The Ideology of Progress

The real master ideology of modernity, which has spawned the neoliberal ideology that I will be discussing in the next post, is that of Progress.

Quite simply, the ideology of Progress is an ardent faith that things are constantly getting "better."  Society is evolving, knowledge is increasing, and humans are gradually mastering the universe.  Of course, the foundations of this belief are not quite so sound.  First, there is the question of what criteria one chooses to measure Progress, and generally there is circular logic at play:  the criteria that are chosen are those which support the Progress narrative, while other aspects of life are deemed irrelevant.  Second, things are not so black and white.  Any beneficial development will simultaneously have its downside.  For example, while technological innovation and industrialization have greatly increased the efficiency and comfort of many people's lives, they are also responsible for massive waste, environmental degradation, and highly destructive weapons.  Third, the ideology of Progress has rested on a certain distortion or ignorance of historical and ethnographic evidence.  For instance, many people are unaware of the various complexities of non-industrial societies, or the unprecedented scale at which poverty has increased since the industrial revolution.

However, I should cut myself off there, because my goal in this post is not to "disprove" the ideology of Progress, but rather identify its important role in modern thought and point to its effects.

More generally, by forcing us to focus on all of the positives of the social order, to minimize the negatives and identify them with a receding past, we are less likely to challenge structures of domination and to truly understand our social world.  Additionally, Progress has great legitimating power.  Any number of things may be justified by recourse to Progress, including violence and discrimination.

A very specific consequence of the ideology of Progress is that it enables the perception that the accumulation of wealth is something that occurs in and of itself, by internal forces, rather than through relationships which ultimately only alter the distribution of wealth.  Thus, the relationship between wealth and poverty is never fully examined, and wealth on an unprecedentedly large scale is not viewed with caution.