Progress trap
From Freepedia
A PROGRESS TRAP is a case where the inevitable negative long-term consequences of what is perceived as progress because it solved a problem in the short term clearly outweigh the gains.
The term was coined by the historian and novelist Roland WRIGHT in his 2005 non-fiction book "A Short History of Progress", elaborated from his 2004 Massey lecture.
While the idea is of course not new, Wright locates the central problem as being one of scale, the error often being to extrapolate the positive expectation of what works well for long on a small scale until for example resources are overstretched or environmental damage becomes untenable (erosion, greenhouse...).
The book sketches world history as a succession of progress traps.
Thus even in early stone age, perfecting hunting techniques already resulted in the extinction of prey species. The only viable alternative, agriculture, in time proved even more progress trap-prone.
Almost any sphere of technology can prove a progress trap, even medicine: for example, eliminating natural selection had already caused an enormous increase in genetic risks.
The example he states as the first ultimate one on a global scale, weapon technology reaching the treat of total nuclear destruction, is perhaps a bad one: is military technology as such progress, or rather neither good nor bad in se, and would the alternative not have been World war III in stead of the Cold War?
- It counters the modern notion that progress as such is a good thing, which by the way would have been pointless as long as the linear view on time had not taken over from the Ancient cyclic notion of time, in which classical Greco-Roman pagan religions actually referred to a Golden Age in the past which once would be returned by divine intervention; the Judeo-Christian messianic view on the contrary suggests one continuous time line, while the Indian (mainly Hindu and Buddhist) endless cycle of reincarnation allows no lasting progress on earth, at best merit and reward.
