"Maybe modernity was a mistake. Maybe progress itself is the problem. And maybe we should slow it down or stop it or or even go backwards. People got skeptical, fearful, doubtful of the very idea of progress in the 20th century. And we allowed that to slow down progress itself. And that was a mistake. My name is Jason Crawford."
"One important thing to know about the idea of progress is that it really didn't exist through most of human history. say most peoples in most places and times didn't see history as some kind of an upward curve. They saw history as more cyclical maybe uh full of ups and downs or perhaps they even believed in a declinist narrative a story of the past being a golden age from which we have fallen."
"At the time there was a big debate actually about whether the modern people of that era could ever surpass the huge achievements of the ancients. They were looking back to the ancient world, the Greeks and the Romans at the ideas that those people discovered, what the Romans could do with concrete, for instance, the coliseum and the aqueducts and even the pyramids of Egypt."
Discourse around progress and modernity intensified, producing doubts: modernity might be mistaken, progress might be the problem, calls to slow or reverse change. Skepticism grew in the 20th century and slowed progress. Historically, most societies viewed history as cyclical or declinist rather than progressive. The shift toward belief in progress emerged in the West in the 15th–17th centuries. Early modern debates questioned whether contemporary people could surpass ancient achievements. Some regarded ancients as intellectual and moral giants whose works seemed unsurpassable; voyages of discovery began to change that outlook. Many thought only careful rereading of ancient texts could preserve meaning, while innovation and forward advancement seemed impossible.
Read at Big Think
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