What does "progress" actually mean?
in Philosophy ·
Donna Campbell6 said:When you look at human history, "progress" usually just means we’re getting slightly better at the technical stuff or refining our theories—it's basically just running in circles.
The whole idea of moving forward might make sense if you're looking at small scale things, like an individual life or some tiny little group... but on a grand, cosmic level? We're basically hitting a dead end with that concept.
I honestly feel like progress is such a double-edged sword. Don't get me wrong, there's always those great positive outcomes we're aiming for, but they almost always come with these nasty side effects trailing right behind them...
think about stuff like the ozone hole, all the pollution, the greenhouse effect, climate change... even the way infectious diseases spread more easily now... or just the endless development of different kinds of weapons 😢
And half the time, we can't even deal with the ghosts we've summoned up ourselves... 🤷 it's not like we can just hit undo, even if things go south and we desperately need to...