eBook - ePub

The Progress Trap

Name: The Progress Trap
ISBN: 9781509567638

The Modern Left and the False Authority of History

Ben Cobley,

English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

The Progress Trap

The Modern Left and the False Authority of History

Ben Cobley,

About this book

The idea of progress, one of the animating ideas of Western civilization, has now gone global. From Marxism and neoliberalism to today's mutant identity politics, it offers a framework of knowledge and confidence: an assurance that things will get better and that history is on our side. However, in doing this it creates a form of authority that is simultaneously imaginary and dishonest, resting on confidence in a future that is really contingent and unknowable.

In The Progress Trap, Ben Cobley looks at this progressive mindset as a form of power, conferring a right to act and control others. 'Change', 'transformation' and the 'new' are the superiorvalues, meaning destruction of the old: people, cultures and nature. It is a trap into which nearly all of us fall at times, so attractive are its stories and familiar its techniques.

Hard-hitting but thoughtful, the book is a meditation on the sinister consequences of the progressive way of being: for ourselves, for our democracy, for our art and for the pursuit of real knowledge.

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Yes, you can access The Progress Trap by Ben Cobley in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Conservatism & Liberalism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.