“How can humanity achieve its feats if under constant pressure due to such limitations as time, as illness, as poverty? We are unable to build, if all we’re content with is destruction. If we are left with dissection, we learn, and yet, we are left with useless knowledge. We cannot bind, if all we do is break. Nor can we, if we mean to break, find our wisdom when things are left shattered.”
– Modern Romanticism
Today’s focus on “difference” and “diversity” is the sign that progress is reaching its limit.
Progress is only ever achievable through a recognition of similarities. When things work, we can break limits. Though, when people compete in their differences, able to be stagnantly proud to them, then there is no progress. There is the mere appearance that has no function for itself.
If science gathers data and knowledge, then such findings prove to be useless without a place for their application. It is to say that without a societal focus on similarities, more knowledge becomes increasingly insufficient. Dissatisfaction becomes the focus to those obsessed with difference, since their desire for greater choice comes at the cost for what functions. If what is meant to function cannot, then it was because more had been broken, than what had been mended.
War and conflict decreases progress, because an incident of any kind will involve its expenditure and/or reveal, to the vulnerability of its design. When societal conflict (or infighting) is upon the grounds of a nation, then progress is, again, stunted.
We cannot progress without recognition for what is similar, since conflict generates the difference, making equality the place of the true progressive. Equity cannot stand upon the road to progress, when its focus is upon what is different, not similar.
When progress reaches its limit, there are the signs, such as an increasing focus upon difference being the supposed accomplishments of people that are deserving of pride. Though, as pride should be reserved for achievement, then a difference would merely be a fluke for this unnecessary pride.
Humility grants progress, not pride. Pride is the aftermath of an achievement, once the work is completed. However, during the process towards the achievement, there is more humility than pride, due to what similarities are understood through being humble.
We cannot be progressive without understanding each other, just as a grieving individual cannot “move on” without recognition for those who struggle in the same pain. In that recognition, there need not be the loneliness that causes the stagnancy. Outside of such stagnancy, there is a road. There is another path, that for wherever it leads, is better than standing still.
Modern Romanticism 