Progress

I am progressing from birth to death. So are you. But what is progress?

Is it simply more of everything including wealth? I've certainly got more posessions now than when I was young. I can buy more or less anything that I want, although as I get older there is less and less that I desire. In fact I have gone to the opposite extreme in that I have been trying to divest myself of more and more stuff over the last decade. Interestingly, it's quite hard to sell or even give stuff away. Nobody wants second hand stuff now except the poor. Even antiques have lost their value. Everything has to be shiney and new & "on trend". What's more we are programmed to change & consume. Clothes, our homes - kitchens, bathrooms, technology etc, all have to be the latest design, so we accept as normal "built in obsolescence". Nothing lasts.

The greedy rush for more wealth has led us to the edge of a cliff & no one knows what will happen if we fall off it. We do know that, if we fall, it will dramatically change our world for the worse & may be irreversible. The repercussions of a worse financial mess than we are in currently will affect every human being on the planet, except possibly tribes in very isolated places. It may well unleash civil unrest on a scale much worse than anything so far. Maybe the tribes have got it right.

Does progress really mean something better? Is it better that we can prolong the life of very ill patients, make infertile people parents, let very pre term babies live....? We have developed the skills & the technology and the advances are truly astonishing. But, we have a seriously overpopulated world, with an ever widening gap between the have's and the have nots, and a chasm between the Western world and the developing world. We have the brains to make these huge developments, but they aren't available to all, and millions would just like enough to eat and clean water.

Has our concept of progress made us happy? Apparently not when you see the statistics for depression & psychological problems. Not to mention drug and alcohol dependency.

In the West we have health problems previously unknown - Anorexia, Bulimia, Obesity, as well as more people suffering from all the usual diseases like Diabetes at a much earlier age. Isn't it ironic that this is a result of a truly unhealthy relationship with food? Progress has introduced food made in factories & divorced us from the reality of natural foods & a balanced diet. Progress has meant that the kitchen is rarely used for cooking proper meals which we sit down & share with our families. We have a world of choice on the shelves of our supermarkets & we are killing ourselves.

I have progressed through life & seen huge progress in all areas of that life. My problem is that I don't see the value in, or sustainability of, much of that so called progress. What I see is a civilisation making expedient, selfish & short term choices without understanding the long term consequences of their actions. Real progress would be if we stopped, now, and started making the hard decisions which might, just, save the human species. Sadly I don't think it will happen.

I'm quite glad that I'm closer to the end of my progress than the beginning.