‘Development towards an improved or more advanced condition’ is how it is defined in the dictionary.
However, progress is a very subjective thing. It is often thought in a way that bigger, faster and easier are better. Why?
Having clean running water versus walking miles to a diseased water supply for an African villager is indeed progress.
Is having, say, more megapixels on your smartphone camera progress? Or is that another example of #FirstWorld ‘progress’, also known as needless upgrades to encourage yet more needless consumption.
Perhaps we could progress further as a human race if we concentrated our efforts on people and their well-being, instead of wanting to progress yet ever more shallow needless technological enhancements in order to fuel more meaningless consumption.
After all the number of pixels on our camera will never advance kindness, compassion, love, and empathy for our fellow human.
Philip Dodson 