all true? We’re promised that progress will bring us somewhere… better… but better by what standards, and according to whom? This week, we’ll explore that omnipresent narrative of progress, to what extent it drives and justifies modernity, and all that it misses.