Ending and Beginning

One hundred years ago, progress was always good. It meant more leisure, less pain, less work, longer lives, and more ease and comfort.

But sometime in the last century, many of us began to realize that progress was not what it used to be. We began to see that progress was a double-edged sword. We began to understand that progress for some meant more hardship for other people, or harm to the planet, or even detriment to the individual who is supposedly the beneficiary of the progress; in other words, we began to realize that the American version of progress is never wholly good. And so the idea of progress today is much more complicated than it was in 1909.

In 2009, progress might mean giving up some of our trinkets and baubles and comforts and food in order to lead a more rigorous, austere, but meaningful life.

This entry was posted on 18 October 2009 at 8:08 am and is filed under TEOTWAWKI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.