What’s some people’s problem with progress?
I haven’t been on this planet very long, but I have made my peace with progress: the principle that things only move in one direction, forward.
The wheels of progress can be accelerated and they can be slowed. But there is no reverse gear on society. Try to turn it around and things will come to a screeching halt, but they won’t go backward. Push hard enough and the whole thing will fall apart, fall apart until someone comes along and rebuilds it and starts it moving in the right direction again — but it will never move backward.
Have you ever heard these sentences:
“Remember the way things used to be…”
“If we could only go back to the way things used to be…”
“Young people these days…”
“That’s a slippery slope…”
“Remember the Alamo…”
OK, I just added that last one for fun. But you get the point: “the way things used to be” are not the way things used to be. They are the way we think things used to be. To be more exact, they are the way the media reminds us things used to be for a select group of people. But they are not the way things used to be: not for women or minorities anyway. It’s called the mythical past.
If “the way things used to be” had been so good, then things wouldn’t be changing. Call it what you will: momentum, inertia, progress. It’s not a political force, it’s a natural force.
Sometimes this force works in our favor and sometimes not. The secret is that nature grants every person a few “freebies,” rule-bending pleasures that we’re allowed to hang on to despite the ebb and flow of time, human migration and general entropy. These are called forks in the road. They’re also what make us grow old, but we wouldn’t be human without them. You have to choose carefully, because as you try to save something from being squashed by the meat grinder of time, you’re likely to loose a few fingers. If you choose wisely, you’ll never miss those fingers — and you’ll be content to let the rest of the world get on with its progress.
