What is Progress?

Progress does not mean movement that closes in on some ultimate goal.  Nor does progress imply a single direction to history.  Progress is movement away from past errors and terrors - movement outward, in an infinite number of directions.  We measure progress not by our proximity to perfection, but by our distance from oppression. 

And this distance is not measured in years - the mere passage of time does not imply progress.  To think that it does is to fail to understand the second law of thermodynamics.  The comparison I keep coming back to is gravity.  Moving out, away, exploring the vast unknown universe of possibilities requires attaining escape velocity.  An enormous amount of force and energy must be used, directed with extreme precision.  This will be and is such an enormous cost of resources that most of what we are must be fuel, burned up and ejected for this purpose alone.  If we were ever to stop thrusting outward, we would not be able to maintain our position - instead, we would, at best, fall back into orbit around our old practices, ideas, and modes of existence, and inevitably any trajectory would decay until we fell, faster and faster, crashing back to what we had sought to escape, if we could even survive such a fall.

Not only is this distance not measured in years - it's not clear, from here, how to measure it at all.  Only by exploring can we possibly learn how to make such judgements, which undoubtedly will not only be quantitative, but also, and more importantly, qualitative.

Further, this does not mean that we must "unlearn" the past, but, on the contrary, that we must penetrate it and absorb it all the more thoroughly.  Paradoxically, we must bring the past with us as we move as fast as we can away from it.

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