Progress is not flourishing

It seems clear and simple, and I've wondered why I want to write about this in the first place.

Several conversations around progress - especially technological progress - make a fundamentally flawed assumption. The assumption that technological progress inherently will lead to human flourishing is inaccurate.

And we have history to show us this.

Yes, with progress comes economic empowerment. With progress comes some levels of prosperity and abundance. We'll be able to create agents that can help us with mundane tasks. We'll create new drugs, new ways of curing diseases.

But we shouldn't confuse progress for human flourishing.

We shouldn't confuse drug discovery with wholesome healing. We shouldn't confuse instant connectivity with authentic connection. We shouldn't confuse assess with trust and what empathy creates. We shouldn't confuse making things easier with making them better.

We've become more connected than ever before, and more distant from one another. We continue to create new jobs that didn't exist a decade ago, and less people are engaged at work. We have an abundance of information, and a lot of people are still confused about what to do next. We have access to more data points in the history of the human species and fewer applications of wisdom.

We can embrace progress, but only the kind of progress that has at its core the flourishing of humans. Progress that supports us in becoming the best versions of ourselves as individuals and communities.

By all account, we are making progress. And we can equally flourish when we start paying more attention to it.

Useful progress enables us to lead a life of giving and receiving love, of radiating joy in spite of the circumstance, of being useful and doing meaningful things, of paying attention to the things that make us better.

We can do useful. For our sakes, we should.