{"id":11327,"date":"2017-02-01T20:32:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T04:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=11327"},"modified":"2017-02-01T20:32:16","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T04:32:16","slug":"the-cost-of-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-cost-of-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cost of Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"progress\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When progress comes at the price of people and their well-being, we are all in danger of not living with security, freedom, and respect. My mind wandered back to my education on the Industrial Revolution in America, when Polanyi said, “pauperism and progress are inseparable”(Kindle, 2875). To this day, it still disturbs me the price we paid for progress during that era. The lives of: children, immigrants, impoverished, and minorities were dispensable and devalued as progress was achieved with such a furious intensity. People of all ages were literally being worked to death, thus provoking the much-needed labor laws that still influence our industries today. Feudalism is also a prime example of a few benefiting lavishly off the labor of others creating a gross imbalance of quality of life. It begs the question, “Can progress and transformation in a society be achieved without the price of inequality or impoverishment?”<\/p>\n

\"Progress\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a teacher, in an attempt to help my 7th graders know how to identify with and understand the powerlessness and cruelty of slavery, I had them split up according to eye color. The dark-eyed were “masters” and in charge, while the blue-eyed were “slaves”. To prevent a “Lord of the Flies” experience, I put down some ground-rules of what could or couldn’t be done, which I found to be fortuitous. The “slaves” owned nothing and had to ask permission of the “masters” before they could: sharpen their pencils, go the bathroom, be excused for recess….etc, and they had to perform services for their master like: throw their trash away, get them snacks, assist with work, etc… Despite my teachings on empathy, respect, and it being a Christian school, the masters became increasingly restrictive, inconsiderate, and arrogant. They thoroughly enjoyed having power over their classmates and gloated greedily in the faces of their disgruntled slaves. Even though they were all old enough to understand this was an experiment and boundaries were being kept, the slaves were becoming increasingly uncomfortable, agitated and frustrated with their powerless position.<\/p>\n

What surprised me most was when I had them switch roles. When the slaves became the masters, they were worse than their predecessors! Instead of treating them how they would have wanted to be treated, they were eager to be in the position of power and lorded their authority over their slaves. To the relief of all, everyone was promoted to equals and we processed the exercise. Both groups detested being the slaves, but when they were the masters they loved being in charge and lost all empathy for one another. They experienced a society where progress came at the cost of another and how, when given the opportunity, it was repeated. In comparison to some industrial ages throughout history, I discovered middle schoolers don’t behave much different than grown adults, greedy for power and gain.<\/p>\n

When a society’s single intent is on progress and forgets the value of humans and nature, destruction appears to outweigh the gains of progress as the next generation inherits progress along with difficult issues. In recounting similar societies, Polanyi summarizes it best with: “After a century of blind “improvements” man is restoring his “habitation”. If industrialism is not to extinguish the race, it must be subordinated to the requirements of man’s nature”(Kindle, 5806). In pursuing progress, it is an intelligent and fortunate society to achieve gains to the benefit of humans and nature, and establish a culture and society where all are treated with equity and respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When progress comes at the price of people and their well-being, we are all in danger of not living with security, freedom, and respect. My mind wandered back to my education on the Industrial Revolution in America, when Polanyi said, “pauperism and progress are inseparable”(Kindle, 2875). To this day, it still disturbs me the price […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-11327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-polanyi","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}