True Progress
"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision."
We did it. We are living in an 1800s utopia.
We produce an abundance of food.
We have ample access to education.
We can protect ourselves from small pox.
We can keep the lights on without burning oil.
We have multiple methods of transportation and communication to connect us with other states, countries or continents.
If our forefathers wanted to hear good music, they would have to book a fiddler (with money they didn’t have) to perform at their house. We have Spotify.
So we may not have a classless society like early Americans envisioned, but, hey, we can’t have everything. Still, why are we not celebrating the realization of these utopic visions?
Well, that’s the problem with progress: We’re constantly moving the target. Writer and philosopher G.K. Chesterton calls this out in Orthodoxy (1908):
“Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision…
Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.”
Chesterton gives a fun example to drive home the point: Say your idea of the world is to turn it blue. You paint a blade of grass, then two, then it soon becomes a blue field. Even slow and methodic, that’s progress toward your blue world.
But if you decide, whether through enlightenment or on a whim, to turn the world red, you would have to undo all the blue. You have changed your vision of what the world should be and are back to where you started.
Editor’s note: I thought this would be a fun, short topic to discuss. It unraveled quickly.
While this concept of progress has reframed the way I think, it leads down a deeper rabbit hole on evolution vs. reform. As such, I run the risk of changing my vision for this post.
So while I encourage you to read some of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy for yourself, I leave you with some modern applications of how we continue to miss our own points. Which is the point.
In this way, we lose sight of our intended goals.
Progress should mean that we are embracing fitness and nutrition for for stronger, longer lives. Progress does mean that we create unrealistic body standards with weight-loss drugs, steroids and eating disorders.
Progress should mean that AI makes our jobs more effiencient, allowing us to work less and pursue our passions. Progress does mean that AI is taking our jobs and stealing our passions.
Progress should mean that we abide by the morals set by our faith and teachings. Progress does mean that we justify our own bigotry and imperfections by twisting the words of historic texts.
Progress should mean independence from tyrannical kings. Progress does mean that we are doomed to repeat the past.
And the dreams of utopia live on.