I just wonder if the loss of our own independence is inevitable to achieve it. Everything seems to indicate that the advance of civilization, at least what we call progress, is heading towards a reduction in human freedom, and a greater dependence on the collective. What do you think about it? Is it possible to make progress without losing the freedom, independence, and individuality of people, or does it need to be so?

... it depends what you mean by "progress", as you already mentioned.

Good article, by the way. Those thoughts do come to the surface nowadays more often.

I am trying to give some answers or my thoughts and observations:

Not only is there nothing linear about progress, not only the fact that more and more specialised activities lead to greater and greater dependency, but also the associated dumbing down of human thinking and doing ability is a reality for me. The less I use my own body, proverbially also my extremities like eyes, ears, nose and legs, arms, hands, to nourish, clothe and live, makes me a living being more helpless than a newborn animal.

Progress, in my current judgement, is a myth.

I have been involved in sewing for some time and have looked at a few things and realised that if I want to learn to sew with a sewing machine, I won't learn to sew by hand in the first place. But sewing by hand is much more educational, satisfying and basically effective. But no one who is fascinated by machines believes that.

First of all, to see what is effective, I ask myself how much clothing I actually need and how much I am able to care for, wash, mend and sew. I realise that it is no problem at all to have few pieces of clothing and could sew for others to boot. It's not faster with a machine, it's just different. Anyone who has ever had to cut fabrics themselves, organise the cuts, calculate them mathematically, sew them to fit one another, will find that working with a machine has the smallest of all shares in this process. The machine can only sew straight ahead and it always joins the upper and lower fabrics together. These are very limited possibilities and small fine works are not only less quick to do with a machine, they are impossible to do in parts. The work that cannot be done with a machine can be eliminated, but then you change the way of making clothes as a whole.

A machine is only good if you learn how the machine works. But if I'm not a mechanic, if I don't know how it works, which parts have which function, I can't repair it when it breaks down. I then need a specialist to take care of such things for me. If I then want to learn to master the machine, I need years of experience, which ties up my time and energy.

A sewing machine consists of hundreds of individual parts, it is an extremely complex apparatus, has many coils, springs, gears, etc., and all that just to be able to sew straight. The effort that goes into making such a machine compared to what it can actually do is, in principle, disproportionate to its usefulness. So if I did without the machine itself and just sewed by hand, I would get to my goal just as effectively: to dress myself.

Much more important, therefore, is the part of providing the raw materials, such as hand needles and above all: fabric. Making fabric yourself is much more time-consuming than processing it. Making silk, wool or other fabrics from raw material requires weaving. The finer, the more work. We can imagine how many silkworms, sheep, hemp and cotton have to be used for this. Weaving machines are therefore quite a useful thing because they actually work much more efficiently, that is, they are much faster. Unfortunately, however, this leads to an overconsumption and oversupply of machine weaving fabrics.

This should bring us to the question of how much of our own clothing we actually need over our lifetime, and the answer would be: as little as possible.

Fashion is therefore completely irrelevant, the entire fashion and clothing industry is irrelevant.

My thesis is that people are most satisfied when they are able to take care of themselves. They don't need anyone to tell them what to do: they see it for themselves.

The reason why people believe in technology and depend on it is probably because they are ashamed of not having learned anything sensible, and after many decades in the world, some things can no longer be learned or undone. Limiting oneself to pure consumption, but not really being able to do anything that provides for oneself, is a mortification to the ego, which does not want to feel useless. Coupled with the realisation of dependence on specialists, it seems easier to suppress such things and simply pretend that such normality can just go on indefinitely.

It would already help if we generally believed less that there must be authorities to give direction or take responsibility for us.