On Progress (Episode 3)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction

Jesse: Hello. Today, I'll be speaking about progress.

While researching ways to enable young talent to pursue their curiosity I came about the question of pursuing progress, both on an individual and societal level. And I was wondering why is it important to pursue progress? So, this is my attempt to reason why striving for progress is important.

My thoughts will be more like deliberations in a diary entry than a scientific paper. Please enjoy.

[00:00:58] Seeking change

Jesse: Let's start with the origin of life.

Life originates from the first self replicating cell. So natural evolution can be interpreted as an exploration for divergent organisms on finite earth. Survival and reproduction are constraints on this open-ended exploration.

How can survival and reproduction be increased? One important way is to avoid local competition by founding new niches which then leads to diverse ways of survival and reproduction. And therefore natural evolution is change.

Humans are searching for novel ways to survive and reproduce. And the human species is thus a large-scale open-ended creative system seeking change.

Why do humans seek change?

There's an inherent desire for actualizing change to increase the chances of survival and reproduction. And that's a minimal criteria for human life. It therefore requires agency. Consciousness enables us to intentionally choose how we act upon change we're seeking.

So we're able to choose intentionally how we act upon the change we're seeking, but how do we evaluate change?

We are still equipped with a primitive biology that didn't evolve as fast as our civilization so our modern world clashes with this primitive biology and threatens our chances of survival and reproduction unless we are intentional about our actions. So if we were to follow our instincts that would probably decrease our likelihood of survival and reproduction since we would most likely end up in a box either prison or a coffin.

Let's say we were to strive for a world that matches our instincts and therefore strive for a civilizational regress, we would probably also decrease our chances of survival and reproduction because the achievements of the modern world in terms of health and wealth they would be lost. So there's no way back.

[00:03:37] Evaluating change

Jesse: Since we require intentional action, we need to evaluate change in order to decide on how we act. How do we evaluate change?

Well, morality evolved to increase survival and reproduction. It contains excessive individualism and enables human cooperation. So it increases group cohesion. As we're a social species helps us survive and reproduce.

So in order to act intentionally, we require an ethical framework that guides our actions.

Change in accordance with our ethics is progress and change in clash with our ethics is regress.

[00:04:23] Institutions of progress

Jesse: So now we've established that we are seeking progress and why we're seeking progress.

But why has our quest for progress been institutionalized?

Institutions give individual and group behavior structure and continuity. And our quest for progress is pursuit in institutions because it helps to transform change into progress in a structural manner.

Historically, there has been schools or apprenticeships, universities and businesses that have been institutions to explore and drive progress.

So we are . Generating change. But are we making progress? That requires a closer look at our current ethical framework and our existing institutions.

[00:05:20] Outro

Jesse: My thoughts are very much work in progress so please do email me your thoughts and feedback at jesse@gabel.is. Thanks for listening and stay tuned.