The pathological myth of progress has, over time, uprooted and displaced the more local, organic, and spiritual human myths that have sustained cultures all over the globe. The result of this is an entrenched system of pathological politics and commerce, working in an unhealthy symbiosis with no orientation towards the future save that of monetary gain and technological innovation, and behaving with no responsibility towards or concern about future generations of humans, current and future generations of animal and plant species–in sum, so-called progressive society has barreled heedlessly through history, dealing in private property, material accumulation, and waste. The legacy of modernism, industrialism, and deeper still any progressively-oriented society as opposed to subsistence-oriented societies is complete habitat and planetary destruction in exchange for temporal and spatial power. This is nothing if not insane. Therefore, the very notion of progress is pathological.
Which certainly raises the question for many: “If we cannot be progress-oriented, what can we be?” My answer to this question is that we can be human among the miracles of existence; we can be natural and amazed, participating with and entranced by the balanced dance of existence; we can be content. We can stop tweaking our technology and stop interfering with nature, stop increasing the velocity by which we storm Armageddon, which is the only absolute destination of progress. We can replace our notions of some city of god with the reality of the immanence of spirit and the finely-tuned, self-correcting, highly improbable yet real miracle of life.
We cannot hope to improve on the abundance provided to us through the cosmic fortunes that have grown life on this planet. We are only a small part of the life that has grown so strongly, carefully, and slowly on this planet. If there is progress to be made, it is not ours to make. The human scale is too small, too insignificant for progress. We practice our notions of progress and imperil not only ourselves, but an entire planet. Only in our small arrogance can we believe that some god or cosmic forces have conspired to place us within a planetary ecosystem to develop engines of alienation and destruction, paving over and stopping the growth of life in a grandiose gesture of singularly egotistical and species-centric progress. To believe that, under any justification, whether religious or scientific, is to harbor a delusion and nurture a pathology that affects an entire planetary ecosystem.
