RE: Evolution: progress or decline?
Very refreshingly put! This reminds me that I was thinking about diseases the other day, because of a family case, and when I read elsewhere that auto-immune diseases are much more common in modern societies than in unmodern ones, this is due to the progress of antibacterial and antiviral drugs and treatments. So while this is seen as progress on the one hand, at the level of bacterial and viral defence, it is a kind of regression at the level of the immune system that now, as it sees itself rid of useful bacteria and viruses, is turning against itself. Thus, research has been done on the tapeworm and there is the thesis that the tapeworm and its host have formed a symbiosis in millions of years of evolution that is useful. No matter how you twist and turn it, everything always has an effect that cannot be completely foreseen.
Interesting. It would be necessary to see whether the advance in medications brought only a decrease in autoimmune diseases, or brought progress in general. Although I agree with you, although the change is for good, there are effects that cannot be completely foreseen.
Well, the devil is in the word "generally." How can something be general if it means progress in one case and regression in another? You can somehow assume that people are better off today than they were four hundred years ago, but what aspects of that do you want to base that on? On health, on income? Then you have to ask, what is health, what is income? Nevertheless, I do not want to pretend that I do not know what you are talking about. I believe to know that it is generally better today than it was hundreds of years ago, yet I do not know exactly. I assume that we are materially better off, but all the sparrows are calling from the rooftops: But mentally. But psychically! Then one would have to ask: What does "today" actually mean? Am I better off than my mother? Sure I am. Materially and in terms of degrees of freedom. But how much do I suffer in the care of those who come after me? For example, when I think of my son and his peers?
When he said the other day that we needed a printer, I said, "Really? Isn't it wiser to use the printer at my work, since it's not used all day anyway? And is it wise that we all have our own washing machine here in the house? Wouldn't it be wiser to share two washing machines in the basement? And he said, "Three would be better."
Such a thing is called regressive economically because it reduces consumption, but could be called very progressive ecologically because it protects the environment. Can we think of progressiveness differently than in terms of production and profit? Can we be the more progressive the less we work and produce?
What would you say: how do you imagine a progressive world?
I'm with you. For me a more progressive world is a more ecological world. Economism is a hard nut to crack. Progress should not be seen only in productive or economic factors. There is a wider world than that.
I don't think there is such a regressive economy, rather it would be a stagnation. It's not like you're throwing away what you have. Then, it does not really recede under any aspect, as in the case of autoimmune diseases, it only stagnates.
:)
Von EwigLernender - my own digital foto, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1378819
I was about to mention permaculture, which is a term with which I am not very familiar but I know thanks to Steem(it). That's a form of ecological progress.