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Why progress needs futurism
andrew3y2

I think there's an interesting sociocultural counterpoint to be made here by studying the Italian Futurists 

The Futurists admired speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature, and they were passionate nationalists. They repudiated the cult of the past and all imitation, praised originality... and gloried in science.

I think the glorification of ["humanity over nature", "young over old", "brash over wise", "strong over weak", "future over pres... (read more)

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4jasoncrawford3yI think to avoid repeating past mistakes, it's crucial to remember that (1) technology and industry are ultimately valuable only in the service of human well-being [https://rootsofprogress.org/progress-humanism-agency], and (2) in order to ensure this, we need more than just technology and industry: we need the recognition and protection of individual rights.
4Ross Graham3yYes, I think the Italian Futurists provide us with interesting lessons. One reason their movement was so short-lived was the onset of WW1. A bunch of them died in various conflicts, but the intellectual foundations of the movement were also killed off. According to Marinetti and friends, technology and machinery was the source of dynamism and progressive change in society, and war was a primary means of putting this machinery to use. Yet in practice, the main 'achievement' of technological advancement in this period was a novel 'meat-grinder' style of warfare, one that ushered in the industrial-scale killing of faceless statistics. Rather than dynamic progress, they got pointless, static violence. Both sides of the war had perfectly concrete visions of the future. Yet pursuit of these competing visions of progress caused them to largely neutralize each other. I therefore appreciate Eli's focus upon a vision of the future that is constructive and credible, as well as concrete. Balla's Street Light [https://smarthistory.org/balla-light/] was a personal favorite from my history of art class as an undergrad.