Briefly, because it's bedtime

[avevale_intelligencer]

This: Progress, as we generally understand it, is an illusion. Or, perhaps, a lie.

I've said before that in my view progress means "moving forward," that moving forward involves knowing which way "forward" is, and defining a direction as "forward" involves having a goal closer to which moving "forward" will take us. One can decide to put a person on the moon, and everything one does that works toward that goal is furthering progress toward that goal. That is real progress. One cannot have progress without a goal.

But sometimes things happen by accident. Or sometimes a goal we have attained brings unexpected fringe benefits with it. What we do then is this. We retroactively define everything that led up to the accident or the fringe benefit as "progress," much as people used to define the evolutionary process as the ordered, willed march up through the stages of development toward the triumphant culmination of god's divine plan in the form of, er, me. You can see the flaw in the logic right there.

And this leads to the really big mistake of assuming that we can have progress without a goal. As long as we are constantly learning to make things bigger, or smaller, or faster, or cheaper, or more expensive, we can call that progress. Never mind that the things are so big, or small, or expensive or whatever that they're no actual use to anybody. We'll just market them aggressively and people will buy them anyway. Because you can't stop progress, and anyone who wants to is, well, they're just a bunch of poopy-heads, so ner.

Another reason why once the hardware guys have come up with a faster chip the software guys have to come up with an OS which will slow it down again. A computer that works so fast it's impossible for a human to interact meaningfully with it is no use to anyone. But you have to keep making faster and faster chips, because that's progress. And if, purely by accident, something you make actually does somebody some good, that just proves that it is real progress.

Except it isn't. It's an illusion. It's a lie. And it's a distraction.

Real progress has goals. More. Real progress has goals which redound to the lasting good of people in the mass. Real progress is about saving the biosphere. Real progress is about devising a political system which works to everyone's benefit. Real progress is about abolishing the game we have made of life, the game that has winners and losers, and creating a new game in which everybody wins. Real progress is not about discovering accidentally that something you made to make a profit can be used to make somebody's life better. Real progress is about setting out to make that person's life better and doing it.

Most of what we call progress in our time is meaningless flailing and floundering. We have undoubtedly done some amazing things that way. How many more amazing things might we have done if we had actually meant to.

And on that note, goodnight.

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

But of course there can be no progress without a goat! Preferably one of the breed known as "Scape"... =:o\