To just survive … or live alive (Part 2)
Here and in our 6th podcast episode we would like to highlight further aspects of the work of Daniel Schmachtenberger and the Consilience Project – in particular the excellent article on the “Concept of Progress” from summer 2024. As we have already mentioned elsewhere the article is available online in different languages.
We still live within the common narrative that progress is synonymous with improvement, and that the world will be a better place for everyone if GDP and the economy continue to grow. This belief is deeply embedded in our institutions and politics; we rarely question the necessity of continued growth at the expense of nature and human well-being, the well-being of all life on Earth.
The progress narrative is thoroughly anthropocentric — non-human life on Earth is increasingly being destroyed — and colonial; people in poorer countries are almost exclusively harmed by the externalities of progress.
Our current understanding of progress is immature and incomplete. Progress, as we define it today, ignores or downplays the extent of its side effects. These side effects (or externalities) occur in a complex cascade, often distributing the damage across time and space.
The secondary and tertiary effects of our actions in the world are difficult to attribute to their original cause and are often more significant than we realize. As technology becomes more powerful, its impact on reality becomes more profound.
How can we shift this dynamic to develop a new, holistic definition of progress that considers the connection between our planet and the health of our minds, bodies, and communities?
For change to be considered progress, it must systematically identify its externalities and internalize them as much as possible.
The Consilience Project article provides numerous examples of progress that ignores its many externalities. To name just a few:
– The use of pesticides and herbicides has enabled a huge increase in grain and vegetable yields – but with a host of negative impacts on human health.
– Heavy metals like lead are essential for our machinery and equipment – but accumulate in the soil and then in our vegetables and grains, with harmful effects on our health.
– Ultra-processed foods enable long shelf lives but have been linked to a huge increase in obesity among consumers.
– Microplastics are ubiquitous: even in our brain cells – we don’t yet know their effects on us.
– The emergence of antibiotic resistance in intensive animal farming is alarming and dangerous.
– PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are very useful in waterproof textiles, non-stick pans, and some firefighting foams and are often referred to as “forever chemicals.” However, the external effects of PFAS are associated with numerous biological harms, including disruption of the cardiovascular, endocrine, and reproductive systems, as well as liver dysfunction and an increased risk of cancer.
One study estimates that removing just a small subset of PFAS chemicals from the environment would cost approximately seven thousand times the annual global GDP. PFAS are now found everywhere, even in the most pristine parts of the Earth.
It is also important to note that during the course of evolution, these substances were not in the environment. In the biosphere that gave rise to intelligent life, there were no synthetic chemicals, and no heavy metals that were not buried deep in the geological layers.
The most consequential and difficult problems we face are unintended consequences of human attempts to solve other problems; they are not caused by our inability to achieve our goals — they are a direct result of our “success”.
Technologies change our existing value systems. It often happens that the values that were in place at the beginning of a technology’s development change—or even become reversed—over the course of use.
Progress – exemplified by Social Media
For example, at the beginning of the development of social media (apart from making money), the hope was to bring people closer together and give everyone access to all kinds of information — something that has partially come true.
But studies show that people who use social media frequently feel more isolated than those who do so only occasionally.
Smartphone technology has had a massive impact on the human mind and behavior. Unintended consequences include reduced attention spans, disinformation, opinion manipulation, election interference, political and social polarization, loss of privacy, extreme data collection, psychological warfare – and much more.
None of these externalities were intended, but social media companies chose a path from the outset that allowed them to privatize the profits of this model and externalize the harms, i.e., pass them on to the public at large.
Progress – exemplified by the global increase in life expectancy
People who support the progress narrative cite increased life expectancy in particular as an example of how our lives have improved. But is this really a pure improvement?
“While life expectancy has increased over the past two hundred years of industrial growth, we have simultaneously poisoned the environment, wiped out countless other species, and enormously increased the unnatural burden of disease worldwide.” Consilience Project
Older and elderly people in particular often experience deep loneliness, meaninglessness, and existential emptiness. If civilization had actually improved comparatively, people’s zest for life would most likely increase, not decrease. Old age is often not a good prospect; people fear a slow end in a nursing home.
In the United States, the average person over 60 now takes fifteen prescription medications annually. Many of these medications have a range of harmful side effects — both for the patient and for the environment.
Historically, this is not a typical end state of human experience. For most of human development, it was not normal for an increasing proportion of older people to spend their extended lives, extended by medical advances, depressed and alone, far from family, without responsibilities, and without a sense of meaning.
Real Progress
Progress that truly leads to greater improvement and greater goodness in the world must still be considered “good” even if it takes all perspectives and externalities into account.
For social media, for example, this would mean changing some key design features to encourage constructive, connection-building interactions – which would be technically easy to implement and beneficial for everyone, but might not generate the same profits for social media companies.
Minimizing the negative externalities of technology would create a safer, healthier, and ultimately better world for everyone alive today and for future generations who will inherit what we leave them.
