The following is a condensed summary of my thoughts on humanism and nihilism. It pulls sections from essays, notes, etc. that regular readers may have already come across, and I apologize for the repetitiveness. Consider it a necessary consolidation phase before The Idols of Progress. Background I In Repent to the Primitive I explain that human […]
I Humanism is the dominant ideology of world society. “Humanism” here means a morality that sets justice, equality, and peace as its ideals, and that considers the sphere of moral consideration to be the whole human species. “Dominant” here is a measure of power, not popularity. Most of the world population, by numbers, may not […]
Central to radical conservationist claims is a rejection of the Idea of Progress. What does this mean? Put simply, to paraphrase Bury (1987, p. 2), the Idea of Progress is the belief that civilization has improved, is improving, and will improve the human condition. Note the three components of this idea: first, improvement happens in a […]
Among the weak arguments against Progress, there is the peculiar case of dominant ideologies hosting factions that reject it in the name of dominant values. The so-called “regressive left” is an example of this from humanism. The regressive left argues that Western civilization embodies power structures that prevent it from living up to humanist or post-humanist […]
Summary—Progressivists sometimes charge that conservationists are misanthropes. In reality, progressivists are the real misanthropes, since they disdain human nature and seek to “improve” it into non-existence. As a result, they only consider “human” (and “humane”) those things that benefit civilized conditions, and use this as the framework by which to judge whether or not an […]