How Can We Be Free If… 'Progress' Is Brain Damage
Why maybe we need less 'progress'.
I was watching YouTube recently… some guy from Denmark built a tiny house in the woods to escape the rat race. Then I watched this documentary about humanity being on the fast track to extinction. Yikes. No change then…
From the description:
“Surviving Progress explores the dangerous paradox at the heart of modern civilisation: What we call "progress" might actually be leading us toward collapse.“
It had some great lines like:
“Conventional economics is a form of brain damage.”
Some great perspectives, too.
From those in the thick of it, chopping down rainforest to feed their families.
To those aspiring for lifestyles considered normal in the first world.
Who could blame either?
The only issue is that if the populations of China & India were to achieve the same living standards as those in the West, we’d need an extra planet.
Maybe we don’t have the best example for what ‘progress’ should be…
Infinite Economic Growth ≠ Progress.
The idea of progress being tied to economic growth was the central issue.
If we don’t deprogram this lie, we’re doomed.
We can see through it, intellectually, but if we don’t pluck it out of our subconscious, it won’t matter.
We’ll continue to value everything we are and do on some fabricated, detrimental system that is destroying the planet and enslaving the majority in ‘survival mode’.
What Is Progress?
They asked a slew of people this at the beginning.
My quick answer was: increasing levels of harmony between humanity and the planet.
A nice answer, I thought. Vague and inconclusive, maybe, but I believe it.
I’m not sure that’s sufficient for a Bangladeshi rice farmer, though, or the other five-ish billion people striving to make ends meet.
So What Has This Got To Do With Freedom?
Pretty much everything.
Inner freedom and outer freedom go hand in hand.
The thing we have to understand is that it’s an inside job first.
It is our inner, subconscious world where we are entangled with these faulty systems and ideas.
E.g. the irrational fear keeping you trapped in a job you hate, or of never having enough, even when we might be living in the top 0.1% of humanity in terms of living standards.
If we’re entrapped in that, how will a better example of real sustainable progress be set?
We need financial support, no question. But what good will that be when we’ve no planet left to spend it on? They’re saying over 90% of Earth’s soil could be degraded by 2050 if the current rates continue. That’s not too far away.
Maybe we should rename all currencies to ‘Earth’ as a reminder of what we’re really spending and stacking in banks?
In the end, anthropologist Jane Goodall managed to sprinkle some hope on the matter, which I’ll paraphrase.
“It’s going to take having our backs against the wall to make any sort of real, necessary changes to our lifestyles… but we usually do pretty well when that happens.”
Nothing to worry about then, that’s useless anyway.
I suppose we have to wait and see.
The Human Spirit will prevail.
I’m surprisingly hopeful of that.
There are enough people awake or waking up to make meaningful change happen.
It’s already happening.
All we can do for now is get/stay connected to each other, and the one thing that can guide us out of this mess and toward harmony — the human Spirit.
How we do that is up to us.
If you had to answer the same question they asked in the film: ‘What is progress?’, what would you say? Drop a comment or hit reply; I’d love to hear it.
