The Grammar of Progress

Language philosopher Bry Willis argues that the concept of progress is not an objective reality but a subjective narrative defined by those who reach a specific destination. He characterises civilisational advancement as a one-way diode, where the transition to new technologies or social structures involves the irreversible dismantling of prior knowledge and alternative ways of being. Willis suggests that modern accounting of growth is structurally biased, as it fails to record the "epistemic losses" of things like language, ecological wisdom, and cognitive independence. He specifically highlights artificial intelligence as a modern trap, suggesting that outsourcing reasoning to machines leads to a comfortable atrophy of human intellectual capacity. Ultimately, the text serves as a diagnostic critique, asserting that what we celebrate as development is often a retrofitted justification for a journey that was never truly voluntary.👉 https://brywillis634737.substack.com/p/why-progress-is-just-someone-elses?r=pvxh5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true