From one of Elle Griffin’s notes, I learned that Jason Crawford, founder of the Roots of Progress, had a Substack and was writing a book about his philosophy (and serializing it, which Elle was understandably excited about). I learned about the Roots of Progress from someone I met in a previous Write of Passage cohort, and it’s been on my mind to read more of this work, so I’m glad that I learned about this Substack.
In his essay The Present Crisis, Jason introduces his idea for a philosophy called techno-humanism:
This is what I am calling “techno-humanism”: the idea that science, technology and industry are good—because they promote human life, well-being, and agency. The rest of this book will explain and defend this idea.
The idea itself is interesting, and I definitely plan to read more.
But what I want to write about here is the emotions that it brought up. Some parts of this essay brought up a lot of emotion—especially the parts at the beginning that indicated that many people participating in a survey believe that it would have been better to be born 200 years ago than today. When I read things like this, I think about the meaning of my life, my daughter’s life, my partner’s life, of everyone’s lives. I wish I could say that I don’t get pessimistic, but I do. I wonder about how it feels to strive for something—like getting the world to believe in progress and that we can make it a better place for all inhabitants of the earth—and feel dissatisfied about the progress made. This is one of my favorite problems after all: How can I keep working toward making the impact that I want without losing heart or constantly second-guessing myself?
There was something about realizing that this was one of my favorite problems that helped just now. In writing the above paragraph, I felt a noticeable despair, but something about realizing that I’ve thought about this before
I think the heart of all this is the question: How do I keep going?
When I read that question to myself, my voice said it in 2 different ways:
- How do I keep going?: Emphasis on the “going”. This voice was more emotional, somewhat forlorn. This voice
- How do I keep going?: Huge emphasis on the “how”. This voice felt more curious, almost leaning toward positive. What actions can I take to continue continuing?