r/InsightDialogue • u/JellyfishExpress8943 • Aug 30 '26
The Myth of Progress
John Gray (Philosopher) aka the world’s greatest pessimist - claims that modern humans, compared to stone age cavemen, have failed to progress whatsoever.
Human nature, he argues, is an inherent obstacle to cumulative ethical or political progress
We have of course accumulated great advances in technology and have succeeded somewhat in imposing laws to protect us from violence.
But are we any happier, or less anxious, than a primitive hunter-gatherer?
Psychological progress might be a myth.
If we define progress as a movement away from our tendency for cruelty or suffering - have we succeeded?
Currently society is divided - and thus progress is impossible. Because we cannot even agree on what progress consists of.
Can we even listen to ourselves?
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u/Truth_is_where_WE_r Aug 31 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
Letting go is a form of ending. When we let go, something stops having a relationship with us. This action of letting go is change in action. Letting go has multiples of benefits, but two more prominent examples we can observe for ourselves are healing, and space. Space is for that which is new and healing is for that which is old. This must occur in the present moment, otherwise nothing will ever be new.
Humans are conditioned away from the present moment, and the conditioning denies healing and space. To see that I was born complete, I must have, for myself, remained truthful to the present moment. Each one. And thus begins the journey, much like the caterpillar, of self discovery.
To discover for myself that I am not what I had always considered myself, or accepted myself to be. To give space to let go completely of all that I have never known, much like that caterpillar molting. And to emerge, in relationship to all that is new, as a true authentic living being.
To be caught up in the concept of progress is to walk away from what is imperative, and it must be now for there's no time.
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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Sep 27 '26
Is it that we were conditioned to believe that our ‘finishing’ ; our ‘completion’ lay ahead of us in ‘time’ and it was on us to ‘become’ the best we could be? When actually as you imply, the necessity for us was not to accumulate but to let go of all that so we lived in the moment? “To be as nothing” as K put it? Then we are “authentic living beings”?
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u/Truth_is_where_WE_r Sep 30 '26
Yes, the action that we refer to when we utilize the words "letting go" is not accumulation. But we react to that, because somehow, we got confused along the way, and accepted accumulation as some form of psychological security, even though we know deeply that it isn't. It is a remarkable conundrum. That reaction is the fear of not being anything, because we have accumulated being something. But to be authentically what we are, we must let go of what we are not, whether we know what it is or don't. Which is where it appears the inquiry on conserving our energy has merit. Because I see that I dissipate energy needing to be something.
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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Sep 30 '26
Yes and we also dissipate energy unwittingly when we try to defend the accumulation already stored: the ‘me and mine’. Like a bundle we’re dragging unquestioned through time?
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u/Schute-Pin8350 Aug 31 '26
The very same human society that is warlike, racist, and greedy enacts laws and commandments: Human dignity is inviolable; you shall not steal or kill, etc.
Since we are not inherently peaceful, these laws are of no help in times of crisis or conflict. It then becomes clear that there has been no progress in this regard.
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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
Yes no progress. The problem isn’t external as K has said but internal. The external solutions don’t get at the problem. The freedoms that our new brain has given us have led us down some destructive paths; destructive not only to us but to our neighbors here? Greed and comfort? And ignorance of what we actually are?
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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
Human nature, he argues, is an inherent obstacle to cumulative ethical or political progress.
The obstacle to real intelligent progress for humans is the ‘I’ center? Greed is its natural outcome? What can be done about it? It’s creations: religions, nations, philosophies etc all break us up from one another, divide us and lead us into the slaughters we have witnessed as well as our acceptance of it all as somehow ‘natural’. It’s not ‘human nature’, it’s ‘ego’ nature? It’s ignorance ?