PROGRESS

A new understanding of our past Danny Dorling author of Inequality and the 1 A spirited skewering of the idea that things can only get better The Guardian Progress is power But our modern story of progress is a very dangerous fiction In the pursuit of progress of growth and expansion we have levelled cities flattened mountains charted the globe and ushered in a new geological epoch unique in our planet s 4 5 billion year history The idea of progress has compelled societies toward exploration invention and grandiosity on one hand and on the other genocide slavery ecocide and conquest it is the root of our civilization s success as well as its looming demise Geographer Samuel Miller McDonald offers a radical new perspective on the myth upon which the modern world is built illuminating its blood strewn lineage and suggesting an urgent alternative He traces the history of how human societies broke from their pasts broke from their environments and broke from longstanding egalitarian values that sustained them supplanting these with one imperative to rule all others progress If humanity is to have any chance of a future then we must fundamentally change the way we think about one of our most basic political ideas