https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_jaHdcrIMG8
So, the thing I’ve been thinking about lately, but what not to get fooled about, is progressive or progress, progressivism. This is one of these pernicious terms that seems to float about and people are fooled. They’re given the impression of an absolute good and it’s right there, just progress, good. And this is a trick. It’s a trick that people play on us. And so, again, I want you not to be fooled. So we’re going to try this again and see if I can explain to you what this trick is, how to spot it, and what to do about it. So the word is progress. And the problem is that people wrap a lot of stuff into progress, right? So they’re saying, well, progress is just good. Like we’re progressing, right? We need to progress. We need to? Are you sure we need to? Is change always good? Because progress has an element of change. So if you’re sure it’s always good, maybe we need to, but let’s just set that aside. Let’s say progress is always good for a moment. How much? How do we know when we’re done? How fast? There’s three things right there, without the good or bad issue coming into it, that are left open. Progressive visa leaves this open, wide open. Why? Why would they do that? It’s part of the trick. So determining whether or not progress is good is hard enough. You can progress backwards. You could make progress towards a dystopia. Progress doesn’t mean utopia. It could mean dystopia. It could mean not much good change at all. It could mean the same amount of goodness and badness in the world. And so by keeping you focused on progress, they keep you not focused on better things, like getting better, doing better, being better, going towards the good, discerning good from evil, calling out evil. All these things are set aside, because when your highest value is progress, it just references itself. And anybody can steer that progress in any direction they want, and you’ll follow them, because they’re progress. They said progress. You know, and that’s where you get fooled. And so when people are using progress, progressivism, any derivation thereof, pay close attention, pay extra close attention, start to really think about it. What are they proposing? Is what they’re proposing progress? Because they may say progress and not actually propose a change at all. Right? You could make all kinds of crazy arguments. You could say, what we need in this country is a progressive party that emphasizes progress. Fair enough. But it didn’t say anything. Like, that doesn’t mean anything. It sounds like it means something. Because effectively, what this winds up to be is what I like to call word salad, which I’ll be doing a video on for sure. Using these decontextualized words that don’t mean anything in the context of what you’re saying. And then what happens is the listener projects, oh, progress. Yeah, what we need is progress. I’m unhappy with what I have because I’m resentful and angry. And then what I need is something else. Progress sounds good. We need progress. Or maybe it doesn’t sound good. It sounds better than what I got because I’m angry and resentful. And so now you’re tricked into this progress trap. And there’s no way to discern what it means. But you’ll project what it means. And then whatever that person said, you’ll believe they said something that is different. Whatever was in your head, that’s what you’ll hear. That’s bad. They can use you. They can manipulate you. This is how we get fooled. This is one of the ways. So progress in particular is one of these words that allows you to assume a bunch of things. You assume that progress is good. You assume that progress is a goal that you can attain. You assume that you know what that goal is. You assume you know how fast you’re going to get there. And you assume that when you get there, whatever resentment and anger you have will be gone. Unfortunately none of those things are ever true because they never fill in those items. They never say we’re progressing towards the utopia where everybody gets ice cream. They don’t specify that typically. And even when they do, do they have a plan to do that? Is that plan a real plan? Can it be implemented in the world? I have a plan to take over the world. I do. I have many such plans. They’re not practical. I can’t do them. But I have the plans. I can tell you the plans in some cases. They sound viable, but they’re not. This is an easy trick to play in some sense. I can give you a goal, give you a plan, and you won’t notice that it’s not possible because most people don’t think things through. But if somebody else looks like they did think something through, they’ll go with it. Progress! Oh yeah, progress. I know what progress is. Because progress is in my head. I know what progress means to me. I just don’t know what progress means to you. That’s where it becomes problematic. I don’t know what progress means to you. So when you tell me we’re going to do progress, man, let’s all get together and progress, that could mean anything. But now that I’m in the progress tribe, I’ve got to go along with progress because progress, that’s how they fool you. Don’t get fooled. So how do we avoid this? What do we do? We don’t want to, in the moment, call them out and say, ah, you’re invoking progress, therefore you’re a bad person. Probably not. They’re probably trying to be a good person, although maybe not. It doesn’t really matter. You don’t want to call them out. Fair enough. So what we have to do is we have to temper our own feelings. We have to look at our own projections and figure out how did that make me feel? Why did I feel that way? Was it justified? And they said progress, and I went, ooh, progress, right? Ooh, right? What was that about? What’s going on in my head? You know, because you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do. And this is how people hijack you. This is how people get you. This is how you end up doing things that you would never do normally, that you would never have done six months ago, that you never considered doing. This is how they do it. They appeal to things like progress. And once progress, self-references, doesn’t have something outside of itself, a goal, a higher goal, a higher aim, a goodness to aim for, all bets are off. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I know it’s probably not going to be good because it’s really hard to be good. And it’s really easy to not be good. It’s really easy to miss good. It’s easy to go past good. It’s easy to see good and then move away at the last minute. It’s easy to do. But we don’t want to do that. So we shouldn’t get hijacked. We shouldn’t get fooled by the idea of progress because most ideas that are sent to us are projections in our head and not actual ideas that somebody can implement with a plan in the world, even if they have a plan. These are the things to keep in mind. So I really hope that this helps you when people use the word progress or progressive or they state something about this is progress, progress towards what. I hope that you’ll be able to ask yourself those questions and fill in those blanks more explicitly in the moment. When somebody confronts you with these things, you just have to stop and take a breath and think about how you feel for a moment. Think about what’s welling up inside you. Did they make an emotional appeal? Remember how that boss screwed you, man? This is going to be progress. Progress towards what? There’s lots of ways to solve that problem and most of them are bad. Not just bad for you, but bad for society. Maybe they’re good for you, but bad for society. That trick works once or twice, but man, if you bring society down, the things that you got by doing things bad for society, yeah, you’re going to pay for that. It’s not going to be good. So when they talk about progress, it’s okay to agree in principle on progress. It’s also okay to ask them towards what. It’s okay to say how. It’s okay to say, how will we know when we’ve reached progress? Because we can’t keep doing the same thing forever. Who wants to do the same thing forever, right? That’s Sisyphus, the rock back up the hill. You don’t want to do that forever. So these are legitimate questions to ask. And when they don’t have immediate answers, and I guarantee you they won’t have immediate answers, then they can stop and they can reflect. Whether or not that works or works reliably, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. It matters that you make them aware of their own blind spots and make yourself aware of your blind spots and do that in communitas together. Because at the end of the day, we’re still all on the same planet together. It’s not good if we collapse societies or governments or bring down culture or any of that stuff. It may seem good in the beginning. It may give us the immediate response that we want. It may even be immediately good for us in the moment. But that’s not going to last. And that’s the problem. That’s not going to last. And that’s where it all goes wrong. And so make sure you’re not doing progress for the sake of progress or progress for the sake of assuaging, relieving your anxiety or your anger or your resentment. Those are not things to drive positive change with. And focus on positive change and not just positive change for you, because that’s easy. Focus on positive change that goes beyond you, that expands out into the world and helps others. And maybe sometimes that will be completely selfish positive change, because maybe you’re just that far down or that far in your anger or resentment. But you can turn that into helping others pretty easily. And as long as you do that, your self-care or your selfish desire to get better in the moment is not wasted. And that’s what’s really important. You don’t want to waste your energy on progress by not doing the good. You should point your energy on progress towards the good instead. And when you focus on that, you’ll make the right amount of progress towards the right end. And I want you as always to be careful and really to not be fooled by this, because this is a sneaky one. People get tricked by this progress idea all the time. And hopefully you’ll be able to avoid that trap and better yourself in the process, because now you can use that as a trigger word and say, oh, every time I hear that word, I need to stop. I need to take a breath. Feel what I’m feeling and understand where it’s coming from. Then I need to ask myself some hard questions about what this means, how I’m contributing or not contributing, whether or not we’re aimed towards the good. And I think in doing that, you will be able to make yourself a better person and make the world a better place at the same time. As you’re not too selfish about what progress, what goodness, what being better means. And with that, I’d just like to thank you very much for your time and attention.