Questioning the Morality of Progress
In my last piece, I wrote about how impact and progress came to be seen as always good.
It can be tricky to judge the human value of progress, particularly when looking at material or technical Progress. Yet, somehow, it feels very straightforward to judge the human value of decline as unequivocably bad. There is a powerful cultural myth that “if you’re not going forward, you’re going backward.” Since this the goal, anything but great Progress must be a great failure. We can see this in how the stock market values companies and how governments use GDP growth to evaluate themselves. We can even see it in how we treat our elderly, separating them from the rest of society as if ashamed by their agedness. Our collective belief in the perfect correlation between growth and goodness implies a similar correlation between decline and degeneracy. Instead of seeing reduction and decay as natural processes, our obsession with Progress forces us to see them as failures.
Yet our lived experience tells us that “more,” “bigger,” and the “new” are not always better. Everyone has had an experience of fearing the future, or of making a choice that seemed great at the time and turned out to have negative consequences. This expectation that expansion and innovation are always good for society deadens our ability to think critically about their consequences. At times, we may even excuse ourselves from blame by claiming that Progress is inevitable, a river flowing towards the ocean, a train that cannot be stopped. But this sets us on a path we feel we cannot control, and worse, cannot question. It can make otherwise good people make decisions that lead to very bad outcomes.
When we praise Progress, we give technology companies permission to do whatever they want to us.
The assumption that Progress and growth will happen no matter what we do absolves us of responsibility for our actions. Any kind of impact we make becomes good because it is part of the movement forward, part of the process of Progress. We saw this at Volkswagen in the late 2000s, as engineers and executives decided to write code which would make a big impact on their company. They designed and programmed a “defeat device” that helped diesel vehicles pass emissions tests in the lab, while polluting above legal limits the rest of the time. Volkswagen enjoyed 7 years of sales boosts from being able to market its vehicles as “clean diesel” before they were caught. It wasn’t just VW either. Fiat Chrysler, Renault, Mercedes Benz and Porsche have all conducted similar operations, using cheating technology to make an impact on their companies’ bottom lines. These scandals illustrate how a drive for impact, broadly defined and unconditional, can corrupt. If impact itself is the only goal, if the Progress that impact leads to is seen as inevitable, the decision to move forward with a criminal operation like these becomes an easy one, regardless of where the road ends.
The societal focus on Progress also results in a lack of respect, appreciation, and compensation for maintenance work. Our reliance on doctors, teachers, farmers, plumbers, caregivers, mothers and hundreds of other professions is overshadowed by the supposed heroism of entrepreneurs and inventors. Shopify, a platform for building e-commerce businesses, celebrates the conventional wisdom in its Global Economic Impact Report. “Every new business adds more value to the world,” the report exclaims. The world is clearly better now that “anyone, anywhere, can impact everyone.” Yet the people who maintain, restore, and care in their daily work are no less noble or important in their contribution. To value innovation, growth,and expansion above all else implicitly devalues anything that already exists, no matter how valuable or complete it may be. This includes the wonders of modern life already built, the cultural heritages which provide our foundation, and of course, the complex and mysterious natural systems which sustain them both. When we devalue what already exists, we devalue the maintenance work and maintenance workers that support them.
As much as white male tech tycoons might want it to be true, Progress is not a force of nature.
Saddest of all, white imperialists and colonists have, and still do, invoke Progress to justify the exploitation and extermination of other cultures. In the 19th century United States, the ideology of “Manifest Destiny” encouraged millions of white Americans to take control of the country’s interior from indigenous peoples. White settlers were told they had a special duty to bring Progress — capitalism, technology, and Christianity — to the rest of the country. Since this Progress was inevitable, any deceit, violence, or outright genocide could be justified as stepping stones on the path of destiny. In the same way, the sentiment of the “White Man’s Burden” was invoked later in the century to legitimize white American conquest of the Philippines. By bringing the Filipinos the unquestionably superior ideals and institutions of white Western culture, they would someday become civilized, and worthy of their own humanity. Again, because this transition was irresistible and its ethics unimpeachable, any horrors committed in the process could be vindicated.
While such examples likely evoke shame for white Americans today, similar justifications continue to be made by American companies. Like its older sibling Uber before it, the scooter company Bird operates in foreign cities who have explicitly rejected it, dropping thousands of its scooters on the street under cover of darkness. The cities do not ask for this, they do not want it, but Progress arrives anyway, without invitation, without consent. Uber, at its peak of arrogance, took things even further through its “Greyball” program, tracking and blocking the accounts of journalists, law enforcement, and city officials who would dare question its expansion. The actions of a company like Uber or Bird cannot be justified on their own merits, but these companies maintain their public image by invoking the inevitability of Progress as justification.
When Bird does a scooter drop, it purports to make civilized people out of barbarians. When Uber evokes Progress to justify continuing to operate its service after being banned, it evokes a long history of colonialism and colonist morality. Progress was similarly forced upon American and European colonial subjects. It was not asked for. It was a concept weaponized against them. But Progress is not a force of nature. As much as white male tech tycoons would like it to be true, material and technological Progress are neither inevitable nor unimpeachable. When we praise Progress, we give technology companies permission to do whatever they want to us. We push the essential contributions of maintenance workers and caregivers into the shadows. We encourage businesses to grow by any means necessary, including crime and pollution. We give away our agency, and, more importantly, we give permission to take away the agency of the vulnerable. None of this is predestined. But without a robust conversation about what progress we want and why, we can’t push back effectively. What’s a technology lover to do? In my next piece I will try to explore some of the alternatives.
This piece is the third in a series, starting here. A link to the next instalment will be posted here once it is published.
All my pieces are drafts, and feedback and criticism are strongly encouraged.
