Don Quixote’s Thought for the Day: Progress in three parts

I grew up in the 50s & 60s, when “progress” was a popular and positive term.  Indeed, progress was all around us — in our homes, our cars, our televisions, our hospitals, even our kitchen appliances.  We were headed to the moon and beyond.  Sometimes, progress was a little scary; we had harnessed the power of the atom and used it to build the ultimate bomb.  But even then, we had created the United Nations, giving us hope that the whole world would progress to the point where we no longer needed the bomb, where perpetual peace would be interrupted only by the occasional “police action.”  As a society we believed that, in the youngster’s phrase, “every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better.”

Even the flower children were truly, if unrealistically, optimistic.  They truly believed that a new age was dawning, one in which “peace will guide the planets/And love will steer the stars.” 

My how we have lost that optimism.  We don’t hear much about “progress” any more.  In fact, we seem mostly to be resigned to the fact that progress is about over and our best days are behind us, not ahead of us.  I’ll talk tomorrow about one striking example of how this guides our politics, and more Saturday about how buying into the pessimism hurts the conservative cause.  In the meantime, I’d be interested in your thought about where the concept of progress fits in today’s world.