Progress How one idea built civilization and now threatens to destroy it

Geographer McDonald debuts with a sweeping reappraisal of the notion of historical progress. He examines frequently cited evidence of progress, including falling global poverty rates and increased lifespans, and dismisses it as "cherry-picked" data. Arguing instead that progress is a political myth used to naturalize inequality in the present by promising a better society in the future, he traces the concept's roots all the way back to 3,000 BCE, when expansionist Mesopotamian states began to be "fueled by intensive environmental harvesting." Previously, McDonald notes, human cultures revered the natural world, and believed human societies ought to stay within their limits and act as nature's caretakers. The Mesopotamian states produced a very different worldview, one already apparent in The Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh converts a "wild man" to "civilized" life and slays a forest god to use the timber to build a city. This is especially striking, McDonald notes, given that "the first known instance of human-caused deforestation occurred in this region." Concurrently, the "Promised Land" myth emerged, which McDonald shows was "explicitly used" from its inception to justify expansionist wars, environmental degradation, and a hierarchical society. McDonald astutely traces how these ancient ideologies flourished throughout Western history until they found final expression in capitalism, which sees "growth" as an end in itself and promises a better future in exchange for inequality today. The result is a provocative interrogation of the very foundations of modern society. (Dec.)

Geographer McDonald's first book excoriates what he terms the false narrative of progress, spurning the Steven Pinker school of optimism. For 5,000 years, belief in the collective, progressive improvement of humanity has inspired peasants and kings, undergirded belief systems, contributed to the rise of complex societies, and justified extractive economies. Western ideologies of progress became ubiquitous as communities shifted from foraging and subsistence farming toward states, agriculture, and exploitation of nature and of workers. To make his case, McDonald presents evidence of empires and suffering throughout (primarily Western) history. He argues that societies have always been parasitical, and he appeals for commensalism, in which human actions harm neither nature nor people. He spurns the neoliberal belief that endless economic growth is both possible and desirable, pointing out that the Soviet Union and China experienced rapid growth while residents starved. McDonald's sweeping arguments, recommendations, and dystopian predictions have limited historical and philosophical depth, but he offers a bracing corrective to the axiom that human progress is inevitable. VERDICT An urgent critique of the ideology of progress, for readers who enjoy the work of Thomas Piketty, David Graeber, and Jared Diamond.--Michael Rodriguez

Dreams of Eden. Progress does not necessarily make us better. Can you measure happiness, fulfillment, or the spiritual quality of life? This first book by McDonald, a geographer, seeks answers through a great cultural history of the West--running from ancient Mesopotamia to Christian Europe, from medieval faith to Enlightenment reason, from war to peace and war again. We've told ourselves a story: The longer we live, the better; the more we have, the better. Rather than praising personal or national acquisition, the author argues for a "calculated commensalism," societies "that practice economies of reciprocity." We need to look back to what the author calls older, "ecologically sound societies" for models of this reciprocity. Such societies--ancient, non-Western, agrarian--were often conquered and destroyed by Western imperialism. Those old societies built a "pathway to those qualities of freedom, equality, leisure, abundance and peace…not through the conquest of frontiers and the hysterical extraction of life, but through experimentation…inquisitiveness and courage, and through the willingness to fight for these things." There is an idealism to this book that refreshes readers jaded by the claims of "techno-futurism" and the aspirations of oligarchs. You read this book and want to love the earth rather than reach for stars. At times, though, the book offers the overstatements of the justice warrior: "We must not see the political change we fight for today as yet another step…along the lineage of progressive history within which we so often situate our struggle.…Indigenous resistance stands outside this lineage of parasitism." If a sharing, selfless society is out of reach in waking life, it still may fill our dreams. A critical history of progress rests on wishful thinking for a return to an ecologically sensitive, communitarian life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.