{"id":704,"date":"2022-01-23T21:37:19","date_gmt":"2022-01-24T02:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/?p=704"},"modified":"2022-01-23T21:37:19","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T02:37:19","slug":"uncertain-future-progress-and-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/2022\/01\/uncertain-future-progress-and-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncertain future, Progress, and Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In chapter 1, Tsing mentions the view of progress as inherent towards humanity and how this view makes it easy to miss other patterns of humanity. Humans have consistently caused change within the environment around them, but the changes are not a linear march forward and instead deliver both \u201cpromise and ruin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This paints a very uncertain picture of the future as opposed to the optimistic view of constant progress while also not being a message of despair that the world will collapse and nothing can be done to stop it. In my experience, the future seldom matches my expectations and it is not hard to find past predictions about today from the past that overestimated the progress of technology. Therefore I agree that it is most accurate to consider the future to be uncertain, which is dependent on both factors outside of human control and collective human agency.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tsing mentions agency as a disguised word for progress, but I disagree. Agency is the ability to take actions to achieve a desired end, and the agency of people and how we interact with the changing world determines what the future will be. For an example of agency not leading to progress, when COVID-19 reached America many people, both in government and the general public, chose to not take action and as a direct result, the USA consistently got hit the hardest by COVID-19 and its variants. With an uncertain future, it is important societally to make conscious decisions to lead to a better, sustainable future and hold decision-makers moving the world to ruin accountable. Do you agree that the viewpoint of the future as uncertain most emphasizes the need for action to avoid ruin or is an optimistic or pessimistic lens needed?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In chapter 1, Tsing mentions the view of progress as inherent towards humanity and how this view makes it easy to miss other patterns of humanity. Humans have consistently caused change within the environment around them, but the changes are &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/2022\/01\/uncertain-future-progress-and-agency\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":705,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}