Christmas and Progress

I've decided in my older years that the best part of the season is Christmas Eve. This is the one day when everything is possible. Because it hasn't happened, the next day still holds the potential for a happy day and for gifts that won't leave me scratching my head over what to do with them. On the eve, I can think only positive thoughts about family without having to watch the day deteriorate as someone raises the issue of Health Care or Iraq. Yes, Christmas Eve is lovely. It's the one day that resembles those phony picture of snug sentiment, yule logs, and eggnogs, that we are fed by our media and by our own faulty memories. The reality is something more complex in many fractured families. I've come to the conclusion that whoever hosts a family dinner probably loves the guests best as they leave.

Still, eve or not, I find myself engaged with the idea of progress. This idea did not jump unasked into my mind, as the poets say. I read an article in the latest edition of the Economist, which asked the question about where there had been progress we could point to and how we might measure it if we felt there had been. The essayist went back into history to find examples of what might be considered "progress," and finally identified two areas in our lives where there had been change for the better. These were science and the economy (he was talking about the changes since the Industrial Revolution when there was no real middle class and working conditions were appalling). This being the Economist, the article conluded with a lecture on the need for regulating both science and the economy, with which I heartily agree but would also add on religion.

It's an interesting question about progress and I don't think the Economist essay is anywhere near the last word. For example, xactly what is progress? I've often heard the word coupled with the phrase "you can't stop," as in some juggernaut of change that carries both posiive and decidedly negative outcomes. They put through the high speed railway from London to the south coast, a positive, but threaten one of the most scenic parts of Kent in the process--far beyond negative, I should say, and venturing into lunacy. Yet, none of us would deny the massively positive changes that medicine has brought us, just to use one example. Or the conveniences of travel that we take for granted.

Most of us think of progress as a change that is rational, productive, and helpful. Even if I accept this definition, though, I reserve the right to hedge on whether things that meet this criteria are always beneficial. Keeping someone elderly alive at the cost of their suffering doesn't meet my requirement. Progress in this area would be someone talking wisely to me about end of life issues when I am there rather than assuming that every single day of my life is equally valuable. I shall come back and haunt anyone unwise enough to keep me artificially alive just because the science allows it.

At one point, the essayist admits that many measures of progress are really accounting: how many infants die, how long people live, how much money they earn, and so forth. And I fully agree with him. As I write this and think about this question of progress, I find I would define it another way. I would ask, how more self-aware have we become because of the advances in our world? Are we better people? Are we wiser in setting our standards for our own ethical behavior? Have we learned to accept the responsibility for thinking rather than choosing sides as if we were playing the Super Bowl? Have we asked ourselves not just what we think but why we think it? Have we gone into that journey within to face who we really are and accept that we are not always right and not always nice.

One of the Greek or Roman philosophers (it's late and my Bartlett's is back in Denver) said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Yessss. That's what separates te truly thoughful: they don't spout regurgitated ideas from someone else. They form their own ideas and accept the accountability for them. My idea of progress then is a time when by education and tempermanet we are able to look dispassionately at ourselves. This to me is the real, hard work of living. Until then we are still the same grubby, competitive little animals we ever were no matter how long we keep ourselves alive or flaunt our wealth to our neighbors.