How the myth of progress robs us of hope (and perpetuates colonialism)

This is a much shorter version of this article I wrote on medium: link here

When we feel like things are sliding backwards, it's hard to stay optimistic. If you follow my work, you know that I've been convinced social, economic, and ecological collapse are just around the corner. This climate fatalism, shared by many in the Deep Adaptation network, suggests it's too late for the overhaul needed to sustain life on Earth.

However, when someone pointed out to me that the oil industry benefits from our belief in hopelessness, it started to change my mind. Just like when people didn’t believe in climate change at all, or didn’t believe we could do anything about it — believing that it’s already too late promotes inaction and allows the status quo to continue.

It’s also the easy way out; if we don’t think there’s hope, then we don’t have to sit around having difficult conversations and working our way out of this… we can just enjoy the final days without worrying about the consequences.

But what drives this sense of hopelessness? Sure, it’s everything you see - every time you scroll through the news. But it’s more than that: our expectations and unconscious beliefs about progress play a huge part into how we perceive the world.

Think about it: you’ve been told a very specific story about “progress”. humans started out in caves, eventually discovered fire, then we had the Agricultural Revolution, advancing more and more until the Enlightenment, where scientific thinking and reason trumped superstition, we defeated lots of diseases, lifted more and more people out of poverty, until we got to now — the pinnacle of human progress and achievement. Right?

But then you look at the news. Political and social regressions, the overturning of Roe vs Wade and the rise of right-wing fascism, increasing temperatures… all of it feels like we’re slipping backwards. It might feel as if we were so close, but now we’re plummeting downwards, instead, towards collapse.

The belief in simple, linear progress, which is deeply rooted in Western ideology, ignores the complexities of history. Progress has never been a straight line - just look at how the Indus Valley civilisation had plumbing 5000 years ago, yet after the Romans left Britain it took us until the 19th century to rebuild a sewage system.

What Charles Eisenstein talks about as “the myth of progress” also has colonial implications: the idea that “civilisation” and “progress” move in a specific direction in accordance with what is good, moral and desirable, is what emboldened Europeans to enslave and colonise other nations whom they deemed to be “less advanced” or “savage”. Even today, people are able to turn a blind eye to suffering in other parts of the world as, on some level, they believe them to be less “advanced” (and therefore less human). A lot of ancient societies had better rights for women than many do today.

The narrative of progress is also harmful to life on earth when it turns into an irrational, insatiable desire to grow and increase no matter the costs — especially because the thing so many people are driven to grow is the amount of money in their bank accounts

Books like "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow also dismantle the myth of linear progress, showing that early human societies were complex and varied. Societies experimented with different forms of governance and agriculture long before the so-called Agricultural Revolution, which they argue did not happen overnight but slowly over hundreds of years.

Seeing progress as one-directional makes us complacent, too — if we believe that we’ve already “solved” issues such as racism and sexism, we will turn a blind eye to what seem like small incidents; people who call out microaggressions will be seen as making a big fuss over nothing. In fact, they may be the only ones who recognise that just because we’ve temporarily “solved” an issue doesn’t mean it stays solved forever.

Paul Kingsnorth notes that the story of linear progress traps us in a narrative where technology and science are seen as saviours, preventing us from learning from the past or the present.

This myth creates unrealistic expectations in our personal lives, too. Progress is often two steps forward, one step back, yet we can forget this when we’re fixated on a personal goal. This is why you might be so hard on yourself if you “slip up” on your exercise routine, miss a deadline, or end up taking a financial hit.

In many cultures, happiness and luck are seen as cyclical, not linear. This perspective helps manage expectations and maintain balance. Progress requires continuous effort and maintenance, much like cleaning a house or staying in shape - you don’t just clean your house once and expect it to stay clean forever, right? You have to keep cleaning it - but it’s also easier to manage if you don’t leave it for months without picking up a broom.

So, should we give up? The idea of “two steps forward, one step back” still suggests that we’re moving in a particular direction overall — even if it’s one beset with obstacles and setbacks. But what if it isn’t? What if we never “arrive” at the Utopia we dream of?

There’s a paradox here: believing that things are going to get infinitely better can rob us of hope when we see things start to get worse, as we tend to assume that means things will continue to get worse. But if progress isn’t an upward trend at all, then everything we’ve worked for could disappear tomorrow — which doesn’t exactly make us want to leap out of bed with excitement.

There’s a fine balance that we need to achieve: holding up a vision of a perfect Utopia will always leave us feeling dissatisfied — just as a large gap between the way we see ourselves and our ideal self (“incongruence” in Psychology terms) leaves us feeling less satisfied with our lives.

At the same time, having an inspiring, positive vision to imagine and work towards can be vital medicine for these times. Joanna Macy talks about the importance of moral imagination as a vital way of engaging with active hope and envisioning a different future.

Sometimes, we can feel hopeless because it feels as if all the effort we are putting in isn’t leading to the results we thought we would see. But should we do things because we are hoping for or expecting a particular outcome in the end, or because they are the right thing to do? Do actions lose their meaning if they don’t lead to the results that we want?

I love the line from “Place” by W.S. Merwin: “On the last day of the world. I would want to plant a tree”.

After all, we all know that our own lives won’t last forever, and most of us are aware that the sun will eventually expand and swallow the earth… and yet, we continue to live our lives. Despite that, I would prefer to continue to fight for a liveable planet where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. We might get there — we might not. And even if we do, we can never truly assume “we’ve made it” and relax.

But if we give up and don’t try at all, I can predict one thing — a whole lot more suffering now and in the near future.