ABSTRACT
As the course of history begins to drift away from the myth, those who have placed their hopes for the future on the civil religion that grew up around the dream of perpetual progress face a shattering disillusionment, of a kind that has seen extensive discussion in the literature of social psychology. The processes explored in this chapter are thus entirely capable of leading otherwise rational people into remarkably irrational behaviour, at least for a time. Before the modern vogue for cross-disciplinary studies, it was at least a little unusual for an anthropologist with a background in communications theory to be confronted with the task of making sense of the origins and structure of mental illness. The psychology of the progress myth all but guarantees that most industrial societies will continue to pursue technological progress long past the point of diminishing returns, while rejecting more useful options that fail to further the myth.
