Progress is a muddled concept. The current concept of progress suggests that if a community increases its GDP by 5% while eroding its habitat, it's making progress. The current concept suggests that if people feel compelled to stay indoors at night and spend more money on home security systems and Chinese take-out because of high crime rate, thereby driving an increase in GDP, it's progress.
I'd like to suggest a measure of progress that is conceptually more clear than growth in GDP, even if is harder to measure.
Progress means more autonomy for the individual. A person with shoes has more options about where to go than a person in bare feet. A person with a car has more options than a person with shoes. And a person with access to a great transportation system that costs hundreds per year has more options than a person stuck in traffic paying thousands per year for gas, payments, and insurance. A person with the option to enjoy a local forest on the weekend or even on a lunch hour (I used to love jogging the fire trails through the redwood trees between classes at UC Santa Cruz) has more autonomy than a person who lives in a concrete jungle miles and miles from any bit of wilderness. Progress = more options for the individual.
When the West wrested freedom of religion away from the medieval church, the individual had more autonomy - more choice about how and whether to worship. This was progress.
When the West wrested political control away from monarchs, the individual had more autonomy - more influence over the policies that defined the community.
When access to credit and investment markets was popularized, when the average person had access to retirement accounts through a combination of retail innovations and social security, the individual had more autonomy - more control over the financial irregularities that could be so devastating to an individual or household.
There are at least two dimensions to this progress: the initial surge of progress (monarchs lose power to merchants) and the gradual, continued dispersion of that progress (minorities gradually win the right to vote - minorities as varied as blacks, women, and conscripted 18 year-olds).
Such a measure of progress takes into consideration technology. Cars, computers, and even iPods give a person more autonomy. But this measure of progress also takes into consideration social inventions - credit cards, civil rights, and the joint-stock corporation.
By this metric, policies can be evaluated. Does the new legislation provide more autonomy? To whom? At what expense?
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About Me
- Ron Davison
- Working in the basement on the Escher Expressway (every direction down hill for fuel savings) and Mobius Strip DNA (for immortality).
6 comments:
i am not disagreeing with you (one must understand, before one can disagree)
But regarding
"Progress = more options for the individual"--sometimes too many options ends up hindering movement.
(boy, i am beginning to sound like a communist)
Every system becomes corrupt as it gets too fat to see it's own feet. The only solution in any system is actual justice. And that has to come from a leadership level.
xSD,
I wonder if one of the options ought not to be the option to accept the default?
"Too fat to see its own feet .." I'm not sure why I like that notion so much, but I do.
Are you saying you wish you were too fat to see your own feet? :)
Chrlane,
Ha! No. I do think its a brilliant image, though, of a society so indulged that it can't see where it's going. I don't know whether you threw it out there as something whimsical or profound, but it works both ways.
No– I threw it out as something big and fat that can't see where it's going. And man, was it heavy! :P
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