Progress, Goals and Values

Progress can only be determined or measured using goals and values. If you don't have a goal to move towards, it is just random movement. If you don't have values to measure (or more often merely quantify) change, it is just random change.  

More often than not, values and goals are defined very narrowly and not put into a wider context. Values are numbers that have been narrowly defined by isolating specific things from as much as possible. The best example is dollar amounts, especially as profit. 

There is often little open debate or explanation of the values: how they are set, what they mean, how they connect to other things, etc. They are usually numbers these days and are passed off as being obvious and self-evident.

The narrowness and lack of transparency and details about them are big reasons why what is defined as progress by some is felt by others to be degeneration or even outright loss.

Mylar Balloon

We have made important ideas in our Western culture (like truth, justice, equality) foundationless by cutting them off from the traditions that forged them and should play an integral part in revising and reshaping them. By marginalizing and neglecting philosophy and history (and even theology), we are cutting of the origins of these ideas and the complex and important arguments, systems and frameworks that created them. This leaves them without foundations, susceptible to being compromised, hijacked or even washed away by fads, thoughtlessness or carelessness. We have gutted them of content by abstracting to an extreme. 

We have also smoothed out the surface and given it a minimalistic and shiny exterior with no detail. The words we use to talk about things are simple and without nuance. They are also positive and attractive, but they lack any substance and as a result the things they try to represent are unobtainable and unsustainable.

Instead of having a solid foundation, detailed inner workings and an expressive exterior, like a gothic church or even early era sky scraper like the Empire State Building, we have a hollow, shiny but plain balloon floating in the air. We have a mylar party balloon that blows in the wind and displays a comforting but generic message, if any messages at all beyond being bright and shiny. It is attractive and fun, but lacks any substance to the point of being a mere party favor and nothing of real consequence.