On Progress
Often the solution to a specific problem is so prolific that it allows some acute ailment to motivate problem solving with far greater benefits than the issue at hand.
A tinge of foul is informative enough to expunge more than the source of acute distress.
The excesses and short-sightedness expected of a society searching for progress may indeed prove to have silver linings. A single notable issue is almost always of more general quality than its specific instance.
For this reason, it is as likely that the target of remediation is of a more general nature that the methods and ideals developed in response solve related problems which on their own could not justify the reaction a more dire scenario does. The introduction of meditation to specifically foil attention-capture-consumerism is one modern example of a specific solution having general benefits.
Progress in response to the errs of progress is a temptingly simple refutation of conservatism in general, which is here defined as the slowing of progress such that its harms never outweigh its benefits over some period of time - a single generation of humanity is a natural interval. When progress does indeed grant short-term reward expended at something greater, it is at least possible that in ameliorating the consequences of that mania, tools are acquired whose utility reaches further than the issues which motivated their development; one step back, two steps forward.
This concept is generally cordoned to the domain of engineering, but the generality here intends to impart a similar framework onto concepts as abstract as ideology and morality. What is interesting of this idea in the modern historical context is the unique condition of shallow progress at all levels being so relatively cheap to attain - making this a time appropriate to be wary of that which may be technically labelled “progress,” and whose latent growing pains may have silver-linings. Even accepting the prospect of a deeper sort of progress stemming from solutions to the issues associated with arbitrary steps forward of shallow progress: only so much change may be competently managed at once. All progress stirs its own roots. If the problems associated with the naive progress of an Era are allowed to accumulate without refrain, the time needed for reflection will be granted after inevitable broad collapse, and so conservatism has a place.
When the work of unwinding unintended consequences is greater than the work which motivates the progress forcing such reflections, then progress itself has become over-specified and pathalogic. To progress easily is often equally myopic. Much important work may only be done by moving more slowly, but the rewards of that work are likewise delayed. A society whose priorities span no further than the lifetimes of its citizens is bound to cast aside the careful progress which diminishes short-term reward - to decay, in favor of pathologic progress. Narrowing of one’s time horizon to within only their own experience becomes progress for progress’ sake. To abandon motivations for moving forward rooted in service of humanity's dignity, connection with God, or other pre-rational moralities to instead ‘progress’ arbitrarily and maniacally is, generically, a cancer. The post-industrial obsession with productivity, unbounded by our consumeristic material demand is an informative demonstration of such consequences; what value it offers is so shallow.
Today it can be seen that Production is a positive tenant of post-industrial morality.
"Productive" openly lingers as a moral value worthy of affecting action all the way down to the interpersonal interactions of society - not merely in the metric which describes one's effectiveness at accumulating wealth, a pursuit common throughout history and necessary to fuel the most sophisticated intelligence known (market economics), but now far beyond: as a judge for the intimate interactions with one's psyche, for example: "That's not a productive way to talk to one another," a statement which may be charitably translated such that productive means "healthy" or which may cynically be interpreted as a reflections of the deepest priorities of this post-industrial culture. In any case, the invocation of productivity broadly into how one thinks has been so accepted that the fact that this language is a product consequence of the industrial revolution is commonly missed. Yet the measures of productivity are post-rational, the measures are perfectly objective computations of a moral code which values material production primarily. Morality which serves the human spirit is pre-rational, it itself dictates what ethics rationality may deduce and does not itself serve some higher-order purpose like production. How hard it must be to actually think about morality, rather than to compute it.
Though efficient production and markets of goods is necessary for humanity’s advancement, it mustn't be mistaken as a source of true ethics. When humanity begins to construct its morality around production itself, it is conflating one component of prosperity for moral righteousness. In fact, any progress for which advancement is uncritically accepted holds this paradoxical relationship to deeper morality. The great irony then of progressivism is its explicit juxtaposition: that which is negligent towards humanity while itself possessing equally unfounded tautologies about what is good. Its hollow opposition to the moral consequences of productivism are necessary for its own survival - it can point out its material harms, but not their shared, true nature - progressivism itself relies on the same pathology: metrics to replace morality, and so it cannot critique materialism, consumerism, industrialization. Both sacrifice the pursuit of deeper meaning for pursuit of goals easily measured as valuable when one's definition of value becomes narrow and self-referential.
What allows Progressivism to avoid this comparison is that in name and message it is so adamantly against that which shares its flaw, but only superficially so. Rife with emotional appeal - it would be easy to mistake it for that which is rooted in the pursuit of deeper human flourishing and a foil for what is intuitively wrong of the ideology it is shedding. By complaining of the consequences of the more specific instance of progressivism, productivism, and then labeling itself as the fundamental solution, it averts attention away from that which is fundamental to both it and its target of critique.
Explicit progressivism is productivism shedding its skin and appearing anew, seemingly docile, yet equally threatening. To enumerate the practical reasons for which progress as moral framework is bad is a request not to be entertained - it is bad at its core and any perceived benefits are incidental. Though the exact morality which best serves is an unending dialectic, this conflict is no excuse to tolerate perpetual confusion; post-rational morality, using a specific ethic as the fundamental moral kernel, is technically flawed cyclical reasoning not worthy of deliberation, and in fact deliberation within any paradox is precisely the trap which sustains it. Whatever benefits may be imparted are far more purely reached through proper, pre-rational morality.
What progressivism offers is largely a practice of debasement in reaction to parasocial guilt, using cherry-picked and iconic historical events as its measure of value.
Progressivism's veneer of strong moral foundation as an opposition to a paradigm which shares its central sin are to make it, as an ideological virus, all the more invisible to us - even when we can directly identify it as the true enemy, it will have directed all our inflammatory energy towards false infections - moral and social allergies. The sin of progress for progress sake proudly taken in name its own pathology.
As productivism exploited measures of progress to stumble upon material and environmental horrors in less work than it will take to unravel them, progressivism hacks our morality to corrupt reason.