(seen at jerolson.ca in this post)

Progress involves doing what is better. In that sense, we have not made much, if any, progress in a long time. When we use the word progress, we are using it in a very narrow sense of the word. We call the next thing better because it is more efficient. If it was made into a mathematical equation, it would look like this:

Efficiency=results/cost
We (as Modern, North Americans) call cost money, but money is not the only cost involved with progress. A good example is factory farming. The result is cheaper pork (higher efficiency when cost=money). The problem is that there are other costs involved: unsustainable farming due to pollution, brutality to animals, displacement of sustainable family farms with high labor low-wage jobs, not to mention strains of superviruses due to antibiotics that affect people and animals with unimaginable pain. What is the cost of that? I think it's too high. So even if the efficiency of something is higher when cost=monetary, if you take the other costs into account, the efficiency is actually worse than when you made "progress".