John Gray:
“Today liberal humanism has the pervasive power that was
once possessed by revealed religion. Humanists like to think they have a
rational view of the world; but their core belief in progress is a
superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the
world’s religions.
Outside of science, progress is simply a myth.”
Karl Kraus:
“Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature.”
Jill Lepore:
“The idea of progress—the notion that human history is the
history of human betterment—dominated the world view of the West between the
Enlightenment and the First World War. It had critics from the start, and, in
the last century, even people who cherish the idea of progress, and point to
improvements like the eradication of contagious diseases and the education of
girls, have been hard-pressed to hold on to it while reckoning with two World
Wars, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, genocide and global warming. Replacing
“progress” with “innovation” skirts the question of whether a novelty is an
improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are
getting newer and newer.”
Artist: Bob Mankoff, April 2019
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