I love that this topic (and tension) is getting a little focus, but I do wish you would respond to a steel man version of the argument, rather than a quick Twitter thread—there’s great writing out there on the tension between material progress / modernity / capitalism and spiritual values / community decay / alienation, etc. Obviously, given this crowd, the point isn’t to accept or reject capitalism or material progress, but to at least engage with the best articulations of the tensions they hold with the latter three, so as to best navigate those tensions moving forward.
Besides the obvious Frankfurt School (who, understandably, are not everyone’s cup of tea), I find Hartmut Rosa’s treatment of this tension, in particular in his book Resonance: A Sociology of our Relationship to the World, excellent.
I won’t blast you with a synopsis here, and don’t expect you to read a 500+ page tome, but if the progress community ever finds enough interest to earnestly engage with this material abundance + spirituality/humanistic/community decay tension, I would be quite the eager reader.
I love that this topic (and tension) is getting a little focus, but I do wish you would respond to a steel man version of the argument, rather than a quick Twitter thread—there’s great writing out there on the tension between material progress / modernity / capitalism and spiritual values / community decay / alienation, etc. Obviously, given this crowd, the point isn’t to accept or reject capitalism or material progress, but to at least engage with the best articulations of the tensions they hold with the latter three, so as to best navigate those tensions moving forward.
Besides the obvious Frankfurt School (who, understandably, are not everyone’s cup of tea), I find Hartmut Rosa’s treatment of this tension, in particular in his book Resonance: A Sociology of our Relationship to the World, excellent.
I won’t blast you with a synopsis here, and don’t expect you to read a 500+ page tome, but if the progress community ever finds enough interest to earnestly engage with this material abundance + spirituality/humanistic/community decay tension, I would be quite the eager reader.