A Short History of Progress (book review)

This is the first book that I've read all the way through in only a matter of days, in quite a while now. Ronald Wright, a Canadian novelist, essayist, and historian introduces his book with an explanation of a painting by Paul Gauguin, on which the words, 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we gong?' are painted. This is is the criteria for questioning that Wright follows in his assessment of failed civilizations over the span of human civilization. As he pulls from a large selection of anecdotal evidence, Wright paints a picture of the mistakes that civilizations have made over the last few millenia, from over farming to over production. One case he writes about is that of Easter Island, an island rich with forest that sustained a civilization for a good period of time. In the end, the people of the island became so greedy in their search for power and significance that they litterally cut down the last tree that they could have used in order make a canoe to get off the place because they were blinded by progress. Though there are funny stories like this strewn throughout the book, the overall tone is much more dim.

By the end of the book the feeling you get is that this is written as less of an informative history and more of a plea for change. He points out dangers such as the militarization of space, underproducing food for and overpopulated world, and echoes warnings of fellow writers (Huxley, Orwell, Coetzee, and Hoban) on globalization and complacency. In the final pages, Wright expresses his belief that the powers that be are simply ignoring what we are doing to the earth and the demise we are driving ourselves toward, on the hope that God will come fix at night what we've destroyed by day and goes on to say "none of this should surprise us after reading the flight recorders in the wreckage of crashed civilizations; our present behaviour is tyical of failed societies at the zenith of their greed and arrogance." He wraps the book up by showing that the fallen civilizations of the ancient world were at the time a mere speckle of what the earth had to offer as far as people and nature goes; but this time, with growing interdependance and the massive amount of people at the mercy of few, civilization faces a much more brutal fate, with possibly no hope for recovery - that 'now is our last chance to get the future right.'

It's a quick read. If you have time and read fairly quick, it can easily be an evening read...132 pages.