Disputes of Progress
Disputes of Progress: a critical response to the Roots of Progress
Disputes of Progress is a critical response to The Roots of Progress blog, (now) the Roots of Progress Institute and the wider progress movement. Through targeted critiques of Crawford's writings and the work of other (non-progressive) 'progress' thought leaders, the blog aims to formulate a critique of the actually-existing progress movement and its ideological alignment with actually-existing techno-capitalism. Ultimately, Disputes of Progress seeks to advance the formation of a counter-hegemonic ‘alter-progress’ movement and establish a new critical 'philosophy of progress for the 21st century'. Read More »
Disputes of Progress is an in-progress para-academic research project by Max Ramsahoye (forthcoming Summer-Autumn 2025)
The Roots of Progress
The Roots of Progress symbol representing the ‘roots’ of:
(economic) growth, (status quo) stability and (hegemonic) knowledge.
The Roots of Progress symbol inverted (and subverted) to represent a ‘dead tree’: the decay, death and destruction of modernisation.
Disputes of Progress
Naive progress accelerationism and techno-capitalist optimism is on the rise.
We need a more holistic history of more-than-human civilisation and a more omni-considerate vision for the future.
An alternative progress movement: to respond to the meta-crisis, recognise meta-modernism and realise meta-utopia.
‘Never has humanity been so powerful, and at the same time so distrustful of our power. We live in an age of wonders... Once, these accomplishments, and their benefits to humanity, were referred to simply as ‘progress’. But not everyone agrees that the advancement of science, technology, and industry has been such a good thing… We need a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century, and beyond.'
— The Techno-humanist Manifesto, Jason Crawford
‘The fact of technological progress provides people with the instruments of ever more indiscriminate destruction, while the myth of political and moral progress serves as the excuse for using those means to the very limit…[according to this myth] every conflict over prestige, power or money is a crusade for the Good, the True and the Beautiful’
— Ape & Essence, Aldous Huxley
Why study progress critically?
The techno-capitalist ‘progress’ of the last few centuries – the instrumentalisation of advancements in science and technology for the purposes of maximising profit and growing the economy - has been one of the greatest 'ongoing moral catastrophes' of humanity. But this dominant form of false progress is not automatic or inevitable. We must understand its causes, so that we can keep it from externalising more harm and even decelerate it. Further we must show to those who are convinced in the benevolence of markets, as the source of progress, that their belief is not only mistaken, but misaligned. Read more » [in-progress]
We need a new critical philosophy of progress
In order to stop techno-capitalist progress, we must recognise that it is preventable and undesirable. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Marx, Weber and Veblen observed the power of markets, technology and industry to harm humanity. But later in the 20th century, Fukuyama, Friedman and Keynes espoused the virtues of techno-capitalism as the final form of ‘political-economic structure’ (‘the end of history’), the only means of securing ‘economic freedom’ (‘neoliberalism’) and the solution to ‘mankind's economic problem’ (‘material scarcity’). In response to the hegemonic ideology of ‘capitalist realism’, we need a new critique of advanced 'AI-capitalism' and a new vision of an alternative. Read the essay » [in-progress]
A critical development in progress (studies)
Disputes of Progress is, in part, a more targeted approach building on 'Development in Progress', the last and longest research article of The Consilience Project (2021-2024) – which itself builds on their previous articles ‘The Case Against Naive Technocapitalist Optimism’ and 'Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design’. (Note: Disputes of Progress is not affiliated with The Consilience Project)
This article explains how our current idea of progress is immature: it is developmentally incomplete. Progress, as we define it now, ignores or downplays the scale of its side effects. Our typical approach to technological innovation today harms much that is not only beautiful and inspiring, but also fundamentally necessary for the health and well-being of all life on Earth. Developing a more mature approach to our idea of progress holds the key to a viable, long-term future for humanity.
The way we understand what progress is and how we achieve it has profound implications for our future. Ultimately, it shapes our most significant actions in the world—it affects how we make changes and solve problems, how we think about economics, and how we design technologies. Whatever is not included in our definition and measurement of progress is often harmed in its pursuit. Its side effects (or externalities) occur in a complex cascade, often distributing harms throughout both time and space. The second- and third-order effects of our actions in the world can be difficult to attribute to their original cause, and are frequently more significant than we realize.
As technology gets more powerful, its effects on reality become increasingly consequential. On our current trajectory, these effects will end civilization’s story long before we merge with machines, or before we have built a self-sustaining colony elsewhere in the solar system. We are not as close to a multi-planetary future as we are to the kind of damage to the biosphere that either destroys or significantly degrades civilization. If we continue to measure and optimize progress against a narrow set of metrics—metrics focused primarily on economic and military growth, which do not account for everything on which our existence depends—our progress will remain immature and humanity will continue its blind push toward a civilizational cliff edge.
In this article, we use the phrase “the progress narrative” to refer to the way we think and talk about progress in society. The progress narrative is the pervasive idea within our culture that technological innovation, markets, and our institutions of scientific research and education enable and promote a general improvement in human life. This article questions the accuracy, incentives, and risks of this narrative, examining the reasons that the idea has held such a central role in shaping the development of our global civilization. In doing so, it attempts to outline the progress narrative earnestly and clearly, noting that it is often driven by an honest desire to see positive change in the world. The intention is not to point the finger of blame, or to deconstruct for the sake of argument. It is to inform a way forward and outline a path ahead toward potential solutions.
‘The results of disinterested research were from the first applied in such a way that the upper and middle classes of all industrialized societies found themselves becoming steadily richer and richer. It was, therefore, only to be expected that the professional thinkers who sprang from these classes, and who were familiar with the methods and achievements of science, should have based upon the facts of technological and economic progress a general theory of human life. The world, they affirmed, was becoming materially, intellectually and morally better and better, and this amelioration was in some way inevitable. The theory of progress — [is] a theory that soon became a dogma, indeed an axiom of popular thought…The belief in all-round progress [is] based upon the wishful dream that one can get something for nothing. Its underlying assumption is that gains in one field do not have to be paid for by losses in other fields.’
— Science, Liberty & Peace (1946) Aldous Huxley
The Techno-Progressive Manifesto: Another World is Possible
Towards an Aligned Civilisation: a Fourth Industrial Revolution requires a Second Renaissance
The Techno-Progressive Manifesto is a series of essays laying out a new critical philosophy of progress.
'Techno-progressivism' is a worldview founded on humanism, agency and meta-modernism. It is the view that science, technology and industry are good – not in themselves, but only if they are aligned with human well-being and flourishing by cultural, ontological and institutional change. In short, it is the view that material progress guided by psychological and structural progress – a fourth industrial revolution steered by a second renaissance (4IR<2R) - leads to (more-than-)human civilisational progress
'The Wanderer above the Utopian City of Fog'
As with any intellectual work, the manifesto is a response and a successor to previous materials:
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primarily a response to The Techno-Humanist Manifesto (Crawford, 2024) as well as the The Techno-Optimist Manifesto (Andreessen, 2023), Notes on e/acc Principles & Tenets (Beff Jezoz & Bayes Lord, 2022) and Enlightenment Now!:The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (Pinker, 2018)
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a successor to Development in Progress (Schmachtenberger et al, 2024), #ACCELERATE Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (Williams & Srnicek, 2013), The Second Renaissance Whitepapers (Pollock & Barbier, 2024) and Dispatches from a Time Between Worlds: Crisis and emergence in metamodernity (Perspectiva, 2021).
The purpose of the counter-manifesto is to present a moral critique of technological and material progress and provide a framework the progress movement can use to understand why what it is doing currently is misguided. It will also present a nuanced, meta-utopian vision of a collective future that we want to live in and will be inspired to realise, both through inner and outer change. It will diagnose the problems of the dominant techno-capitalist model of progress, and point towards ecologies of solutions for realising a more holistic form of progress.. And it will show how civilisational progress can become a practical goal and a moral ideal which is embedded in systems and enacted by each of us — giving us an individual and collective future to strive for.
This book is first and foremost for the scientists, engineers, and technologists who create material progress and who are seeking - or neglecting - to understand the moral dangers, perverse incentives and system-wide (unintended) consequences of their work. It is also for intellectuals, storytellers, and change-makers, to inform their thinking and writing in response to the metacrisis. More broadly, it is for everyone in the alternative and actually-existing progress movements, and for anyone who is curious to learn what we are both about, where we find consensus and where we diverge.
The first draft of the essays will be serialised here and on Substack.
Featured Essays: A New Critical Philosophy of Progress
The red posts are written by Jason Crawford (linked here) from The Roots of Progress.
The black posts are critical responses to these posts written by Max Ramsahoye for Disputes of Progress.
Progress studies as a moral imperative
Progress is real and important, but it is not automatic or inevitable. We must understand its causes, so that we can protect them and reinforce them.
Progress studies as a civic duty
We have a responsibility to learn the underpinnings of the standard of living we all enjoy. To understand and appreciate how we got here, and what it took. And ultimately, to keep it going
Why I'm a proud solutionist
A third way that avoids both complacency and defeatism
We need a new philosophy of progress
The 19th century believed in progress; the 20th century grew skeptical. We need a new way forward
Progress, humanism, agency
An intellectual core for the progress movement
Industrial literacy
When you know these facts of history, you understand what “industrial civilization” is and why it is the benefactor of everyone who is lucky enough to live in it
Critical Progress studies as a moral imperative [in-progress]
‘Progress’ is real and important, but it can be deceptive and dangerous. We must understand the causes of ‘false progress’, so that we can expose them and negate them.
Critical Progress studies as a civic duty [in-progress]
We have a responsibility to learn the underpinnings of the standard of living that a minority of us enjoy. To critically understand how we got here, and what it took. And ultimately, to keep inequality from increasing.
Why I'm a proud holistic solutionist [in-progress]
As a fourth way that avoids complacency, defeatism and reductionism/reformism
We need a new critical philosophy of progress [in-progress]
The 19th century believed in post-capitalist progress; the late 20th century rightly grew sceptical. We need a new way forward: ‘A Post-capitalism for the 21st Century’
Progress, inhumanism & agency [in-progress]
An intellectual criticism of the progress movement
Industrial (il)literacy [in-progress]
When you know these facts of history, you understand what “industrial civilization” is and why it is the antagonist of everyone who is unfortunate enough to live in it.
‘Our civilization is characterised by the word 'progress'. Progress is its form rather than making progress one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary, clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves. I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings.’
— Culture & Value (1977) Ludwig Wittgenstein
Problem-Solution History
What I am trying to do in this blog is something I’m calling problem-solution history. Since I’m telling the story of human progress, I want to tell not only what happened, not only why it happened, but why we decided to make it happen. To do that, I need to clearly explain the problems humans face and how almost every aspect of the modern world is a solution to one of those problems.
The Spiritual Benefits of Material Progress
The Industrial Revolution gave us abundance and comfort - but what did it do to our souls? The Industrial Revolution is often disparaged for what it “did to humanity.” One response I agree with is that abundance is good, But people criticise this response for basically reasserting the material benefits and seeming to ignore the non-materialistic concerns in the original thread.So, let’s talk about spiritual values - that is, emotional, intellectual, social, and other psychological values - and what industrial progress has done for or to them.
The Environment as Infrastructure
A good metaphor for the ideal relationship between humanity and the environment is that the environment is like critical infrastructure. Infrastructure is valuable, because it provides crucial services. You want to maintain it carefully, because it’s bad if it breaks down. But infrastructure is there to serve us, not for its own sake. It has no intrinsic value. We don’t have to “minimize impact” on it. It belongs to us, and it’s ours to optimize for our purposes.
Problem-Solution-Externality History [in-progress]
Beyond Crawford’s problem-solution–history I propose a more comprehensive framing of problem-solution-externality history. Since I’m telling the holistic story of human progress, I want to tell not only what happened, not only why it happened, but why we decided to make it happen and further what the unintended consequences were of doing so. To do that, I need to clearly explain the problems humans face and how almost every aspect of the modern world is a solution to one of those problems that in turn generated further problems of their own.
The Environment is Far More Than 'Infrastructure' [in-progress]
A dangerous metaphor for the ideal relationship between humanity and the environment is that the environment is like critical infrastructure. The notion that infrastructure is there to serve us, not for its own sake leads to anthropocentrism and ‘resourcism’ It may not have intrinsic value as ‘deep ecology’ and ‘Gaian’ philosophies would affirm, but it does have instrumental value for more than just humans. We do have to “minimize impact” on it for this reason. It does not belongs to us, but to everyone and to no one; to all sentient minds. It’s ours to steward for the purposes of life, including but not limited to humans.
The Spiritual Costs of Material Progress [in-progress]
The Industrial Revolution gave us abundance and comfort - but what did it do to our souls? The Industrial Revolution (IR) is often disparaged for what it “did to humanity.” Crawford’s respond is that the IR created abundance and abundance is good,. People rightfully criticise this response for reasserting the material benefits and seeming to ignore non-materialistic concerns What we need to assess this is a systemic analysis of spiritual values - that is, emotional, intellectual, social, and other psychological values - and what industrial progress has done to suppress, co-opt and manufacture them.
‘Our predecessors mistakenly coupled their particular mode of mechanical progress with an unjustifiable sense of increasing moral superiority. But our own contemporaries, who have reason to reject this smug Victorian belief in the inevitable improvement of all other human institutions through command of the machine, nevertheless concentrate, with manic fervor, upon the continued expansion of science and technology, as if they alone magically would provide the only means of human salvation…our present over-commitment to technics is in part due to a radical misinterpretation of the whole course of human development…before we become unduly inflated over our own technical progress, let us remember that a single thermonuclear weapon can now easily kill ten million people, and that the minds now in charge of these weapons have already proved as open to practical miscalculations, humanly distorted judgements, corrupt fantasies, and psychotic breakdowns as those of Bronze Age kings.’‘this social and technological transformation might be duly rationalized as a massive practical effort to fulfill human needs and increase material wealth: but beneath it was a deeply subjective and more obsessive drive toward the ‘conquest’ of nature and the control of life, to the “effecting of all things possible.”
— The Myth of the Machine (1967) Lewis Mumford
Disputes of Progress
@Copright Max Ramsahoye