a case of mistaken identity
There is a mistake in contemporary intellectual theory on the concept of progress in the attack of its supposed evils. Today's theorists attach the effects of bad business, waistful and inefficient means of production, and negligent misuses of our cardinal resources, to the word progress.
These kinds of practices are not progress.
I've heard it stated by instructors at the California College of Arts and Crafts that "the negative effects we are now suffering in the shadow of this country's notion of progress..." are to be assumed as some version of reality.
To assign the word 'notion'--a general, vague or imperfect conception; fanciful or foolish idea, whim, (Random House College Dictionary)--to the word 'progress' results in a contradiction of terms. It is exactly this convolution of the word 'progress' that presuposes a willful rejection of its actual meaning.
Theorizing of this kind is a cop out. In effect, it supresses man's two most important resource for survivol: reason, and the faculty of fully active and concious creativity. It is skirting around the reality of the work and creative effort that is necessary to achieve actual progress--toward the fulfillment of what one values. It is an example of the thoughtless and inconsistent ambivalence of those who, while throwing up their arms in a gesture of surrender to the will of some entity greater than their own, enjoy the use of products they have determined as inherently evil. As an escape from independent judgement, it is an attempt to validate a collective handicap--one that is imposed by arbitrary external forces out side of, and greater than, the free choice and abilities of individuals. It is a culturally entrenched escape mechanism--a way of avoiding taking responsibility for one's fredom of choice, one's will power, one's creative faculty; in effect: one's life.