Modern hypercapitalism is congenitally resistant to looking beyond short-term profit and endless growth. Such myths serve the money and power elite by seducing the public.

Almost as tenacious is the myth that nature will clean up our mess, no matter how messy it gets. Unfortunately the myth that progress will solve our problems is still behind the wheel.

What would you say are the most prominent myths that organize ideas and action today? It is even more urgent now that we face the question of whether civilization itself will prove to be the ultimate progress trap, an outcome we can avoid only by changing our shortsighted and profligate ways.ģ. Over the past ten years we have not done well in rethinking progress so that we keep the good without letting the bad run out of control. I think this is because more and more people are recognising that progress often has unintended consequences which result in disaster when it runs into natural or social limits. The idea of the “progress trap” has taken on a life of its own since I came up with it in the 2004 Massey Lectures. Has your thinking around progress and what you call “the progress trap” shifted or evolved since your 2005 lecture series? That in turn has led to my latest book The Gold Eaters, a historical novel set during the Spanish conquest of Peru. The last chapter in A Short History of Progress gave me the idea for my next book, What Is America?, published in 2008, which followed the money from Inca gold in the 1530s to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the USA. What have you been up to since A Short History of Progress?

The Gold Eaters by Ronald Wright