Escaping the Progress Trap

by Daniel B. O'Leary          Available at www.amazon.com   ISBN 9780978126209

This book addresses questions that are on the minds of many, as we enter a future with unprecedented environmental challenges: Why are we so slow to take action? Why are is there such a disconnect between scientists and artists? What is science for? What will it take to make people change their habits? Aren't we supposed to make the most of nature's bounty? Shouldn't we put left-brain people in charge? Why aren't scientists more creative? How come politicians can say scientists are wrong? Why are the best and brightest minds not solving our problems?

These and many other questions arise when we look into the cause of progress traps. This is the condition in which we find ourselves when human ingenuity, while pursuing progress, inadvertently introduces problems that it does not have the resources to solve, preventing further progress. Environmental degradation, followed by social decline, is a key example and provides the starting point for this study. The book investigates, culturally and scientifically why people are susceptible to this predicament. Jared Diamond (Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel), describes the oft-repeated collapse of formerly brilliant societies as a "baffling phenomenon."

The classic case is Easter Island, which became uninhabitable after all trees were cut down for transporting stone monuments, but other examples, such as Seymour Cray’s doomed Control Data Corp. or the impractical medieval Church, show the same characteristic: development that excludes solutions to problems that arise from development. The phenomenon is "baffling" because its cause is something that is inoperative.

The author finds that the work of neuroscientists who investigate cerebral development and hemispheric specialization provides support for the view that individuals and societies can become irremediably committed to exclusive forms of technocratic rationalism. Thus societies get stuck in a rut of fruitless development. The optimal method for avoiding the progress trap is to ensure, through education and cultural vitality, that individuals and cultures do not become overwhelmingly technocratic. This is common sense, but having it spelled out in scientific terms could be the only way to get the attention of policymakers.

Others who have written on the subject include novelist/historian Ronald Wright in "A Short History of Progress" and Prof. Tadeusz W. Patzek, Professor of Geoengineering at Berkeley, who has posted a web archive (2008, 2007) of articles and comments on the progress trap phenomenon.

Comparative works:

    In 2005 Jared Diamond published Collapse(Viking) in which he catalogues impressively the ways that certain societies have marched inexorably to failure, even when they possessed considerable ingenuity.

    T. Homer-Dixon - an authority on conflict studies - published The Ingenuity Gap in August 2001 (Random House). He contends that the severe divide between the world's problems and available resources, and between rich and poor nations breeds political disintegration, even terror, and felt that new ideas are vital for averting escalated conflict.

    Clive Ponting published A green history of the World (Penguin 1993). It is rich in detail and learning, and is concerned mainly with negative outcomes.

    Ronald Wright published A short history of progress (Anansi 2004) which gives a general description of the progress trap.

    Adam Curtis' BBC documentary The Trap is a relevant description of administrative policies that counter problems with methods that lead inevitably to similar problems.

© D. B. O'Leary 1991, Geozone Communications 2007