As I pulled up behind the vehicle in front of me at the stoplight, I noticed its intriguing bumper sticker that stated adamantly, with a tone of virtue signaling, “I vote for Progress.” I had to wonder, “What is this person’s notion of ‘progress?’”
Over the subsequent weeks, I was left with the resonating echo of questions. Progress towards what? Progress for what reason; and how does one intend to get there? What will be it costs and consequences? What safeguards are in place to protect from errors of judgment or reasoning? Who decides what is indeed “progress” and what is not? By whose authority and by what standards are those decisions made?
I was left to ask myself, “Is our culture really progressing in any sense of the word? And if so, to what end?”
In the fantasy book, Alice in Wonderland, Alice discovers that she has become lost in a mysterious underground world. As she cautiously walks along, she comes upon a Cheshire cat sitting on a branch of a tree and asks for directions. The cat answers: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.” “But I have to get somewhere,” Alice added. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
(Alice in Wonderland, Kindle version, Chapter 6)
Just keep going, and eventually you’ll get to…somewhere. Is that all there is to progress? Walking blindly and misdirected towards somewhere amidst a strange and uncertain world?
I remember as a kid growing up wearing patches on the knees of my blue jeans after I had worn a hole in them. They were iron-on patches that would soon curl up around the edges after a few washings. It was embarrassing to wear them to school but a lot of the other guys did too, living in a farm community like we did.
Now it’s fashionable to wear blue jeans with holes in them, and we even pay big bucks for them. That must be a sign of progress. I wish my Mom would have known about today’s fashions when I was a kid. But we didn’t have much money to spare.
We grew up being taught that “money doesn’t grow on trees,” because we certainly heard that expression often enough from our Mom and Dad. It’s probably in the Bible someplace. But I wonder, “Where does money come from?” I read that our government had enough spare money to send trillions of dollars to help wage a war in a country on the other side of the world. I guess that is what is called “globalism” in the true sense of the word. But what confuses me is the next day I read that our government doesn’t have enough money for Social Security for old folks and Medicare for people when they get sick. So if they have money to give away to another country for a war, why doesn’t the government have money to give old folks and sick people? A friend told me once that when the government needs money, they just print more. I wish my Dad would have known about that when I was a kid and I wouldn’t have had to wear blue jeans with patches on them. I would have just asked him to ask the government to print some more money for us, since it doesn’t grow on trees. I guess that’s another sign of progress. …fashionable holes in blue jeans and printing more money when you want some.
In elementary school we used to get a regular newsletter called the “Weekly Reader,” and I remember reading in there that computers were on their way and would make our lives a lot easier. We would only have to work three or four days a week and the rest of the time we could spend playing baseball or going to the lake. But somewhere along the line that didn’t happen. It seems that now people spend more time on their computers and cell phones than ever. And they don’t talk face to face with one another anymore. And they get mad easier, because they don’t understand the other person. Could it be progress causing that? Is that progress?
My Dad was a great fixer-upper. Part of it was out of necessity because we couldn’t afford to buy anything new. But he could fix almost anything with some wire or a screw or a hammer. I still remember his grease-stained hands. Things lasted a long time then because they were made so a guy could fix it and not have to throw it away when it was still mostly good. Now you can’t fix things up, because they’re made too hard to fix up or they’re made to throw away. I wonder why? It seems it’d be better to make a law that things had to be designed so that a person could easily fix it. Wouldn’t that be better than throwing everything away in the heap of trash? But I guess that’s progress for you. We don’t want to be bothered or inconvenienced.
Even if a person didn’t go to church, there was always an abundance of moral sayings governing a person’s conduct. One of my mother’s favorites was, “If you can’t say something good about a person, don’t say anything at all.” And I have tried to live by that expression, well, mostly anyway. But it seems today progress never heard that expression. That’s too bad, because I think it really does help people get along a little better with one another.
I suppose some things are actually better. People don’t have to grow their own food in a garden anymore. They can buy things at the grocery store that are made with stuff they call preservatives and additives which cause them to last a lot longer and taste good. Some people say all those preservatives and additives aren’t good for a person. A loaf of bread doesn’t get moldy anymore, but it never tastes as good as my Mom’s freshly baked bread covered with butter or jam. I think I would rather see my body last longer rather than making loaves of bread to last longer on a grocery shelf.
I don’t remember us playing much as kids, because our folks usually had plenty of work for us to do. I think it was a way of keeping us out of trouble. But when we did play, it was usually baseball or football with the neighborhood kids. We would come home sweaty and dirty and tired, usually complaining about how we had lost because of the uneven sides.
Progress has even improved that. They have these video games now where you can play and not get sweaty, or dirty, or tired. You just sit and press a button all afternoon. Some of them are pretty violent with lots of shooting and bombing. A person’s got to think about what this does to a kid watching that all day long. What does that do to their way of thinking and reacting to frustration and conflict? All too often there’s news of a guy taking a rifle and shooting a bunch of innocent people minding their own business, for no apparent reason at all. He’s just mad. And people ask, “Why did he do it?” but never stop to think and ask how progress is programming our kids by viewing such video violence so often. I heard it said once that “one becomes what they consume.”
It seems that in this notion of progress is an embedded idea that only things new or recent are better for us, and that’s called progress. Along with that idea comes the idea that anything old isn’t worth anything and should be ignored and trashed. That includes ideas, too. Old ideas are out and new ideas are the only ones to trust, though we really don’t know where they lead to. Probably to… somewhere.
That must be because people now are smarter and wiser than people used to be. It’s probably because students today are graduating smarter, because they don’t have to worry about doing homework anymore. And they have all these other things to study now about what they should believe other than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. I guess because they’re smarter, they can get out of school sooner so they can play in the streets afterwards or do other things. I guess that must be progress too.
Sometimes, I wonder if we really are any smarter. Are we making lots of good things that make us good people? Are we getting along any better with one another? Is there more harmony in our interactions with one another? What art now inspires us? What principles now guide our paths? Who do we follow? Where are we going? What are we “progressing” to? What kind of persons are we becoming? Maybe it’s time to think about those things a bit.
That was one of my father’s favorite expressions when I had done something wrong to displease him. My excuse was usually something like, “I didn’t think that was going to happen.” To which my Dad usually replied, “That’s just it, you didn’t stop to think.”
Thinkin’, seriously thinkin’, can be a rare thing today in our world of progress. We don’t seem to think ahead, only for what we want right now. Our interest is only short-term, and mostly focused on ourselves. We don’t think about the eventual consequences of attitudes or decisions long-term. And, it appears that we will have to do less of it in the future because of this thing they call artificial intelligence. Pretty soon we won’t have to think at all. We’re pretty much there already. But I guess that’s progress?
I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland. Wondering, “Where am I?” and wanting to be “somewhere,” but only living in a progressive world that says, “Just keep going, eventually you’ll get to somewhere.”
But I’m not sure that gets me to where I want to be.
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