{"id":9651,"date":"2024-03-28T19:09:01","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T00:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=9651"},"modified":"2024-03-28T19:09:14","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T00:09:14","slug":"quotable-on-technological-progress-and-humanitys-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=9651","title":{"rendered":"TECHNOLOGICAL &#8220;PROGRESS&#8221; AND HUMANITY&#8217;S DECLINE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Bruce Brander, riffing on the assessment of the great Henry Adams:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c\u2026the miracles of modern technology were only mistaken for progress. They amounted to humanity\u2019s drawing unprecedented sums of energy from sources outside itself, which testified to rapid exhaustion of people\u2019s inner energies and personal resources and their growing dependence upon nature\u2019s reserves to sustain and enhance their lives. <em>Technology merely masked decline, then served to speed it along<\/em>.\u201d (emphasis mine)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Brander&#8217;s book which has not nearly received the attention it deserves, is here:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Staring into Chaos: Explorations in the Decline of Western Civilization\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"625\" height=\"550\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen style=\"max-width:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/card?preview=inline&#038;linkCode=kpd&#038;ref_=k4w_oembed_7ApNfxh53HjIMR&#038;asin=0965320855&#038;tag=kpembed-20\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bruce Brander, riffing on the assessment of the great Henry Adams: \u201c\u2026the miracles of modern technology were only mistaken for progress. They amounted to humanity\u2019s drawing unprecedented sums of energy from sources outside itself, which testified to rapid exhaustion of people\u2019s inner energies and personal resources and their growing dependence upon nature\u2019s reserves to sustain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,88,33,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-culture","category-quotable","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9653,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9651\/revisions\/9653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}