the word that shapes the world
Is progress always a good thing?
Read time: 4 minutes
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Society is in constant pursuit of progress.
We’ve organized our world around the promise of forward motion. It's the story we've all bought into, the assumption that underlies everything else.
The big forces shaping our lives — from politics and the economy to tech and culture — all assume this forward motion is critical to wellbeing. And it's often accurate.
But contrary to other shared values like justice or wisdom, progress rarely invites reflection. It floats above critique. Because of course progress is a good thing.
But here's the rub: we rarely examine what we mean by "progress."
In this edition, we take a look under the hood to understand how we think about progress today, where it falls short, and where we might go instead.
Because the version of progress we choose shapes everything: how we build, what we prioritize, and who benefits.
Progress is the path society walks.
how we got here
For most of modern history, progress has meant different versions of more. More production. More growth. More efficiency.
That mindset emerged alongside the Industrial Revolution, when machines and science radically expanded what was possible. Life expectancy rose, poverty dropped, people gained access to material abundance previously unimaginable.
To track this new trajectory, we invented numbers: GDP, poverty rates, development indexes. Over time, those metrics became our scoreboard for human progress — a shorthand way to decide whether society was heading in the right direction.
But here's where things get tricky. Metrics are only as useful as the assumptions behind them. And for the last century, those assumptions have been mostly material — that producing, consuming, and scaling were reliable proxies for a successful society.
our numbers don’t add up
The metrics we choose to prioritize matter more than we think.
Take GDP. Originally developed in the 1930s to track wartime production, it was never meant to reflect human well-being. It simply measures the total value of goods and services exchanged. Oil spills and hospital visits count the same as education investments or clean energy — the more money changing hands, the higher the number.
Yet, GDP became the marker for national success. Politicians campaigned on it. Headlines tracked it like a pulse. If GDP was rising, we were winning.
But the logic doesn't hold up. A society can grow its GDP while inequality widens or ecosystems collapse. It can be "booming" on paper while people feel lonelier, sicker, and more disillusioned than ever.
Robert F. Kennedy saw this clearly in 1968, stating GDP "measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."
So if our current metrics are missing the mark, what should we be measuring instead?
redefining progress
Every progress metric we build rests on an assumption about what society is supposed to do. If we don't surface that assumption, we risk optimizing for the wrong things (again).
This isn't a new question. Thinkers across cultures and centuries have wrestled with it, and their answers reveal something our current metrics miss entirely.
Aristotle believed society's purpose was to give people the foundation to live well as whole, engaged humans. Not just surviving or accumulating, but supporting the full realization of human potential — lives that are both personally meaningful and socially constructive.
Confucian traditions saw society as a network of relationships to be honored and sustained. Success wasn't measured by individual achievement, but by how well the community functioned as an interconnected whole.
Many Indigenous cultures measure social success by balance — how well people live in harmony with each other, the Earth, and future generations. Progress that destroys those relationships isn't progress at all.
Different contexts, same insight: A society succeeds when it helps people live well together.
Not when it produces the most, innovates the fastest, or maximizes efficiency. But when it creates the conditions for people to feel connected, supported, and purposeful.
a new compass
As for my own definition, progress means delivering more good to more people, year over year.
Not just through material gains, but by expanding society's access to what makes life worth living. Love. Creativity. Connection.
The things that make being human meaningful — made real and available at scale.
Yes, society has an economic drumbeat to it — but it's also a container for the human experience. And progress should make that experience richer, deeper, and more meaningful for everyone.
Progress is our social compass. We owe it to each other to ensure it's pointing somewhere worth going.
Culture moves how we move. And how we move is still up to us.
If not us, who?
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