From Post-Progress Liberalism to Ecohumanism
Conserving the best of the liberal tradition while transitioning to a new & better alternative
The late, brilliant, and often eerily prophetic social critic Christopher Lasch opened his 600-page opus, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (1991), with the following “deceptively simple question”:
How does it happen that serious people continue to believe in progress, in the face of massive evidence that might have been expected to refute the idea of progress once and for all?
It’s a good question.
Personally, it’s one that I’ve pondered quite a bit since coming to terms with the fact that I myself no longer believe in (capital-P) Progress, which is what Lasch was referring to even if he doesn’t make the “capital-P” distinction. As I’ll explain more in a moment, this realization that I no longer put any stock in Progress not only came relatively recently, but landed with quite a shock.
Before going into that, though, I want to emphasize that when I say that I no longer believe in “Progress,” I’m not suggesting that I don’t value “progress.” On the contrary, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s necessary to reject that old-time “Progress” religion to make “progress” on new ways of being, understanding, and taking action in the world that are more appropriate for the 21st century.
Consequently, understanding the distinction between “Progress” as a sort of secular faith and “progress” as just another word for positive change is vital. Among other things, it allows for turning the experience of losing faith in Progress from one of negative disillusionment into one of positive possibility.
“Progress” refers to the once deeply rooted but now justly eroded faith that there’s some transcendent historical force that humans can harness that will propel society forward into an ever-better future. For left-liberals, this has meant feeling aligned with what’s often referred to as “the right side of history.” Presidents Clinton and Obama both loved this phrase and used it frequently. Obama even had the quote, “the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice,” emblazoned on a rug that he had specially commissioned for the Oval Office.
Notably, progressives aren’t the only ones: America’s right-of-center liberals have had their own vision of Progress as well. In their case, however, the guiding faith has been in the unfailing beneficence of the “free market” — which, once again, is imagined as a transcendent force capable of propelling us into an ever-better future. Both neoliberals, libertarians, and #NeverTrump Republicans, among others, have long held this view.
As someone who has been traditionally aligned with the liberal left, I used to hold much more of the former, “right side of history” faith than I realized. (When it came to markets, in contrast, I always had a more pragmatic view, seeing them as vital in some ways but requiring regulation in others.) Now, however, I’ve completely abandoned my former progressive faith, roundly rejecting the belief that some quasi-mystical engine of Progress can drive us to an ever-better tomorrow.
And to that I say: Good riddance. Because while such aspirational faith in Progress has arguably served some worthy causes in the past, that era is over. The vision of Progress that so many of us grew up in the mid-to-late 20th century is far past its expiration date. Whether we like it or not, today’s 21st-century Internet age is a radically new epoch. And in this context, holding on to outmoded conceptions of Progress is harmful.
Ditching our old faith in “Progress” could, however, make it easier to map out more promising visions of “progress” for today and tomorrow. What’s tricky about this, though, is that our belief in Progress tends to operate on a subterranean, virtually subconscious level. Most progressives who resonate with the idea of being “on the right side of history,” for example, simply take that trope for granted. And you can’t reject a worldview that you’re not truly aware that you have.
Losing My Religion
You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.
— Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” (1970)
I’m not sure precisely what precipitated it. But sometime during the maelstrom of 2016-2020, the thought popped into my head like the proverbial light bulb turning on: “I don’t believe in Progress anymore,” I said to myself. “I really just don’t believe in it at all.”
To mix metaphors, this realization hit me like a ton of bricks. But it wasn’t the fact that I’d lost that old-time progressive “right side of history” religion that shocked me. Rather, it was the fact that I hadn’t been able to see just how much some ineffable faith in Progress had undergirded my views of politics, culture, and society until that once-subliminal foundation had not only cracked and crumbled, but collapsed. Only then did I realize that what I’d assumed was immovable rock was nothing more than a shattered mess of rubble under my feet.
While this was a difficult experience to process emotionally, it was easy intellectually: After all, I’d studied enough social science and psychology to know that that’s simply how socialization works. It’s like the story of fish who have no concept of water: If you’ve always been immersed in a certain environment, it’s perfectly normal not to see its particularity as such. Typically, doing so requires having some distance on it. Then — and often, only then — it’s much easier to see it in a new way.
Readers who’ve been with Liberal Confessions for awhile may remember my reflections on growing up in the proudly progressive enclave of Evanston, Illinois, during the 1960s-70s. In that time and place, the progressive liberal vision of the promise of the Civil Rights movement, the Great Society, and the liberationist counterculture infused the very air we breathed. As such, it was very much a “fish in water” environment, particularly if you were young: Having faith in Progress was simply the default way to be.
When I was in fifth grade, for example, there was a lot of buzzing excitement around the 1972 election. George McGovern was running against Richard Nixon, and ALL the cool kids were proudly sharing their parents’ fervent support for McGovern. I, in contrast, felt mortified that my parents were planning to vote for Nixon. Of course, I didn’t broadcast this information socially. Nonetheless, it made me feel uneasy and uncool. Because at the time, it seemed obvious that enthusiastic support for McGovern was the only right way to be: After all, he represented the forces of Progress.
What’s funny about this in retrospect is that outside of a few uber-progressive enclaves like Evanston, my parents would have been in great company: McGovern lost by a landslide, pathetically winning only one state (Massachusetts) out of 50. This isn’t to pass judgment on that outcome or revive that old battle. Rather, the point is simply that what felt like “normal” to me in my youth was really, in fact, not very normal at all.
But kids who grew up in Evanston or similar enclaves when I did absorbed a progressive liberal faith in Progress through osmosis. We were confident of our political and cultural taken-for-granteds. And when you’ve grown up assuming that you’re on “the right side of history,” you don’t need to be proselytized about the need to have “faith in Progress.” The belief itself is subterranean: You’re not fully aware that you even have it until it’s gone.
The fact that I’ve lost the progressive liberal faith I was socialized to believe in doesn’t mean that I’ve turned against it, however. All things considered, I feel fortunate to have grown up where and when I did.
As I’ve written about previously, my kindergarten cohort was the first in the nation to launch a voluntary (as opposed to court-ordered) public school desegregation initiative. And Evanston’s plan was ambitious, including bussing to integrate neighborhood schools, hiring more Black teachers and administrators, offering anti-bias training to teachers and staff, and implementing a new curriculum committed to racial justice. All of this impacted me (and, I’m certain, most of my classmates) quite profoundly.
Over a half-century later, with the benefit of hindsight as well as an enormous amount of disillusionment under the bridge, I still see that impact as a solid positive. Plus, I’m confident I’m in good company on this. While I obviously can’t speak for anyone else, my best guess is that the overwhelming majority of people who shared that formative school experience continue to value it today.
As kids, we didn’t understand that we were part of a new social experiment. But we did intuit a sense of being meaningful players in a collective project that was much bigger than ourselves. That felt worthwhile and important, even if we didn’t really understand why. And that pervasive sense of meaning and purpose was not only uplifting, but made navigating what could at times be a quite difficult social environment seem a lot easier and much more worthwhile.
In that time and place, there really was a pervasive sense that the winds of Progress were blowing encouragingly in our sails. And even if that proved delusional, the sense of optimism and fortitude it instilled was nonetheless valuable in many ways. It attuned us to a sense of aspirational possibility vis-a-vis liberal democracy. It encouraged us to see social problems as soluble. It fostered a deep sense of ethical commitment to the principle that every individual should be seen and treated as a presumptive equal. And it instilled a motivating faith that honoring this principle could and would someday produce a better society for all.
The Politics of Passionate Incoherence
Nearly every one of the promises that were made by the architects and creators of liberalism have been shattered . . . Liberalism has ruthlessly drawn down a reservoir of both material and moral resources that it cannot replenish.
— Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (2018)
Whether you agree with Deneen’s caustic take on liberalism or not, it’s undeniable that there are a whole lot of people out there today who feel cheated out of what they thought society had promised them. This is true both in the U.S. and worldwide. Today, the cultural air we breathe isn’t infused with a sunny sense of aspirational Progress. Rather, it’s poisoned by a suffocatingly thick cloud of rage, resentment, scapegoating, and hate. The social fabric is unraveling fast in many if not most places, and frighteningly ripped —seemingly beyond repair — in others.
Consequently, the question of whether liberalism — understood as a political philosophy based on principles including individual rights, the rule of law, representative government, and free markets — deserves to be blamed for this debacle or rescued from it has become increasingly prominent. Notably, this is quite new: From the mid-1940s through the mid-2010s, the core foundations of American liberalism seemed so stable that the only relevant question was what type of liberalism should prevail. Liberalism itself was so solidly taken for granted that it was never at issue outside of certain very niche political subcultures.
If today’s question of the legitimacy of liberalism is foregrounded in a way that hasn’t been true since at least the 1930s, however, the most well-established responses to it continue to follow a highly predictable pattern. Critics of liberalism who situate themselves further to the left or right on the West’s long-established political spectrum contend that liberalism itself is the problem, just as they’ve always done. Defenders of liberalism, in contrast, continue to believe that every purported cure to the problems of liberalism (e.g., socialism, authoritarianism) has historically proven far worse than the supposed disease — a pattern that, they insist, will also inevitably be true in the future.
What is new, however, is the power and pervasiveness of much more incoherent forms of political agitation, which don’t so much make a coherent argument for or against liberalism as demonstrate its failings by virtue of their very existence. In this sense, there’s a critical mismatch between the established categories that we have to argue about politics — liberalism vs. socialism vs. conservativism, etc. — and the brawling street fight-style of engagement that we see on the ground (and even more so, online). This disjuncture accounts in part for why today’s political landscape feels so maddeningly confusing and unpredictably volatile: Our culture lacks the conceptual categories needed to make sense of what’s happening.
In the U.S., two such forces of incoherence drive a disturbing amount of our politics: Trumpism on the right and wokeism on the left. And while they’re passionately avowed enemies, they nonetheless share certain crucial features in common. For starters, neither offers — or even aspires to offer — a rationally spelled-out, intellectually coherent political philosophy. Instead, both spin through a dizzying succession of chantable, hashtagable slogans: #LockHerUp! #BuildTheWall! #StopTheSteal! #MeToo! #TransWomenAreWomen! #DefundThePolice!
While there are always exceptions, most who champion such slogans have no interest in parsing out the details and complexities behind them. Where’s the analysis? What’s the vision? Who’s got the plan? No one can say for sure, as in both cases, logical coherence is neither valued nor practiced. In fact, it’s entirely beside the point.
What matters is keeping the passions of the moment at a roiling boil. The one goal that’s consistently proffered is defeating the other side — which, it’s presumed, consists of nothing but stupid, hateful, and irredeemably dangerous people who are ruthlessly dedicated to achieving totalitarian control over American society. “This is an existential crisis!,” we’re endlessly told. “We must act!” But we’re not encouraged to question, think, reflect, or — heaven forbid — learn about what motivates the “other side” in a good faith, empathetic way. After all, there’s no time for that: They’re criminals! They’re fascists! Everything’s on the line! American democracy hangs by a thread!
The extent to which individuals who should know better have become swept up in such unquestioningly one-sided fear- and hate-mongering is disturbing. But even more problematic are the much greater numbers of people who routinely quash their doubts about what’s happening and remain dutifully loyal to their own Red or Blue team — even though, in their heart of hearts, they know perfectly well that things there are really not right.
Of course, in many of today’s school or work environments, it might be wise to keep many if not all of your dissident views to yourself. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t question the party line in private — and, most of all, in what should be the sanctuary of your own conscience and mind.
Humanity vs. The Algorithm
The exciting, free Internet which was dangled before us 25 or so years ago — Global communications! Unlimited information! International peace and harmony! The sharing of knowledge for human betterment! — turned out to be a trap, through which we surrender every detail about ourselves to state and commercial interests in exchange for dopamine hits which just keep coming, in turn deepening social divisions and disconnection from the natural world.
— Paul Kingsnorth, “You are Harvest: Divining the Machine, Part 9” (2021)
Like many people, I’ve been asking myself: Why did everything get so crazy so fast? Why did society get sucked into such a disorienting vortex of successive slogan-driven manias? Why did so many people seemingly stop thinking for themselves? And why did the world I thought knew become so suddenly eclipsed?
While I don’t believe in single-factor explanations, I do think it’s possible to sift out what the most impactful one has been in this case. In my view (and I’m far from alone in this), the primary culprit has been the combined impact of the newly powerful smartphones and algorithms that hit society in the mid-2010s. Together, these technologies radically changed our relationship not only with the Internet, but with our very selves, each other, and life in general. In so doing, they jet-propelled us into a new phase of human history.
Increasingly, online algorithms are rewiring people’s brains to the point that they instinctively assume that jumping onto the latest trending hashtag in their social media feeds is perfectly normal. As Jon Haidt and his collaborators have been documenting on After Babel, however, teenage girls are the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to evidencing just how insane and destructive these dynamics have become, both individually and collectively. Unfortunately, though, we’re only starting to come to grips with the profound changes that our constantly cyberspace-connected world has wrought, not only in terms of politics and culture, but vis-a-vis the very nature of human being itself.
Meanwhile, powerful cadres within the technological elite who have been driving this revolution have embraced a dystopian new vision of Progress. In their view, the driving purpose of these innovations is to transition us all into a “transhumanist” or even “posthuman” future. The general public, however, is by and large completely unaware of this fact. Regardless, some very powerful individuals and organizations are working tirelessly to realize it.
As Max More explains in his introductory essay to The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future (2013), the transhumanist movement seeks to move “well beyond humanism in both means and ends”:
Humanism tends to rely exclusively on education and cultural refinement to improve human nature, whereas transhumanists want to apply technology to overcome limits imposed by our biological and genetic heritage. Transhumanists regard human nature . . . as not having any claim on our allegience. Rather, it is just one point along an evolutionary pathway . . . By thoughtfully, carefully, and yet boldly applying technology to ourselves, we can become something no longer accurately described as human — we can become posthuman.
Concretely, what might this mean in practice? According to Joi Ito, writing for the MIT Media Lab via Wired, the goal of the transhumanist movement is “amortality,” or using technology to eliminate aging and disease, and making death an option, rather than a certainty. And yes, you heard that right: Transhumanists want to use technology to make us literally immortal.
Best-selling author Yuval Harari goes further, pointing out that this movement is actually split between transhumanists, who want to “amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers,” and “dataists,” who believe that technology has advanced to the point that even technologically enhanced humans should be seen as having lost any intrinsic value:
Dataism is a new ethical system that says, yes, humans were special and important because up until now they were the most sophisticated data processing system in the universe, but this is no longer the case. The tipping point is when you have an external algorithm that understands you — your feelings, emotions, choices, desires — better than you understand them yourself. That’s the point when there is the switch from amplifying humans to making them redundant.
Let’s pause and take a moment to reflect: One of our most prominent public intellectuals is blithely reporting that in powerful Silicon Valley circles, the debate over “the future of humankind” divides between whether we should become cyborgs or be replaced by computers entirely. Further, the elimination of human life is matter-of-factly described as the core commitment of a “new ethical system.” Because in the dataist view, of course, that would be Progress.
Some might say that we should dismiss such strange new debates as nothing more than the fanciful parlor games of tech-obsessed uber-nerds. I think this would be a mistake. While I’m not knowledgeable about the tech world, professionals who are tend to take the question of where, precisely, the combined powers of the Internet, A.I., and biotech might be taking us extremely seriously. Because even if you dismiss talk of cyborgs and so on as wildly off base, these new technologies have already jet-propelled us into a new phase of human history. And where things are headed from here is at best completely uncertain.
But it feels like we’re losing control. Or perhaps already have. And to my mind, this sense of hurtling towards a radically unknown, super-tech, and perhaps trans- or post-human future signals that it’s past time to root out and discard our old notions of Progress completely. Because falling back on some ungrounded, outmoded, and essentially unconscious faith in Progress keeps us from asking hard questions about where we’re heading and whether we want to go in that direction at all.
I know that I don’t. But most people have little sense that our old visions of Progress, whether on the left or the right, have been replaced by something completely different. Consequently, it’s all too easy to remain loyal to obsolete worldviews, particularly when they operate on a relatively unconscious level. Plus, when every new hashtag slogan comes down the pike with such ferocious propulsion, it’s extremely hard to muster the time, concentration, and determination to reflect, question, and learn. Regardless, it’s individual and collective work that urgently needs to be done.
Breaking Out of the Box
The real problem of modernity is the problem of belief. To use an unfashionable term, it is a spiritual crisis, since the new anchorages have proved illusory and the old ones have become submerged.
— Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)
All of this (and more) has had me asking myself whether I still identify as a liberal or not. This has been a vexing question.
On the one hand, I still feel aligned with the deeper ethical commitments of the progressive liberalism I grew up with. I also believe it deserves credit for many positive social changes I value, such as equal rights protections for women and racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. After all, back when I was born, Jim Crow segregation and sex-based employment discrimination were both legal. Knowing that such historic changes occurred in my lifetime causes me to not take them for granted.
On the other hand, I find many critiques of liberalism from both the democratic socialist left and particular parts of the new right quite persuasive. And when I combine their best arguments with my strong sense that we’re hurtling fast into an algorithmically-driven unknown future, I can only conclude that liberalism — even though it produced a lot that I value in the past — can no longer suffice.
That said, it’s not only liberalism that’s no longer up to the job of conceptualizing our most pressing problems and envisioning a compelling response. The issue is much bigger than that: Our entire left-right political framework no longer maps on to the world in a meaningful way. Fundamentally, that whole structure of political thought is a relic of the modern industrial age. As such, it’s a poor fit with our post-postmodern, dizzyingly digitized era.
The bottom line is that our familiar political paradigms — liberal, socialist, conservative, etc. — are inadequate to meet the current moment. We tend to assume that we must either choose among them or stop thinking about politics altogether. Given that none are truly good choices, however, it’s better to start thinking outside of the box.
That said, it’s important to continue to work with and honor the best ideas and practices that these traditions encompass. Remaining overly loyal to an outmoded paradigm, however, is counterproductive. And while thinking outside the box can also be treacherous, it seems clear that it’s past time to try.
And so I have. Thus far, my best suggestion is to envision what I’ll call “post-progress liberalism” as a transitional stage en route to a new philosophy and practice of “ecohumanism.” The underlying claim here is that while there’s a lot worth preserving in the liberal tradition, liberalism is not equipped to address the unprecedented challenges of a world in which the human mind is being rewired by algorithms, the natural environment is poisoned and dying, and the literal Web of complex technologies driving these and other destructive trends forward seems increasingly out of control. That requires a new framework.
Consequently, we need to stop looking to liberalism (or socialism or conservativism) as an engine of Progress and start imagining an alternative framework. At the same time, rather than trashing, ignoring, or trivializing the liberal tradition, we should commit to preserving the best of what it has to offer, and letting go of the rest.
Because liberalism is so deeply ingrained in our culture, even thinking about this seriously (let alone doing anything about it) is difficult. That’s why the concept of “post-progress liberalism” could be helpful: It signals that while liberalism shouldn’t be seen as the engine driving us forward, it shouldn’t be simply thrown into the trash bin of history, either. Instead, we need to build on the best of that legacy while transitioning to a new and better way of thinking, being, and doing in today’s world.
Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
— Aldo Leopold, The River of the Mother of God (1938)
From Post-Progress Liberalism to Ecohumanism
I propose the concept of “ecohumanism” as a good place to start. As I see it, the core mission of ecohumanism is to restore and sustain the health of our human and environmental ecologies in interdependent, synergistic ways. Its guiding philosophy is simple: We should strive to live in harmony with the natural order that both includes and surrounds us to the greatest extent possible. Imagined at scale, this would require massive shifts on both the structural and cultural levels: Not only moving from industrial to regenerative agriculture, for example, but also from an atomized to a relational concept of individualism.
As I’m imagining it, the term “human ecology” refers to the nexus of social and cultural structures that enable us to not only survive but thrive. Living a good life requires robust, dynamic, and loving relationships with our families, friends, and communities, as well as some meaningful sense of being part of something positive that’s much bigger than ourselves. To flourish, every individual needs to be part of a supportive human ecosystem and feel connected to some sort of sustaining greater whole. Consequently, ecohumanism is committed to promoting cultural, economic, organizational, and environmental ideas and practices that promise to build and sustain such human ecologies to the greatest extent possible.
Ecohumanism also insists that human beings are part of a living planet and that our fate and that of the Earth are connected. We cannot thrive while our natural environment is dying. Consequently, ecohumanism has an equally foundational commitment to building and sustaining the health of “non-human ecologies.” This requires harnessing not only our technological capacities, but also our ethics and will to the goal of better understanding, supporting, and honoring the web of non-human life that exists within and beyond us. This includes everything from the countless microbes that live inside us to the once vast but now shrinking diversity of plant and animal species we may never encounter.
Ecohumanism reverses the relationship between technology and nature proposed by transhumanism. The former insists that technology should work in harmony with the natural world. The latter, in contrast, holds that it can and should dominate, override, and eventually replace both humanity and nature. The contrast between these two visions of what the future should ideally look like could not be starker. And unlike the “Red versus Blue” divide that has infected everything today, the political choice of ecohumanism versus transhumanism is a profoundly meaningful and consequential one.
Is this vision of transitioning from our current morass into post-progress liberalism and on to ecohumanism nothing but a pipe dream? Perhaps. But the seeds of such radically new ways of being in the world have already been planted — and at least in some places, they’re growing. There are grounds for hope.
Consider, for example, the inspiring examples of land regeneration documented in the 2020 film, Kiss the Ground. This documentary makes a compelling case that “by regenerating the world’s soils, we can completely and rapidly stabilize Earth’s climate, restore lost ecosystems, and create abundant food supplies.” Best of all, we have the know-how to do this already: All that’s required is the political vision, commitment, and will.
There’s also a lot we can do in our personal lives to support the ecohumanist cause. And what’s nice about that is that those actions will almost certainly benefit us (and ideally, our local communities as well) in immediate, concrete, and important ways.
Reconsidering our options vis-a-vis our everyday food purchasing, production, and consumption is a great place to start. Can we, for example, buy more from local regenerative farms? Cultivate an organic vegetable garden? Hunt and forage for wild food responsibly? Cook more from scratch? Avoid processed foods? Make meals a dedicated time to connect with family and friends, and disconnect from our smartphones? Help others in our local community access organic, healthy options? The more we say “yes” to such questions, the healthier and happier we’ll be — and the more we’ll be supporting our local human and environmental ecologies.
Taking action to further an ecohumanist future strikes me as infinitely preferable to staying stuck in a depressed rut over our current predicament or in the endless spin cycle of our dead-end culture war. It’s uplifting to have a fresh political identity and positive societal vision to aim towards. Personally, I know that I feel much better thinking of myself as an aspirational ecohumanist than a disillusioned progressive liberal. I’m tired of parsing what’s been lost and why everything feels so broken.
I’ve also always believed that the natural order has an intrinsic wholeness and holds a deeper wisdom. Consequently, I find the vision of hurtling forward into a transhumanist future in the name of Progress beyond abhorrent. Instead, I want to see us commit to finding better ways of living as humans on planet Earth — ones that support, sustain, and honor the sacred web of life that includes and surrounds us.
Wishing a very Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers! And best wishes to all for this late Fall and upcoming holiday season.
Another interesting piece that is somewhat related:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/05/dark-enchantment?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Its not just liberalism that may or may not have failed but Western culture altogether. It could be said that the in-your-face "living" proof of this is the appearance of the religiously and culturally illiterate nihilistic barbarian Donald Trump who is enthusiastically supported by many right-thinking back-to-the-past Christian "traditionalist". Never mind that he does have even one teensy-weensy religious molecule in his heart - does he even have a heart?
Speaking of the heart as the centre of our existence-being please check out a book by Joseph Chilton Pearce titled The Heart-Mind Matrix How the Heart can Teach the mind New Ways to Think (and be).
He cites many references including these two - the first ones features Joseph's work and that of the second reference too
http://www.ttfuture.org Touch the Future
http://www.wombecology.org Womb Ecology