Surviving Progress (NR) 8.0

Surviving Progress (2011): Humanity's ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, A Short History Of Progress inspired SURVIVING PROGRESS, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by "progress traps" - alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. (7.1)

Directors: Harold Crooks, Mathieu Roy
Writers: Harold Crooks, Mathieu Roy
Stars: Ronald Wright, Mark Levine, Robert Wright


Yes, yes, yes ... this documentary shows how I often feel about a lot of things in our highly complex society. So many people like industrialists, energy executives, investment bankers, stock brokers, etc have the mentality that "there's a lot more of this stuff where it came from; and, we need to make use of it to make big profits before the other guys do." The libertarian idea of letting the marketplace alone take care of everything doesn't work since we--individually and collectively as families, groups, corporations, and nations--only think about how to make something "work" for us at the expense of others. The idea of making a buck in however ways and whatever means will have very detrimental consequences for the collective civilization. If we are a self sustaining small group of people floating in a tiny spaceship, we would think about the "right thing" to do before ruining the entire colony for everyone. Well, the earth is kind of a spaceship with 7 billion fellow travelers. The need for preserving that spaceship for the future generations to come is what this documentary tries to tell us. But I think, we are too late already. My Rating 8.0