A Short History of Progress

Most humans would probably agree that society in general has progressed since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Some would also posit that not all of that progress has been good with regard to the planet and for the long term survival of the human species. Humans have been able to make this progress as arguably the only species on the planet that is able to ask the general question "why" about whatever topic. There are some unintended bad consequences to what are generally seen as good progressions in life, those bad consequences including overpopulation, resource depletion and climate change. Those good progressions have been generally chosen as the preferred over changing to mitigate the bad consequences in the human desire for immediate gratification, and the human response of fight or flight for self-preservation in the short term. On the current path, the problem will only get worse as more and more people emerge from poverty, the affluent who have a larger individual ecological footprint than the poor. There needs to be a fundamental change in moral systems for survival of the species in the long run.