On account of sounding dumb, but needing to point out, progress is set by baseline of some sort.
However qualitatively our society does live differently in many ways.
Most things in the past required huge time investment, there was low security for life, and generally the product be it crops, or food, were small compared to these days.
So the constraints people dealt with were huge.
Its fallacy though to think we don’t have the exact same issues in today’s world.
We have washing machines and microwaves and tools that speed things up so we can do the more progressive things so to speak.
The problem is we are subject to biological evolution and therefore progress needs more than quantity.
For instance dinosaurs are extinct yet I bet most dinosaurs would boast that they are huge and bigger than other dinosaurs therefore they made more progress and therefore are the bestests of all.
Human evolution can be the same issue.
On scale of evolution the danger we face is not that we are so good at adaptation and use of tools and changing environments.
We face the problem of change.
All change leads to extinction of some sort. Change is dangerous, but we live in a world were change is becoming a constant variable.
And there is no amount of progress that protects humans from this tricky problem.
If not today 1000 years from now, we might be just as extinct as dinosaurs and from the wood works will crawl out some weird creature of tiny stature like mammals did.
We should therefore not assume the fallacy that bit of fossil fuels, and combustion engines or rocketry will make us better at surviving.
We have better chance of surviving today as individuals, but the behemoth civilization became, is by far something that has never existed before.
Its also not something humans ever did on this mass world wide scale with such pacing and such incredible complex balance of activity.
So yes once people overcame certain constraints that were constant we grew.
So as with all things considering something new, you need lots of trail and error to know what works.
In this sense nature does not have friends or good side.
Nature can kill off anything, and there were creatures that lived for millions of years and went in way of dodo in a single instance as if they never existed.
We have to understand that progress in many ways is limited in certain dimensions for all people.
We as humans are extremely good at predicting certain catastrophic scenarios, but we should not think for one second that nature cannot do more than we can imagine.
We have funny things like bees dying off.
A single species could end our civilization.
And this assuming bees are the only species.
Who knows what other species could die off and kill humanity in basically few years.
So my basic question is what progress really is?
If its survival we made some progress, but we added a layer of problems that never threatened humanity.
If its number of humans on this planet and their long life, that is progress, but it comes at a cost.
Cost we will have to pay back at some point in worlds history to simply go on.
On account of sounding dumb, but needing to point out, progress is set by baseline of some sort.
However qualitatively our society does live differently in many ways.
Most things in the past required huge time investment, there was low security for life, and generally the product be it crops, or food, were small compared to these days.
So the constraints people dealt with were huge.
Its fallacy though to think we don’t have the exact same issues in today’s world.
We have washing machines and microwaves and tools that speed things up so we can do the more progressive things so to speak.
The problem is we are subject to biological evolution and therefore progress needs more than quantity.
For instance dinosaurs are extinct yet I bet most dinosaurs would boast that they are huge and bigger than other dinosaurs therefore they made more progress and therefore are the bestests of all.
Human evolution can be the same issue.
On scale of evolution the danger we face is not that we are so good at adaptation and use of tools and changing environments.
We face the problem of change.
All change leads to extinction of some sort. Change is dangerous, but we live in a world were change is becoming a constant variable.
And there is no amount of progress that protects humans from this tricky problem.
If not today 1000 years from now, we might be just as extinct as dinosaurs and from the wood works will crawl out some weird creature of tiny stature like mammals did.
We should therefore not assume the fallacy that bit of fossil fuels, and combustion engines or rocketry will make us better at surviving.
We have better chance of surviving today as individuals, but the behemoth civilization became, is by far something that has never existed before.
Its also not something humans ever did on this mass world wide scale with such pacing and such incredible complex balance of activity.
So yes once people overcame certain constraints that were constant we grew.
So as with all things considering something new, you need lots of trail and error to know what works.
In this sense nature does not have friends or good side.
Nature can kill off anything, and there were creatures that lived for millions of years and went in way of dodo in a single instance as if they never existed.
We have to understand that progress in many ways is limited in certain dimensions for all people.
We as humans are extremely good at predicting certain catastrophic scenarios, but we should not think for one second that nature cannot do more than we can imagine.
We have funny things like bees dying off.
A single species could end our civilization.
And this assuming bees are the only species.
Who knows what other species could die off and kill humanity in basically few years.
So my basic question is what progress really is?
If its survival we made some progress, but we added a layer of problems that never threatened humanity.
If its number of humans on this planet and their long life, that is progress, but it comes at a cost.
Cost we will have to pay back at some point in worlds history to simply go on.