Progress: Protector of the Morrow

Progress is society’s perpetuator and civilizations means to immortality. Consider the Dark Ages, a historical period predominantly characterized by myth and irrationality. The terrible offense of this era is not that the age harbored irrational conceptions but rather that virtually no attempt was made to combat these irrational ideologies. If progress is society’s perpetuator then stagnation must necessarily be civilization’s executioner. History treats the Dark Ages as if some nasty flee-bitten mongrel for the simple fact that the age’s lack of progress is a hazard to society. The jeopardy of stagnation is that inadequate progress threatens both the physical survival and the philosophical health of a civilization.

Stagnation’s threat to society is a consequence of population ecology and economic theory; globally the human population is exponentially increasing, and this growth means that mankind’s demand for resources will only rise. Since resources are limited, in order to counteract population growth, a society must increase resource efficiency through technological progress. If a society is incapable of progress then the civilization becomes stagnant and eventually, as resources become increasingly limited, will begin to decay. Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist at the Santa Fe Institute, summarizes this concept: “The only way to avoid stagnation from a shortage of resources is to change something. You have to reset the clock, reset the initial parameters of growth. We call this an innovation cycle, and they are clearly apparent throughout history.” West’s innovation cycle is a process that slackened nearly to a standstill during the Dark Ages, and as a result of this near cessation of progress this era is considered a socially menacing period.

The lack of progress in the Dark Ages also endangered culture’s philosophical health. Philosophical stagnation produced by lack of cultural progress was a topic of one of my earlier essays entitled Degradation of Art: Analysis of the Work of Edmund Burke, and consequently I will only briefly summarize this idea. Every generation bequeaths to their children their philosophical and metaphysical understanding, and as a result the philosophy of one generation becomes the tradition of the next. The only inherent vice in this system is that human philosophy, subject to a limited human understanding, is always incomplete or inaccurate, therefore every generation must evaluate the truth of tradition using their experiences and discoveries. In this process progress is the key; innovation and the discovery of new truths permit subsequent generations to weed out errors in tradition and produce more complete philosophical understandings. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, “He who moves not forward, goes backward.” Indeed, this common quotation expresses an underlying truth: a society that fails to critically evaluate tradition is prone to mysticism and irrationality. Moreover, as a civilization becomes increasingly steeped in these irrationalities the society becomes less likely to accept philosophical progress and the technological progress necessary for physical survival.

In conclusion, progress is the social equivalent of Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth. A society capable of innovation is capable of continuance. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow.” Indeed with progress comes a promise of the future. The great vice of the Dark Ages is that in halting technological and philosophical advance this age cast civilization’s future into weak and unsure light.