Against Progress Quotes

“[P]rogress is the inner development of a system, the gradual actualization of its potentials, so it all depends on which system serves as a point of reference.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Against Progress

“The opposition between false limitless desires which only bring suffering and the authentic spiritual desire for well-being thus appears problematic: sensual desires are in themselves moderate, constrained to their direct goals; they become infinite and self-destructive only when they are infected by a spiritual dimension. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling knew that spirituality is self-destructive in its longing for infinity, which is why evil is much more spiritual than our sensual reality. In other words, the root of evil is not our egotism but, on the contrary, a perverted self-destructed spirituality which can prompt unnecessary personal self-sacrifice.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Against Progress

“Early in Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige", a magician performs a trick with a small bird which disappears in a cage flattened on the table. A small boy in the audience starts to cry, distraught that the bird was killed. The magician approaches him and finishes the trick, gently producing a live bird out of his hand - but the boy is not convinced, insisting that this must be another bird, the dead bird's brother. After the show, we see the magician alone, putting a dead bird squashed into the trash where many other dead birds lie. The boy was right. The trick could not be performed without violence and death, but it relies for its effectiveness upon concealing the squalid, broken residue of what has been sacrificed, disposing of it where no one who matters will see. Therein resides the basic premise of a dialectical notion of progress: when a newer higher stage arrives, there must be a squished bird somewhere.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Against Progress

“True progress occurs in two steps: first, we make a step towards actualizing what we consider progress, and when we become aware of the squished bird that was the victim of this progress, we then accordingly redefine our notion of progress. It is in this sense that I define myself as a moderately-conservative communist: in order to survive we need a radical re-arrangement of our entire way of life towards some form of global solidarity and cooperation, but the urgent need to achieve this goal brings new dangers, so we should act with urgency and care.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Against Progress

“In short, a true progress also aims at retroactively redeeming all the squashed birds of the past progresses - not redeeming them in reality (the bio-cosmist dream), but redeeming the potentiality that was present in them.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Against Progress

“We find ourselves constantly in the position of having to decide about things that will fundamentally impact our lives, but without the knowledge required to make such decisions responsibly.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Against Progress

“Progress is, at its most fundamental, progress in freedom.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Against Progress

“The root of Evil is not our egotism but, on the contrary, a perverted self-destructive spirituality which can prompt unnecessary personal self-sacrifice.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Against Progress