A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright

This little book packs a lot of information into 130 pages. The notes at the end make for illuminating reading as well. Perfect for a long flight or rainy weekend, it held my attention throughout. Mr. Wright provides a bird’s eye view of the history of humanity’s progress, if we can call it that. As he points out, “Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.”

A Short History of Progress is filled with subtle wisdom and observations that hold more curiosity than condemnation. In a very short span of pages the reader begins to pick up the pattern of our evolutionary weaving – we tend to consume what we love. The cautionary tale of human development is summed up in the case of Easter Island: the statute cult that robbed the island of its trees became a self-destructive mania, an ideological pathology that wiped out an entire culture. Scattered throughout are examples of civilizations and cultures (which I learned are not the same thing at all) gone the way of the dinosaur through blatant disregard for long-term implications of short-term feeding frenzies.

The author makes a strong case for the trajectory of our population’s explosion: extinction through the depletion of our natural resources. In 200 AD there were 200,000,000 people on the planet; in 1500 there were 400 million; in 1825 there were 1 billion; in 1925 there were 2 billion; and in the year 2000 there were 6 billion. Adding 200 million people after the fall of the Roman Empire took 13 centuries – adding the last 200 million took only 3 years!

Other alarming examples of the growing imbalances present today: during the 20th century the world’s population multiplied by 4 and the economy by 40; the combined worth of the world’s three richest people (Bill Gates = 51 billion, Helen Walton = 48 billion, and Warren Buffet = 33 billion) is greater than the wealth of the world’s 48 poorest countries.

These kinds of statistics can wrench the rose-coloured glasses right off the noses of the dreamers of the world. By 2050 there will be 3 billion more people on the earth – if we make it that far. But while Mr. Wright’s information could be perceived as unsettling, succinct as it is, he leaves us with hope for the future. He writes, “What is extraordinary about human development – the one thing that set us apart from other creatures – was that we ‘leveraged’ natural evolution by developing cultures transmissible through speech from one generation to the next…For all its cruelties civilization is precious, an experiment worth continuing.” If everyone read this little book, perhaps we’d all glimpse the importance of doing so with more reverence, respect, and understanding.

Cynthia Barlow
May 2005

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