12/2/25

The Crisis of the Modern World --ar 3:2 --sref 638607360 3653740444

I think I (and many people who work in techno-forward companies or geographies) often jump to the foregone conclusion that technological and economic progress are (1) indivisibly intertwined and (2) trivially good for the benefit of humanity, across all socioeconomic stratifications. The argument itself is pretty straightforward - technology is anything that gives human action leverage, and more leverage is good. This leverage can radically improve how societies are structured and what we can do with one another (more effectively grow crops, more effectively treat disease, more effectively exchange ideas, etc), and the easiest way to quantify that improvement is through economic activity (usually the number people cite is GDP per capita). The easiest thought experiment to summarize this argument is to consider who had a better life - a King prior to the Industrial Revolution or a pauper in the modern world? Rameses was considered god incarnate and even he didn’t have air conditioning or Tylenol.

This argument goes down so smoothly that it’s hard to consider why anyone rational can believe the opposite. We can throw slurs at them (Luddite, degrowther, etc), but I don’t think this is completely fair. Recently, I’ve been reading some notable works from economists or philosophers that outline either why progress is bad or why anti-progress is good. I can’t say I’ve been convinced by any of it yet, but I do think its important to engage with these ideas, as the world moves closer to intelligence singularity. I’ll type out deeper notes on each of these in the future, but for now I’d recommend people to read through the running list of works below if they want to investigate (or at least inoculate against) arguments against sacrificing modern society on the altar of growth.

The Unabomber Manifesto by Ted Kazynski (1995)

The Crisis of the Modern World by Rene Guenon (1942)

The True and Only Heaven (Progress and Its Critics) by Christopher Lasch (1991)

Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant (2023)