On The Fallacy Of 'progress' Poem by David Welch

It's an all too common mistake these days,
this belief society can ‘progress, '
that with the right laws and the right teachers
we can go beyond ‘better' and even ‘best.'

This thought that humans can somehow be made
to improve by a great external force,
and that if that doesn't bring perfection
it only means that we must apply more.

On a surface level it may make sense,
how people can fall to this fallacy,
our lives progress, from beginning to end,
and so does all of our technology.

So why shouldn't some people start to think
that society should move the same way?
And what mind wouldn't want things to get better,
believe we can bring about perfect days?

It's perhaps the greatest of human conceits
to believe nothing is beyond or grasp,
to misunderstand our reality,
everyone's a little guilty of that.

We view society like a lifetime,
with a beginning, a middle, an end,
we view our morals like technology,
we think things must be getting better, but then

society lurches, as it always does,
in a direction we could not predict.
one life may move from birth straight on to death,
but society jolts in a panic.

The linear path we want it to have
never comes true, it's just more of the same,
a cycle that churns, which nobody can stop,
it's anathema to the human brain.

Because honestly, it is immortal,
it just continues with new born players,
the rules of one life can't encompass millions,
and that's a notion that deeply disturbs.

We humans so like to feel in control,
but billions of minds all playing at once
is something to big to be bent to one will,
even imagining it can't be done.

Not that this stops some people from trying,
and when they do it always ends in tears,
the Soviets tried it, China did too,
their worker's paradise never appeared.

Even if it were somehow possible
another problem announces itself,
no two minds can agree on what's ‘progress, '
one man's hellscape is another man's wealth.

Which man would get to determine the path?
Which one holds the ‘best' ideology?
If one forces ‘progress' on those who say no,
then is ‘progress' no more than tyranny?

Beyond the five big moral absolutes
(Don't murder, rape, steel, assault, or enslave)
is their a concurrence on what is ‘forwards'
that could justify sending folks to their grave?

Of course, there was a solution proposed,
by flawed men of inspired intellect,
they threw out ‘progress, ' said ‘Let me live free! '
Protect their rights, and then simply step back.

Let them decide, on a one-by-one basis,
what constitutes improvement in their lives.
don't try to push on them moral ideas,
leave that to their own conscience to decide.

Those Founding Fathers had the right idea,
freedom is the thing mankind can know,
and progress is not an external cause,
it's a person's choice how to change or grow.

Since society is made of people
the only way that the whole can improve,
is if the ones decide, of their own free will,
to take it upon themselves to do good.

But individuals can't be predicted,
and differ greatly on what they think is right,
so for every one who pulls themselves up
another will plunge down, right out of sight.

For every one who chooses charity,
another will give in to their own greed,
some chose to work to get their daily bread,
others will turn to crime to get what they need.

No power exists that can rewrite our will,
even suppressed it still finds a way out,
to get all mankind moving one ‘preferred' way
is something evolution won't allow.

This is not a truth some folks want to hear,
they dream of remaking mankind anew,
but human nature is something that can't change,
protecting rights is the best we can do.