Farewell to Progress?
Progress is a peculiar word. It is a core word for our discourse about things like politics or science and, as is usual with such core words, we tend not to examine it. Progress is our model for understanding good things that happen. It is a symbol for good things that happen, of course, because MANY good things that happen have nothing to do with it. It is a framing word not a direct signifier and, as such, its use is oblique and non-literal. A pot hole in a road is filled. That’s progress we might say except it isn’t. Filling a pothole is regress for the road is being returned to its original state. We don’t say this however because the word regress has the wrong connotations. To go back to something is bad and to go forward to something is good. This means that all desirable ‘returns’ are actually motions forward. We can spell this out with a bit more exactness. Why is filling a pothole a good thing? Well, it is part of an overarching process: a ‘meta-narrative’ if you like. This