Progress is the God of the modern world. What happens once God is dead?
Progress is not just a goal in the West-it's a religion. Most people believe in its inherent value as enthusiastically and uncritically as medieval peasants believed in heaven and hell. Our faith in progress drives the popular insistence that peak oil and climate change don't actually matter-after all, our lab-coated high priests will surely bring forth yet another miracle to save us all.
Unfortunately, progress as we've known it has been entirely dependent on the breakneck exploitation of half a billion years of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels. As the age of this cheap, abundant energy draws to a close, progress is grinding to a halt. Unforgiving planetary limits are teaching us that our blind faith in endless exponential growth is a dangerous myth.
After Progress addresses this looming paradigm shift, exploring the shape of history from a perspective on the far side of the coming crisis. Greer's startling examination of the role our belief systems play in the evolution of our collective consciousness is required reading for anyone concerned about making sense of the future at a time when we must seek new sources of meaning, value, and hope for the era ahead.
Progress is the God of the modern world. What happens once God is dead?
"Our society's worship of the idea of progress constitutes a formidable roadblock to successful adaptation to what our climate-changed, resource-depleted future has in store. John Michael Greer doesn't just identify that roadblock-he dynamites and bulldozes it, using his characteristically sharp wit and expansive knowledge of cultural history." - Richard Heinberg, author, The End of Growth
"... an excellent introduction to Greer's insightful big-picture thinking grounded in an all-too-rare knowledge of history, ecology, and economics." - Rev. Michael Dowd, author, Thank God for Evolution
Progress is not just a goal in the West-it's a religion. Our faith in progress drives the popular insistence that peak oil and climate change don't actually matter-after all, our lab-coated high priests will surely bring forth yet another miracle to save us all. Unfortunately, progress as we've known it has been entirely dependent on the breakneck exploitation of half a billion years of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels. As the age of this cheap, abundant energy draws to a close, our blind faith in exponential economic growth is coming up hard against unforgiving planetary limits.
After Progress addresses this looming paradigm shift, exploring the shape of history from a perspective on the far side of the coming crisis. Required reading for anyone concerned about making sense of the future at a time when we must seek new sources of meaning, value and hope for the era ahead.
" ...a thought-provoking book [that] provides a cautionary tale about human illusions of domination over nature and scientific rescue from our excessive consumption of natural resources that we ignore at our peril. "
- Paul Kivel, author, Living in the Shadow of the Cross
John Michael Greer is a scholar of ecological history and an internationally renowned futurist whose blog, The Archdruid Report, has become one of the most widely cited online resources dealing with the fate of industrial society. He is the author of over 30 books, including Green Wizardry and The Long Descent .
After Progress is a bracing introduction to John Michael Greer's big-picture thinking grounded in an all-too-rare knowledge of history, ecology, and evolution. Environmentalists and social activists will need to take courage in facing the raw realities that Greer reveals. But on the other side of grief comes gratitude for the chance to re-shape our activism in ways that might actually count.
--- Michael Dowd, author, Thank God for Evolution and host, 'The Future Is Calling Us to Greatness'
It would be nice if there were a detox center for bad ideas; you know, the kind where you pay a year's living wage for a week at a posh spa, replete with infinity pool, gestalt therapy and the off-chance of a celebrity roommate? Until then, After Progress may have to do. It is everyman's self-help guide to unlearn just about every bad thing we like to teach our children but really shouldn't.
---Albert Bates, author, The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and The Biochar Solution
Greer's extremely insightful After Progress takes the reader above the fray, and gives a bird's-eye-view of the civic religions that have tunneled throughout societies. It will be difficult for the reader to return from that view and fail to recognize our own civic religion, as well as the course it's paving for itself.
--- Steven Dillon, author, The Case for Polytheism
After Progress is a solid and necessary look at our Western belief in the inevitability of progress and why we need to adjust to the reality of a finite world. It's a thought-provoking book and provides a cautionary tale about human illusions of domination over nature and scientific rescue from our excessive consumption of natural resources that we ignore at our peril.
---Paul Kivel, educator, activist and author, Living in the Shadow of the Cross
Our society's worship of the idea of progress constitutes a formidable roadblock to successful adaptation to what our climate-changed, resource-depleted future has in store. John Michael Greer doesn't just identify that roadblock-he dynamites and bulldozes it, using his characteristically sharp wit and expansive knowledge of cultural history.
---Richard Heinberg, author, The End of Growth and Afterburn
After Progress invites us to challenge every assumption we have about the Western obsession with perpetual growth and its driving myth of progress. John Michael Greer writes with a wit and clarity that masterfully unpicks the historical and psychological complexities of our political and social landscape, exposing the dangerous blind-spots of our collective perceptions and challenging us to step beyond them.
---Philip Carr-Gomm, author, Druid Mysteries, The Druid Way and Sacred Places.
People say John Michael Greer is incredibly smart and that he really knows a lot; some even say he's outrageous - uh, excuse me, provocative and bold. But we're in extreme trouble and maybe we need extreme statements to wake us up. I would say that in After Progress, Greer lives up to his reputation. You want provocative and bold? It's here.
---Cecile Andrews, author, Living Room Revolution, and Less Is More, Slow Is Beautiful, Circle of Simplicity
