{"id":1032,"date":"2015-11-01T00:59:33","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T00:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=1032"},"modified":"2015-11-01T01:07:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T01:07:25","slug":"myth-of-progress-reality-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html","title":{"rendered":"Myth of progress, reality of change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"myth<\/p>\n

Social progress, which is closely tied to the notion of modernity, has been a core belief of the so-called Western world since, possibly, the French Revolution. It is not without merit, but simplistic\u00a0assertions that\u00a0modern Western\u00a0political systems are the best\u00a0can obscure the central role played by technology<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ancient\u00a0myth of progress<\/h2>\n

Similar notions of the march\u00a0of civilisation against ignorance no doubt upheld the Roman Empire, but did not ultimately help it to prevail against the far stronger forces controlling history. \u00a0While many a man has tried to define or advance what was seen as social progress, the values of whatever modernity he believed in, the fact remains that the only real authority sufficient to define any type of social progress is history itself.<\/p>\n

If you look at history, almost all attitudes, value systems, beliefs and ideologies are transitory. They are not becoming more humane or less humane as we stride into the future, but are merely becoming different or else regressing, as is inevitable, to forms that have already been witnessed over and over again. Almost all the brutality, conquest, insanity and recklessness of the ancient world is still practiced in the modern world on a daily basis. From such an observation, we may say we have found “human nature” and proclaim that we can never change humanity.<\/p>\n

Myth of progress versus reality of technological\u00a0change<\/h2>\n

The only thing that has consistently built up, or progressed, throughout history is the body of knowledge actually available to human beings, and the technological know-how to accomplish ever greater things. It is a myth that the knowledge of the Romans was lost at the end of their Empire. Much was indeed lost, and the Roman value system and state\u00a0was\u00a0destroyed. But it did not take very long before new inventions were being revealed that even the Romans had not developed. The stirrup, for example. Consider that for\u00a0all the advanced qualities of the Roman Empire, their armed forces would not have been much of a match for the Normans, who essentially emerged from the so-called Dark Ages, so it is a myth to say the fall of Rome was a setback for civilisation. The Romans would have been pitifully incapable of defeating Medieval castles, which shows how much more advanced the so-called barbarians became, and in quite a short time-frame. Rome itself had become stagnant, conceited, dependent on slavery, producing no inventions at all over several centuries. It was high time that it be sacked, and so sacking it was in actual fact\u00a0an accomplishment for the historical canon. That’s how it should be perceived.<\/p>\n

It is true that there is a sort of “human nature”, but it isn’t some\u00a0formula that all people are allegedly following. By such a term we can only hope to describe\u00a0the totality of how people and cultures seem to interact. There are some behaviours that have never been shed, since the earliest of human ancestors first learned how to beat one another with a stick. All sorts of people, whether feral or civilised, seem to resort to the same behaviour.<\/p>\n

The only “social progress” that happens is technological and knowledge-based. The latter can be essentially\u00a0anchored in faith structures, myths and literature<\/a> that serve as a kind of collective reforming mechanism of humanity, but the latter can also inevitably fail or become corrupted.<\/p>\n

The myth of progress hides the need to change\u00a0the species<\/h2>\n

One philosophy\u00a0that can be reached,\u00a0if we accept\u00a0technology as the sole medium of genuine social progress, is transhumanism<\/em>. Rather than trying to develop new doomed\u00a0cultural fabrics, cities, organisations, constitutions, and all sorts of other play in order to reform humanity’s character, a more permanent solution may be to simply surgically correct\u00a0the human animal\u00a0in order to make him\u00a0reform.<\/p>\n

Barbarity, recklessness, ignorance, and all the vices that lead to cruelty, overpopulation and collapse, could be done away with by editing\u00a0humanity’s genetic code<\/a>\u00a0if necessary. And, science permit\u00a0us, using brain-machine-interfaces\u00a0to expand the intellect and eradicate\u00a0very undesirable and\u00a0antisocial behaviour. Such fundamental\u00a0change, rather than creating yet more laws, books, CCTV cameras, and riot police, would be true social progress. It would not simply be forgotten or doomed to decay, because it would have leveled\u00a0up humankind on\u00a0every possible scale at which we can study ourselves.<\/p>\n

\"theocracy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social progress, which is closely tied to the notion of modernity, has been a core belief of the so-called Western world since, possibly, the French Revolution. It is not without merit, but simplistic\u00a0assertions that\u00a0modern Western\u00a0political systems are the best\u00a0can obscure the central role played by technology. The ancient\u00a0myth of progress Similar notions of the march\u00a0of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,8,63,37,153,66,62,45,44,69],"tags":[1263,7,562,1260,1259,1258,1264,1261,26,1262,478],"class_list":["post-1032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-antistatism","category-futurism-2","category-history","category-lordre-2","category-politics-2","category-synthetic-biology","category-techno-progressivism","category-transhumanism","category-violence","tag-evolution","tag-faith","tag-humanity","tag-modern","tag-modernity","tag-myth-of-progress","tag-mythology","tag-roman-empire","tag-social-change","tag-technological-change","tag-transhumanism"],"yoast_head":"\nMyth of progress, reality of change - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"While it is tempting to believe in a myth of progress in terms of state and society, the reality is that technology did most of the work, and will continue.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Myth of progress, reality of change - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"While it is tempting to believe in a myth of progress in terms of state and society, the reality is that technology did most of the work, and will continue.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-11-01T00:59:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-11-01T01:07:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-modernity-explosion.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. Bentham\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Myth of progress, reality of change - L'Ordre","description":"While it is tempting to believe in a myth of progress in terms of state and society, the reality is that technology did most of the work, and will continue.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Myth of progress, reality of change - L'Ordre","og_description":"While it is tempting to believe in a myth of progress in terms of state and society, the reality is that technology did most of the work, and will continue.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html","og_site_name":"L'Ordre","article_published_time":"2015-11-01T00:59:33+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-11-01T01:07:25+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-modernity-explosion.png"}],"author":"Harry J. Bentham","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html","name":"Myth of progress, reality of change - L'Ordre","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-modernity-explosion.png","datePublished":"2015-11-01T00:59:33+00:00","dateModified":"2015-11-01T01:07:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e"},"description":"While it is tempting to believe in a myth of progress in terms of state and society, the reality is that technology did most of the work, and will continue.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-modernity-explosion.png","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-modernity-explosion.png"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/myth-of-progress-reality-of-change.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Myth of progress, reality of change"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/","name":"L'Ordre","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Harry Bentham","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e","name":"Harry J. Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. He edits The clubof.info Blog (http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-J.-Bentham\/e\/B00D4MSEY0\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/author\/hbentham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}