No need to apologize. I appreciate anyone’s interest in my writings.
It’s a question of meta-history, not just of personal temperament. The question is how we should make sense of so-called progress from the dawn of behavioural modernity onwards. There are indeed collectivist (Taoist, etc) and individualistic perspectives on this. Some cultures are more prudent and frugal than others.
But civilization in general--a maximizing of artificiality--represents an assault on the wilderness which I try to explain as an implicit existential revolt. Even the emergence of self-awareness is an implicit revolt since it frees us from animality and thus from nature’s genetic grasp. Once we saw ourselves as separate from everything else, we became potentially alienated and we might have blamed nature for abandoning us in that way. That resentment could have driven us to build an alternative, more ideal world, one that reflects our mentality back at us so that we needn't confront the alien, inhuman, amoral, godless Other.
Certain mystics say this so-called progress is hubristic and counterproductive. I’m ambivalent about it, but I focus more on the descriptive than the prescriptive question. What’s the real historic upshot or driving force of civilization? Is the retreat to artificiality wise? These are quite separate questions.
Below are some relevant articles of mine. The last one is on Daoism vs the existential rebellion. It’s from my old blog, though.
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2013/08/daoist-pantheism-natures-tragedy-and.html
