> ... the connection between technological and moral progress. William Blake wrote of the “dark satanic mills” which stripped men of their souls. He insisted that passivity in the face of the alleged movement of “progress” leads to psychic slavery. Matthew Arnold warned that “faith in machinery” was humankind’s greatest menace.
#TheMachine #ProgressTheory #MoralProgress #WilliamBlake #MatthewArnold

> Scholars have searched as far back as biblical times and the fifth century B.C. to find evidence of a general notion of the continuous improvement of human life on earth, and have been hard put to find any. Mind you, we are not talking here about a concept of “better.” All peoples have notions of improvement, of superior/inferior.
#NeilPostman on #ProgressTheory in book, #BridgeToEighteenthCentury