Progress

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Daniel Christian Wahl:

"In The Sustainability Mirage John Foster (2008) argues that the economic-growth focussed mindset of sustainable development perpetuates the obsession of Western culture with the notion of progress. He proposes that addressing our deeper needs of the present would change the debate about sustainability in a more fundamental way.

Wright’s Short History of Progress calls for a deeper questioning of, as Gauguin put it: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” (in Wright, 2004, p.2), if we want to avoid that our globalised civilization follows the pattern of eventual collapse set by previous civilizations like the Easter Islands, Sumer, the Mayans, or ancient Rome. Wright warns of the potential dangers of “technological progress traps” (p. 108) as “ideological pathologies” (p.124). He points out how “every time history repeats itself, the price goes up” (p.129). This time the price might be the planet’s ability to support human life!

The author (Daniel Christian Wahl) explored some of the worldview and value systems changes underlying the shift towards genuine sustainability and a resilient culture in his doctoral thesis (2006). He proposed that metadesign based on holistic and transformative education for ecological and social literacy can affect worldview and value changes that shape intentionality and thus constitute paradigmatic changes of design thinking at the upstream end of the design process. Aspects of this work were developed further in subsequent publications (see Wahl, 2006a, 2006b, 2007 and Wahl & Baxter 2008)." (https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/beyond-sustainability-natural-design-and-resilience-a0374e747333)