If the universe was created by chaos won't it some day return? Is progress even a rational concept in regards to the universe? What is progress?
If I were Socrates I would ask someone, so I did. Wikipedia defines it as, "In history, progress is the idea of an advance that occurs within the limits of mankind's collective morality and knowledge of its respective environment." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_(history)). And I know people say that Wikipedia is not a good source, but as Socrates would say; no one knows anything, "I know I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing." Basically, no one is a good source.
So what does it mean when people speak of progress? Social progress? What does that even mean? That certain morals are endorsed? Who decides what morals are right? What is right? What is wrong? No one knows these answers, though they may believe they do, yet we strive for this idea of progression. This notion that we can make the world a better place, whatever that means.
Look at our nation, we find ourselves in war in order to spread democracy. Who are we to say that's progress? Seems quite hypocritical because a lot of people are dying... for an idea. Progress? I think not.
Am I preaching anarchy? Let's return the world to is natural state, back to chaos, back to a time that has not been tainted by civilization, back to a time where all humans had was nothing. Nothing but themselves. No, I'm not preaching anarchy. I'm not preaching anything. I don't know anything. You don't know anything. Yet, we pretend to. We pretend that we know what we are doing. That we are making progress. But can we? Are we? On any macroscopic scale can we achieve progress, some sort of sustainable order? Is that done by instillation of culture, value systems, social classes, etc? And is that possible to achieve with so many different cultures, with so many different people, with so much chaos?
Progress on any scale seems to be unattainable simply because we are victims of chance, victims of fate, victims to disorder and entropy.
So what is the purpose of life? Some people say they have that answer and some say they do not and most seem not to care but are simply there for the ride. Well, maybe that's all it is, a journey back to chaos. Back to elements.
If we can have no control of the universe than what can we control? If as Socrates says, "The unexamined life is not worth living" than maybe that can be our answer. To strive for self-dependence, self-worth, self-contentment, to just live with ourselves and be happy. Maybe life is to be happy. Perhaps the only real progress that can be made is in within ourselves. Epicurus writes, "It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself. "
So we march on in a crazy world with the wind at our backs, our faces, our cheeks, blowing its breath anywhere at any time and all the time. Many strive for progress. But you can wonder what that's really all about, is it really about anything? Or is simply competition for resources, for power, for nothing? Maybe progress is only as real as we make it. In that case, make your progress internal. Make happiness. Make wonder. Make ideas. Make progress.
"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.
But mankind wasn't always so lucky. Less than a century ago men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.
They could not name even one of the fifty-three portals to the soul.
Gimcrack religions were big business.
Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward -- pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.
Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end.
It flung them like stones.
These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth -- a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions.
Only inwardness remained to be explored.
Only the human soul remained terra incognita.
This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.
What were people like in olden times, with their souls as yet unexplored?"
-Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titans
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