Without sounding edgy is there even such a thing as “Progress (TM)”?

Without sounding edgy is there even such a thing as “Progress (TM)”?

Material conditions have changed but human beings and human nature are the same as they’ve always been.

Progress is more or less an arbitrary measure of how derived a state becomes. Technological advancement is probably the one thing in human history that constantly evolves forward, while mores and social stigmata have alternated.

The idea of social progress as it exists today is essentially state sponsored advocation of defective behaviors. Over time, a completely defecting society will have less fitness than a cooperative one, and will lose to it. That's what a civilization in decline is.

For you to recognize progress you want human nature to improve?

>human beings and human nature are the same as they’ve always been

Yeah, since the dawn of time humans have sat at a computer being edgy shitlords.

Deaths during birth, infancy, and childhood are the exception rather than the rule, so there's that.

Yes user, violence and hunger are now a normal part of our lives as it has always been.

>500+ people got shot at a concert literally last weekend

I think he's implying that things have not really progressed very far, and in fact, may have regressed

So what else is there aside from arbitrary shit like GDP? Technology is just a tool. The Greeks got drunk on wine; we have 4Loko.

I fucking HATE progressives with every fiber of my being, but you'd be an absolute idiot to think humanity has regressed since the days of Old Solomon.

I don't think Humanity has regressed, I think Humans have regressed, as in individually.
As the collective grows, the individual wanes.

Widespread genetic engineering is not far away now.

But how? So people live longer, are healthier, are wealthier?

99% of people will still always be nobodies. The very idea that life is the highest good is a Christian one, like Arendt talks about in Between Past and Future. Human nature is still unchanged. We still have angels and demons. Only the clothing, buildings, and names have changed.

A few weeks ago, it was over 100 F for the whole weekend when my AC was broken. Definitely something I'm happy we now have technology to prevent.

It would be possible to have something like this if you follow a virtue ethics approach and people actually became more virtuous. Which didn't happen as most people are very materialistic and hedonistic.

I would say that humanity neither progressed or regressed. That said, our current elite is pretty damn weak, considering we had large parts of it seeing at Hugh Hefner as if he was an example.

This. Be careful of arguments that conflate technological progress and social-changes this user refers to, e.g:

>"It's 2017, gay people can marry and have smartphones that offer the sum of all human knowledge in the palm of your hand!"

Though there is a correlation in that technology allows you to facilitate liberalism (liberalism consumes a nation's capital stock over time).

After a certain point technological development may entirely do away with society as a unit

What they do it on is different, but he's right. The guy making "why did (rival tribe) never do anything of value?" crap would have said it out loud or written it down instead of spamming Veeky Forums with it. The intent has always been there.

Wrong, technology is contingent upon your nation/civilization reproducing enough smart, well-adjusted people to maintain what you already have and build upon it, which in turn is based on adaptive reproduction strategies: The upper-middle and above parts of your society reproducing the most in order to maintain the genetic quality of a population group - while also ensuring that the environmental conditions are met (stable, two-parent families).

See how conservatism is quite literally based around perennial biological truths, brainlet-san?

You act like technology won't develop the ability to self reproduce.
And I'm not talking about politics at all. People have a vested, inherent interest in technological development so that they will pursue it even if it's illogical to do so. Technology will no longer be the tool of humanity but it's master

>If we develop sentient replicators then my ideology will be sustainable!

LOL.

I'm not even advocating this, stop trying to shove politics into it

>Without sounding edgy is there even such a thing as “Progress (TM)”?
No, life was better when we were all serfs whose bosses/landlords were legally permitted to screw us over

...

>not wanting to be a serf

And you know of it thanks to...mass media?

Back in the days people knew of violence because they saw it, not because they read about them in globalized mass media. Nowadays president has to come and comfort people's feefees over a single man chimping out.

>Some virgin's romanticized vision of the past
No thank you, I like toilets and vaccines

India is still trapped in the 1880s