Progreso : Historia de la peor idea de la humanidad

For centuries, in the name of progress, we have razed cities, leveled mountains, and mapped the planet. We have believed that advancing meant dominating nature, increasing production, conquering new territories, and accumulating knowledge. However, this narrative of infinite improvement has also been the most destructive: it has justified genocide, slavery, conquest, and ecocide. The almost religious faith in progress has jeopardized the continuity of our civilization. In this ambitious and provocative essay, geographer Samuel Miller McDonald reconstructs the genealogy of the myth of progress to show how it became the dominant ideology of modernity. He explores its roots in antiquity, its expansion during the Enlightenment, and its culmination in the industrial and digital age, when the promise of unlimited growth was transformed into dogma. Progress combines intellectual history, philosophy, anthropology, and political ecology while proclaiming the urgent need to imagine other possible horizons. Faced with blind faith in technological innovation and economic growth, if humanity is to have any chance at a future, we must break with the idea of ​​progress. This book shows us where to begin.