I love that this topic (and tension) is getting a little focus, but I do wish you would respond to a steel man version of the argument, rather than a quick Twitter thread—there's great writing out there on the tension between material progress / modernity / capitalism and spiritual values / community decay / alienation, etc. Obviously, given this crowd, the point isn't to accept or reject capitalism or material progress, but to at least engage with the best articulations of the tensions they hold with the latter three, so as to best navigate those tensions... (read more)
3Jim Muller1yThere's a very, very broad tradition in our society of arguing that material
progress is less important than spiritual or other things, of course. Indeed, I
assume that most people studying progress already hold some version of this
opinion very strongly. I do. My take would be there's little point in setting up
any particular version of the thesis, because everyone can already make the
argument themselves and sees Jason's article through the lens of their own
standard.
And I think Jason's article is great in this respect!
I love that this topic (and tension) is getting a little focus, but I do wish you would respond to a steel man version of the argument, rather than a quick Twitter thread—there's great writing out there on the tension between material progress / modernity / capitalism and spiritual values / community decay / alienation, etc. Obviously, given this crowd, the point isn't to accept or reject capitalism or material progress, but to at least engage with the best articulations of the tensions they hold with the latter three, so as to best navigate those tensions... (read more)