"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century"
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The barb lands because it turns “progress” from a proud, modern banner into a small-minded superstition. Mumford is puncturing the 20th century’s favorite self-compliment: the faith that history naturally advances in a straight line, as if time itself were a conveyor belt moving us toward “better” by default. Calling that faith “parochial” is a deliberate insult. It frames the supposedly cosmopolitan modern age as provincial - trapped inside its own assumptions, mistaking local ideology (industrial growth, technological acceleration, GDP-style metrics) for a universal law.
His phrasing does double work. “Single line” skewers the simplification: one axis, one direction, one scoreboard. “Without goal or limit” is the sharper blade. Progress talk usually hides a destination - justice, freedom, human flourishing - but Mumford points out that modernity often keeps the engine running even after it forgets where it meant to go. The subtext is moral: a society that cannot name its ends will treat means as ends, celebrating speed, novelty, and scale simply because they’re measurable. That’s how you get cities planned around cars instead of lives, institutions optimized for throughput rather than meaning, and technologies adopted because they can be, not because they should be.
Context matters: Mumford wrote in the shadow of world wars, nuclear threat, and the machine age’s mixed harvest. He’s not rejecting change; he’s rejecting the era’s lazy metaphysics - the idea that “newer” equals “higher,” indefinitely, automatically. The line is a warning disguised as a diagnosis: the 20th century’s confidence may be its most provincial error.
His phrasing does double work. “Single line” skewers the simplification: one axis, one direction, one scoreboard. “Without goal or limit” is the sharper blade. Progress talk usually hides a destination - justice, freedom, human flourishing - but Mumford points out that modernity often keeps the engine running even after it forgets where it meant to go. The subtext is moral: a society that cannot name its ends will treat means as ends, celebrating speed, novelty, and scale simply because they’re measurable. That’s how you get cities planned around cars instead of lives, institutions optimized for throughput rather than meaning, and technologies adopted because they can be, not because they should be.
Context matters: Mumford wrote in the shadow of world wars, nuclear threat, and the machine age’s mixed harvest. He’s not rejecting change; he’s rejecting the era’s lazy metaphysics - the idea that “newer” equals “higher,” indefinitely, automatically. The line is a warning disguised as a diagnosis: the 20th century’s confidence may be its most provincial error.
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| Topic | Deep |
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