Preface: If we assume that a global zeitgeist of degrowth, anti-solutionism, pessimism, national tribalism, de-enlightenment, and de-globalization — creates a non-trivial risk to future human progress, then
Q: What might reasonably be done by the progress studies community to move the zeitgeist? Or is it too little, by too few, coming too late? It’s sometimes difficult not to see the entirety of the progress movement as a drop in the ocean of doom-centric media.
Progress has its own fans, namely those who drive it and benefit from it. So I think the Zeitgeist is not entirely against us. It is a better situation than it looks from the so-called “world of ideas” alone.
Preface: If we assume that a global zeitgeist of degrowth, anti-solutionism, pessimism, national tribalism, de-enlightenment, and de-globalization — creates a non-trivial risk to future human progress, then
Q: What might reasonably be done by the progress studies community to move the zeitgeist? Or is it too little, by too few, coming too late? It’s sometimes difficult not to see the entirety of the progress movement as a drop in the ocean of doom-centric media.
Progress has its own fans, namely those who drive it and benefit from it. So I think the Zeitgeist is not entirely against us. It is a better situation than it looks from the so-called “world of ideas” alone.