Progress
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Historically things weren’t always good. There is no argument here that we should go back to a better way of being, that never actually existed. Human history is a work in progress. What we’ve gotten wrong in the past, can and should be fixed in the future. As things inevitably change, countries or people that stay stuck in the past and refuse to move ahead, will unfortunately be left behind. So why do people put up so many barriers to the future? Why fight so hard against progress?
We get comfortable with the way things are, and thus we inherently fear change. We rationalise our fear: things might not be perfect, but they could be a lot worse. Our current circumstances are the ones we know, are the ones we understand, are the ones we’ve already survived. The unknown of the future provides no such guarantee. For example we have a dead-end job. It’s stressful, it’s menial, it’s not what we wanted, we would love to find a new, better one. But this job provides a steady income, steady hours, it has its stresses, but what job doesn’t? All of the bad parts of it, we’ve experienced and know we can survive them. Do we quit? If we do, will our next job be worse? What if we can’t even find another job? How will we provide for our family? So we stay in our nowhere job, working day in and day out, fearful of what might be, so never finding out what could be.
This fear isn’t exclusive to our personal lives, it is also prevalent at the societal level and leads to people fighting against social change. People have been discriminated against for all kinds of reasons for centuries. And it has taken centuries of fighting to expand rights and protections to those that have been discriminated against in the past. The expansion of rights, is still a battle waging today. Many people think that racial discrimination is no longer an issue because it has been nominally addressed on paper. But case after case shows that although racial discrimination may be illegal, there is still too many instances where race seems to have an outsize impact on the outcome of a situation. The goal should then be to understand and address the reason why race still seems to have such an outsized impact, but unfortunately many people decide that because these anti-discrimination laws exist, then there is no reason to delve deeper. Why is this? Do we justify the lack of investigation because it used to be worse? Is it solely a fear that we as a society haven’t progressed as much as we think we have? We like to believe that we are better than our ancestors who may have owned slaves, and no doubt we are, but that doesn’t mean we have progressed to a point of complete equality. If we truly believe in an equal society, we should always examine (without hesitation) instances when the system seems unfair. To do otherwise, perpetuates an unfair system and causes stagnation in our progress. We may fear what we find out about ourselves during this examination, but we should be more fearful of allowing our ignorance to hinder our progress.
There are many people presently in power that have benefited from the current system. These people fear change the most. They fear the loss of their power and influence, so they will find excuse after excuse as to why we should maintain the status quo. They will use all available means to divide us and make us fearful. But change is inevitable. It is only up to us to determine how long and how painful the change will need to be. If we accept that things are not perfect right now, but could be better, then we can address change with an open mind and an open heart. We can welcome the progress that is necessary to advance our civilisation. Or we can refuse to hear the hard truths, to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that everything is fine for right now. But change will still happen. It will just be harder and more destructive if we refuse to accept it.
Progress will happen whether we like it or not. We may prefer the way things have always been done because it is easier, because there is less to fear, but that doesn’t mean those ways are correct. Eventually, if those ways are wrong, they will change, as they should. We don’t have to fight every step in that process. Instead we should devote our energy to finding innovative ways to make things better for all of us.