The Paradox of Progress

Hey friends,

Roxine here. If you’re new to my work, quick intro: I’m a writer, marketer, and analyst who’s curious about what’s going on with commerce and tech and the history behind it.

I recently wrapped up a tour of duty in crypto and web3 — I spent late-2021 – 2022 bootstrapping Cabin’s marketing efforts (which you can read more about here and here) — and yet, I still struggled to answer a handful of important questions like:

• Why is crypto and blockchain such a breakthrough technology (or not)?

• What is web3? And when did the other “webs” happen?

• What problems are crypto and blockchain solving? What’s the scale of these problems?

This led me to wonder how these can potentially affect the lives of regular people like you and me.

• Does all this new technology like blockchain, crypto, and now AI, herald a new era — akin to the development of the printing press and the steam engine?

  • Follow up to that: What technology should we pay attention to? What can we safely ignore?

• How do we — regular citizens of earth and of the internet — evaluate and handle these trends in tech and media?

• How do these trends affect technology’s its early and mass adopters, usually the consumers and producers of modern media?

So I’m embarking on a quest to answer these plus the money question on my mind:

I’m both uniquely unqualified and qualified to answer this.

First off, I am not a trained historian or journalist. Nor am I a biologist, anthropologist, or any other “-ist”. You have been warned.

This said, I have spent the last 10 years working and thinking hard about content, marketing, ecommerce, and tech. I’ve been a keen observer of what’s gone down with ...

• Blogging and the creator economy

• SaaS and the unbundling of services

• Marketplaces and the platform/aggregator-ing of networks

I’ve been digging into the history of technology and business, along with a bit of economics and political theory to add as much color as I can to the picture in my mind.

So while you can’t expect objective reporting or comprehensive academic advice from me, you can expect informed opinions that I personally believe in. Expect in-depth syntheses of trends as I see them, along with thoughtful, well-balanced insights that inform my own decision-making.

And with that preamble, let’s talk about The Paradox Of Progress.

I’ve been doing a lot of heavy reading on history recently. To complement that, I dusted off and picked up an old video game again: Civilization VI.

Civ — as players call it — is a turn-based strategy game where you play as a leader from history, directing their people against other civilizations to achieve global supremacy. There are 6 ways to win: science, culture, religion, diplomacy, and domination.

• For a Science victory, a player needs to establish a colony on Mars.

• For a Culture victory, a player needs to attract the most tourists to their cities.

• For a Religion victory, a player's religion needs to be the majority in every civilization in the game.

• For a Diplomacy victory, a player needs to earn the most diplomacy points through actions like mitigating global warming, sending military aid, or voting correctly in the World Congress.

• Finally, for a Domination victory, a player needs to conquer the capital city of every other civilization.

I play as Hojo Tokimune, an 11th century Japanese shogun who successfully repelled the Mongolian empire. The easiest way to win the game as Hojo is through a Domination victory. After sinking over 15 hours into a single campaign, I realized that even though my main strategy is military conquest, I can’t just spam samurais and fan them out over the continent. I still need to ...

• Create trade routes, markets, and commercial hubs to fund my army

• Stay ahead in the sciences, so Gandhi thinks twice before trying to nuke me

• Build entertainment centers, theaters, and farms to keep my citizens happy and my cities growing

I just spent 300 words on a video game. Why is this relevant? Here’s what I realized:

1. Regardless of your victory path, you always end up going to war.

2. Blitzkrieg campaigns hardly succeed. You always have to pull all the levers of civilization to progress.

Life imitates art. And that’s exactly how human civilization has progressed over the last 12,000 years. For better or for worse.

I’m on my quest to study history so I can better understand and solve the present problems I see. In my research, I reread The Lessons of History — a summary of observations about humankind, distilled from a more comprehensive, 11- volume work called The Story of Civilization. Here’s how its authors Will and Ariel Durant defined progress:

Here’s the paradox of progress that I see:

In this essay, I’ll examine what progress has meant for us as a species, through the lens of this definition of progress. Here’s what I’ll cover:

1. How did the human race achieve world domination (despite being physically inferior to many species on earth) ?

1. Why is our overreliance on war to achieve progress problematic?

2. What does the paradox of progress look like, then and now?

3. What’s the cost of progress and who’s paying for it?

4. What’s next?

Before we get into the paradox of progress, though, we need to dig deep into our DNA and how humans have functioned for the last 12,000 years.

I. How humans conquered the world

Despite the fact humans are not physically strong, we love bullying the rest of earth’s creatures.

Michael Phelps can’t outswim an octopus. But we eat octopus for dimsum.

Usain Bolt can’t outrun a llama. But we’ve domesticated llamas for tourism and entertainment.

Even three fully-grown alpha dudes can’t beat a single lioness in tug-of-war — a lioness who then goes back to her enclosure to live out her days in captivity.

Why is that?

For one, maybe it’s because our species is so physically weak that we do this. Like bullies on the playground, our insecurity and obsession with survival drives us to either completely obliterate or domesticate all of nature.

As control freaks with weak bodies, we humans used our Big Brainpower, multiplied by technology and sheer numbers to wage war on the rest of the planet. Let’s call this the Human Control Freak Production Function.

The Human Production Function paved the way for dominion and progress. We fought our way through the tundras and savannahs to emerge victorious in the Cognitive Revolution. We built towns and cities in the Agricultural Revolution. We transcended the Scientific Revolution, ushered in the Industrial Revolution, and — if we’re to believe Bitcoin maxis — we’re now at the cusp of a new technological revolution.

Here’s a brief summary of how that happened.

The process of conquering the earth began with the discovery of fire. This allowed us to fight off direwolves and cook food. We were still beholden to the elements but at least, we had a weapon against wild animals. 100 points for human survival.

Then we began farming wheat and domesticating animals. We settled down into warm homes, narrowed our diet, and lived in closer proximity to each other. Despite the increase in sickness and death, our populations grew. 300 points for human survival.

Over the next few thousand years, thanks to our competitive instincts, we “subdued the earth and everything in it.” We built skyscrapers, coded social networks, and accumulated enormous wealth along the way. As of this writing, humans are the apex predators of earth, the undisputed omniweight world champions. 1,000 points for the survival of human DNA.

But we paid a heavy price to get here. In our bones (literally) we think that we’re still at war. Biologically, many of us behave like we’re still in the grasslands of Africa, plotting trench warfare against a neighboring tribal band who stole our food.

Or our toilet paper.

Why is that?

II. The biological basis for war

In Civilization VI, if a leader declares war on another without due cause, they get what’s called a warmongering penalty. This ranges from moderate to severe and affects their final score in the game. Folks, we’ve been abusing the laws of nature, gaming the system, and decimating entire species for the last 10,000+ years. It’s time to pay up.

IIa. The natural laws

Let’s start by talking about laws we’ve been hacking — the laws of nature. I’m a practicing Christian, so I’m not supposed to say this but ... According to evolutionary biology, there are 3 laws of life:

1. Competition – Human DNA > Animal DNA

2. Selection – Some human DNA > Other human DNA

3. Reproduction – DNA, multiplied by 7,000,000,000

Our natural programming optimizes for the flourishing and preservation of human DNA. In other words ...

1. More us, less them

2. More Us, less Them

3. More, more US

Our society is built on an Us vs Them mentality. This sounds great for us on paper, but I see 3 reasons why this has become problematic (and how the system we’ve been gaming, is now gaming us):

1. A general desire for more. Our biology tells us that we win the nature race if there is more human DNA populating the world than any other type of DNA. More of us means a lower chance of our kind being eradicated, and a higher likelihood our civilization will continue to live long and prosper. This is the root of the rest of our problems.

2. A thirst for war. Warmongers, remember? In our hunter-gatherer era, we took out most of the large land mammals. Since then, we have worked together in our tribes to kill off other tribes of humans. (Sometimes we even rationalize this by saying that they are in fact, not human, and that they deserved to die. Brutal.)Now that we’re not being threatened by saber-toothed tigers and most of us don’t murder other people who don’t share the same worldview (ex. pineapple on pizza), we continue to find other things to fight about:

   1. Vaccines

   2. The color of our skin or our political leaning

   3. Toilet paper

3. A small number of powerful people. This is how we created order amidst a species of apex predators: create a class system, identify the alphas, and get everyone else to pay the penalty.See, you and I are the descendants of people who either ruled or were ruled. Rulers are those who chanced upon circumstances, talent, or skills that the rest of us deemed valuable. They worked with our biological programming and prospered. Back in the day, they were the royals, courtiers, and landowners. These days, we have billionaires, reality TV stars, and landlords. Rulers generally lived a pretty comfortable life. No warmongering penalty.Everyone else? In the old days, folks who wouldn’t or couldn’t rule did not have a fun life. My ancestors, for example, chose to bend over their herds and rice paddies, rather than raise their heads in defiance and risk getting shot by the Chinese communists. Everyone else paid the cost. Thanks to our brave, subservient ancestors, we have things a lot better these days. (I know I sound sarcastic, but I’m truly thankful. More on this later.)

IIb. The extreme side of the natural laws

Phew. That’s a lot. Here’s what we’ve got so far.

Despite having created a world of abundance and safety, we’re still anxious. We worry about the future. We’re wary of what we don’t know. We continue to operate as if we’re hunter-gatherers, jumping and turning our weapons towards the slightest agitation. We are still afraid.

Despite having raised the standard of living for our kind and made our lives more convenient, instead of doing more with what we have, we just got… Softer. Modern day bourgeoisie live in mini-palaces with appliances for convenience, smartphones for social connection, and media systems for entertainment. But even though we don’t break our backs on the fields, we slouch in front of our smartphones and social media platforms instead. We crave more ease.

Despite standing as the apex predators of earth, numbering billions, we continue to pursue pleasure, dopamine, and more happy feelings, regardless of the long term consequences to ourselves or other people. We still want more.

Here’s how the Durants put it in The Lessons of History:

Harkening back to my playground analogy: whether we like it or not, humans are bullies who have muscled our way to the top of the good chain. Now that we’ve got the entire world at our feet, we want more: taller buildings, faster wifi, more immersive virtual experiences.

Remember how I mentioned what a big problem this is? Yeah, this insatiable craving for more leads us to continue paying warmongering penalties like individual suffering — one that many of us aren’t even aware we’re paying.

But before we get to that, we need to take a detour and ask: How did we even get here?

III. How we won the world (but lost our soulS)

Add a dash of philosophy to what we’ve learned about biology and history so far, and we get The Paradox of Progress:

Here’s what I mean by that.

Remember our ol’ friend Progress? Here’s the ironic thing about it.

Progress is measured by the average human’s ability to control their environment. In the relentless pursuit of progress, we’ve forgotten that every data point in that average is made up of individuals, made up of us.

What this means is that in the long run, progressing civilization at the expense of individual well-being hurts the whole. Without the careful cultivation of individual autonomy and creativity, overall development grinds to a halt. In The Lessons of History, there’s two chapters on growth and progress (highly recommend reading it) and here’s a juicy paragraph from it:

At first the paradox took the form of wealthy landowners and monarchs who profited off the surplus of food that their peasant population painstakingly pulled from the ground. Our ancestors worked the construction crews of ancient Egypt, the rice paddies of Fujian, and the assembly lines at Ford — all so that we can have the wonders of the Great Pyramids, the culinary and cultural delights of China, and the marvel of the car.

Today, history has favored the technology platform owners who optimize their apps for daily active eyeballs, making billions of dollars off of advertising and of people’s time.

Us? We fill out spreadsheets and build slide decks so that Corporate can hit their revenue goals (and fire us if they don’t).

We agree to do what’s good for our quarterly OKRs, what’s good for the team, even at the expense of our mental health and our relationships.

We fold and tuck away our creative pursuits, only pursuing side hustles that could turn into businesses, because that’s what gets people’s attention, the work funded, and the mortgage paid.

We’ve been conditioned to delay gratification of our deepest desires for the good of the family, the community, the company, and — if our job is important enough — the world.

Tech companies are the modern day ruling class. We — the users — are the modern day equivalent of peasants and rice farmers.

OK, now we know how we got here. We’re ready: What did individuals have to pay so that our society could continue its endless march towards wealth and prosperity?

IV. The rise of the modern day peasants

Think about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

At first, individuals gave up physiological and safety needs to progress civilization:

• Farmers gave up back muscles and fair skin to give us food.

• Families gave up their sons and daughters to secure national safety.

• Assembly line workers gave up their health to give us microprocessors.

Fortunately these days, most of us live in a society where our basic needs are easily met. Plus most of us spend half our lives in the virtual, too.

Full bellies, work anywhere, endless entertainment. Yay, progress!

But — and you knew this was coming — progress as a whole continues to be paid for at the individual level. Modern day humans have begun giving up love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization — the costs for our higher standard of living:

• We gave up communal farm living to move to 1+1 condos in the cities for a better future. We turned down leisure and social gatherings to work.

• We gave up peace of mind, contentment, attention, and the ability to focus for the fleeting, dopamine-laden pleasures of our Instagram feeds.

• We traded our desires for creativity, autonomy, and purpose for mindless but stable jobs.

I’m not saying that technology and progress is bad. In fact, we have these new sets of problems because we’ve become so successful as a society at meeting people’s basic needs.

Knowing that progress by default means that our lives could get sh*tty if we don’t carve out a path for ourselves. It’s up to us to create our own proverbial bomb shelters.

So what do we do?

V. The revolt of the modern day peasant

In this essay, I've repeated the definition of progress for a civilization. I covered our history and our biology, and brought us to the present and how we’re continuing to pay for the decisions of our forefathers.

But even as I harp on what tech and media companies are doing, they’re merely taking advantage of our natural inclinations. These are the systems of nature embedded in our DNA:

• To resist or ignore views, people, and ideas that we disagree with

• To pursue pleasure, not pain

• To get more of anything, for ourselves

See, I’m not writing this to stick it to the man. I’m not writing this to change a company’s business practices, or to topple a nation’s political system. I’m not writing this for Mark, Jeff, or Elon (but if you are reading this, sup?).

I’m writing this for you, because the power is with the individual. With us.

Throughout history, technology and progress were tools that had been exploited by the ruling class. But it’s also what’s given the peasants, merchants, and artists a way to resist and revolt.

Here’s why I’ve repeated the definition of progress so much.

Because if progress is about life’s control over the environment and we’ve basically conquered our external environment, then isn’t control over our internal environment the next logical step?

And technology is there to help us.

• We get to choose how much time we spend on Instagram and Tiktok — and have apps like Freedom help us stick to our resolution.

• We can create essays, art, music, code with Google Docs, Procreate, Ableton, Python and get paid for it directly via Substack, Convertkit, Patreon, or Mirror.

• We don’t need to make as much money or own more stuff because we can live somewhere cheaper, while staying connected working online with the internet and esim providers like Airalo.

The modern day ruling class might be to blame (and to praise) for all the progress we’ve made. But the mantle of responsibility and ownership over Progress is beginning to fall to us, the individual.

It’s up to us to have control over our addiction to dopamine and our desire for endless pleasure on our phones.

It’s up to us to flex our creative muscles and produce work only we can do, stuff we would do even if no one paid us to do it.

It’s up to us to use the access, technology, and opportunities of the Internet Age to exercise our power as sovereign individuals.

That’s it for this week. Talk soon!

— Roxine