Progress : a history of humanity's worst idea

McDonald, Samuel Miller2025

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Summary

Progress is power. Narratives of progress, the stories we tell about whether a society is moving in the right or the wrong direction, are immensely potent. They have levelled cities, flattened mountains, charted the globe and ushered in a new geological epoch unique in our planets 4.5-billion-year history. But the modern story of progress is an also very dangerous fiction. This tall tale has spread across the globe, shaping nearly everyone's sense of what progress means, what it should mean, and where our society ought to go. Geographer Samuel Miller McDonald's book offers a radical new perspective on the five progress myths upon which the modern world is built, illuminating its blood-strewn lineage and suggesting an urgent alternative. If humanity is to have any chance of a future, he argues, then we must fundamentally change the way we think about one of our most basic political ideas.