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 “promise and ruin.”
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.
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?
Your thoughts on agency being a disguised word for progress really interested me and I somewhat agree with the fact that our agency is what determines the impact of the future. However, I think both your definition of agency and Tsing’s can fit together. When I think of agency being defined as progress, I think of the idea that agency is what sparks progress and has the capacity to move things forward in the future, whether in a positive or negative direction. About your example about the COVID-19 pandemic, I would argue that that lack of agency is what hindered progress towards a more secure and certain future, and thus was what led to the outcome that we see today. To that extent, I view agency as a catalyst for progress, and agency itself is what determines the future. In the pandemic, our lack of agency still created progress towards a future that is not ideal and the future that we have now, even though we most likely wouldn’t classify this progress as positive. In this way, I view agency as being more neutral instead of being strictly optimistic or pessimistic, because our agency can either serve us positively or negatively depending on the actions that are taken. There have been other times where our agency has been able to move us and shape the future in a more positive direction, like when we have taken actions to fight discrimination and end segregation. Overall, I agree that our future being uncertain is what necessitates agency and is what calls us to take action or remain neutral, but I would say that agency still is somewhat synonymous with progress because our agency or lack of it works as a catalyst within our progression to create our eventual future (whether this is positively or negatively).