| A Short History of Progress | 
 enlarge | Author: Ronald Wright
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Category: Book
List Price: CDN$ 18.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 6125
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 208
ISBN: 0887847064
Dewey Decimal Number: 909
EAN: 9780887847066
ASIN: 0887847064
Publication Date: October 23, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
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 interesting June 3, 2008
this was an interesting book discussing the possibility of collapse. wright makes a point that there is a tendency for something to bring itself to an end, whether this is intentional or not. there is the extinction aspect, sometimes a species or group of people just can't cope with a change and they die out, like the sabre toothed tiger, as wright discusses. sabre toothed tigers survive on big game, thats why they need those big teeth to rip into the huge animals, but those teeth get in the way if they were hunting say a rabbit, so as big game died out so did they. but the other kind of extinction, the one more relevant to us today, us being the leading countries with the power to carry out wright's fears, is very much intentional. an example from wright explaining this is the easter islanders... there were a few but i like this one best because it makes it more real for me as i live in suburbia. the easter islanders cut down all the trees on their island and because of that went extinct. that sounds kind of ridiculous to us, but we're doing the exact same things today. wright calls these progress traps and examples would be farming and neuclear weapons. we have become so dependent on farming and use that solely to produce food that if the climate were to change we'd be in something of a pickle.. and i'd assume you can guess how neuclear weapons would hinder the progress of the human species. wright brings our attention to our possible demise by our own hand. a decent quote is "the most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is in no one's interest. It is a suicide machine".
it's not so much a history book as it is a call to attention. it uses history to explain the theories it proposes, because history is all we have, but it is not an all encompassing guide to the progress of humanity throughout time. i thought it was a pretty good book, readable.
 Want some discussion questions? April 11, 2008
The book is great, without a doubt. We did it for our book club, and I was unable to find any discussion questions anywhere, so I thought I'd provide some here that I was unable to come up with.
Another thing to mention in a discussion is the
www.myfootprint.org
website, where you can figure out how big an ecological footprint your lifestyle takes up. Most North Americans live a life that would take 8 planet earths to sustain.
Discussion Questions
1.
Did Wright need to start as far back as he did in human history? Did his coverage of the Neandertals and Cro-Magnons add to your understanding of his thesis that our current civilization is heading straight towards an environmental collapse?
2.
Of the four civilizations that Wright discusses the Romans, Sumerians, Mayans, and Easter Islanders, which one did you find the most gripping and relevant? Why?
3.
Theres a quote by Elizabeth West which reads Human progress should have stopped with the bicycle. Although this means we wouldnt have cars or the internet or many types of medicine, it also means that we wouldnt have invented the nuclear bomb or put the C02 emissions into the sky which are of so much concern now in the 21st century. Do you think theres any truth to this quote? Would we have been better off if wed stopped inventing things around 1900?
4.
One of the reviews gushes that this book should be required reading at the White House. If you had the ability to force your federal and provincial party leaders to read five books, would this be one of them? What other titles would you choose?
5.
On page 4, Wright says We no longer give much thought to moral progress a prime concern of earlier times except to assume that it goes hand in hand with the material. I understand him to mean that the more we distance ourselves from our fur wearing / cave dwelling ancestors, the more morally advanced we feel that we are i.e. I showered today and rinsed with Listerine, Im a morally superior being.
Do you think our society cares about moral advancement? Do we train too many engineers and not enough philosophers? Do we give enough airtime to the Stephen Lewiss of the world, courageously trying to spread the word that 5700 people die of AIDS every day, or are they drowned out by the Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton stories?
OR
Was the 20th century a time of moral advancement? Do things like the outlawing of slavery, the civil rights movement, health care and education for everyone show that we are progressing? Or does outsourcing and sweatshops and consumerism and the war on terror and Enron and the Iraq War and Rwanda mean that we still dont know how to do the right thing.
6.
Easter Island and Consumerism
The Easter Islanders cut down their trees, which let the rain wash away all their topsoil, to build statues with which they worshipped their Gods. Is it appropriate to think of consumerism as the modern day equivalent of the Easter Island Statute Cult? We demand and create a market for DVDs and shoes and Swiffers, and we encourage companies to create pollution and use up our natural resources in order to produce them, when ultimately we use these things for only a few moments before they end up in landfills. Will a landmark book of the 22nd century be titled 20th century consumerism and the fall of civilization?
7.
Progress Traps
Wright talks about how we keep stumbling into progress traps for example, the Paleolithic tribes that could kill a few mammoths prospered, while the tribe that could kill 200 by driving them over a cliff lived in luxury for a little while and then starved, having destroyed its subsistence base.
In the 20th century we created nuclear weapons, we learned how to burn fossil fuels in untold quantities, and we created farming techniques, mainly creating synthetic fertilizers through oil, that is responsible for about a 40% increase in the earths population.
If you agree with the progress trap theory, does it strike you that the 20th century was one progress trap after another?
8.
What was more effective to you Wrights investigative and anthropological ability to show that Rome, Sumeria, the Mayans and the Easter Islanders all failed due to overpopulation combined with agricultural slowdowns due to poor ecological stewardship, OR his writing ability, and his ability to write phrases like (page 7) the biosphere might have been able to tolerate our dirty old friends coal and oil if wed burned them gradually. But how long can it withstand a blaze of consumption so frenzied that the dark side of this planet glows like a fanned ember in the night of space?
9.
Level of optimism?
On page 125 Wright quotes Martin Rees as saying The odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilization will survive to the end of the present century& unless all nations adopt low-risk and sustainable policies based on present technology.
How optimistic are people that were going to figure this out? Do you think there is any point to actually making pro-environment changes in your own life, when China and India are building coal plants by the hundreds?
 Short History..period February 12, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Up to the last chapter, except for some silly asides,the book was interesting. It is, of course, very one sided, and it seems that the author got his ideas about Ancient Rome from Holywood movies, like the Gladiator, or Augustus. If he studied archaelogical record from 1st century BC farming in Italy, he might have been surprised, that the family farm definitely was not dead, and that the brothers Gracchi wanted to help a very specific group of farmers, not the entire population, who did not need their efforts, and neither did they need their extralegal activities. I was also surprised, that he restricted the institution of slavery to the West, while all societies practiced this awful institution and some still do - in Cameroon and other African nations, in the Arab countries, etc. However, to point that out would probably not be politcally correct.
As I was studying the Inca empire, I think that Mr. Wright glossed over the fact, that it was police state of first magnitude - Stalin would have loved it! As well, that the Aztec overlordship was so hated (because of the inhuman sacrifices) that Cortes got a lot of help and allies from the subjugated, long suffering tribes, who would ally themselves with the devil himself to get rid of the Aztec terror. Also, probably not politically correct.
I would dearly like to know what is behind the vague term "social justice", which Mr. Wright introduces in the last chapter. And in the view of the terrible ecological destruction wrought by the communist societies of eastern Europe, I was startled that he even praised them! "They shared the goods" he says. Well, I lived in one for 30 years, and I can assure Mr. Wright, that nobody there shared anything if they could help it. Especially not the ruling Party clique. I think that Mr. Wright would change his tune, if he would stand in line for a carpet all night, or instead of consuming sushi, would have to bribe the butcher to get any meat whatsoever. Sharing, indeed!
A fantastic, well written, researched book. January 8, 2008
Anyone even mildly interestred or concerned about the current path of humanity should read this book. Mr. Wright draws upon the rise and fall of numerous past civilizations as a comparisson to the present day world.
Good read and approachable December 10, 2007
I picked up this book because I have a growing interest in how a society or civilization can grow and sustain itself. This book gives several really interesting examples of societies who have come before us and are no longer in existence due to the fact that they were not able to sustain themselves. This book is easy to pick up and read, you don't require more than an average reading level to be able to interact and reflect on the material. I really recommend anyone to pick this one up for a great read.
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