Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.
Writing
Wright's 'progress trap' concept reframes all of human history
Direction
Gorgeously bleak visuals that make collapse look cinematic
Director
Harold Crooks
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released post-2008 crash, the film weaponized economic trauma to environmental ends—bankers and loggers became unexpected allies in the 'progress trap' thesis.
Wright's book was subtitled 'An Illustrated History' with woodcuts; the directors replaced medieval plague imagery with satellite deforestation footage, arguing we've automated our own collapse.
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