YOUTH FUTURES: The Myth of Progress

There are many things we don't understand about our universe, so we make myths, stories we tell ourselves and our children to make sense of it all. One of those is The Myth of Progress. It says that our lives will keep getting better and better, richer and richer, more and more comfortable. Always. Guaranteed.

The only problem is that The Myth of Progress was invented to explain a very temporary situation. Starting in about the year 1700, we found coal and started using it. About 1860, oil joined the party, much easier to use. Finally in 1950, uranium promised to be clean and "too cheap to meter."

Then geological reality set in. In 1972, oil wells in the USA started declining. In 2005, it now appears, the world's oil supply peaked, and the stuff will never again be cheap. And we're wondering if we dare keep on using nuclear energy. All of the alternatives, so far, have a serious problem or two.

We learned The Myth of Progress at the same time as we learned to walk and go potty by ourselves. Things learned that early are difficult to question, which is why so many people deny that the climate is changing, the economy isn't growing anymore, and our energy supplies are getting tight.

People from almost any time in the past (before 1700) would have laughed at the idea that the future will always be better than the past. They knew from experience that it probably wasn't true. Their lives were limited by the sunshine and water that grew their food, human and animal muscle, and the little bit of stored energy in firewood. The only way to live at a higher standard was to enslave other people, or steal from them.

Myths have great power ... over us. They don't have much effect on the geology of the planet. Whenever there's a conflict between myths and hard, cold reality, reality wins. We usually see this as a struggle between Man and Mother Nature. She wins, every time.

Each of us has a choice to make. We can walk into the 21st century with blinders on because we believe what we're told. In every society, there's a class or political party that's skilled at telling people what will keep them happy so they won't notice where all the money and power is going. Hitler's Nazi Party was one of those. He promised continual progress too.

Or we can look at the evidence and think for ourselves.

The evidence for The Myth of Progress is very slim, with just a few items like hope, faith, pride, wishful thinking, and the deeply-felt belief that "we're different from everyone in the past."

Every civilization of the past has believed the same thing, that they would continue on into a glorious future. And yet, every one of those civilizations came to an end. The people didn't disappear, just the civilizations. The people of the Roman Empire, when it collapsed in the 400s, continued living, had children, and became today's Italians.

The evidence against The Myth of Progress includes the facts of geology, the laws of physics, the rules of economics, the lessons of history, and everything we know about human nature.

It's natural to think we're better than people of the past. There is even a sense in which that's true, as knowledge does slowly build, over the centuries, as long as it's carefully preserved. But The Myth of Progress only worked while energy was cheap and plentiful.

That just ended.