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Progress Does Not Exist

André du Pôle
January 26, 2018

The blue-pill consciousness follows a Manichean narrative. One of the most important elements of the narrative is “progress.” It is something über-positive, associated to all kind of positive passions and buzzwords, something mandatory to follow—unless you’re a boring, uncool, and ever-suspected conservative—and perhaps corresponding to an immanent historical necessity. Progress WILL happen, progress MUST happen, follow it or you’ll die ignominiously as an inferior retard!

Inside the narrative, good people are those recognized as oppressed or ex-oppressed or simply cooler, and they embody progress. The non-oppressed start disadvantaged as they can do no moral claims, and they need to virtue-signal loudly at the feet side of the purportedly oppressed so they can be progressive as well.

But what is “progress” exactly? Does denying the sexes or pretending they can be changed or ignored while choosing among 120+ “genders” make the world better than how things have always been? Was the blank slate, an alienating and de-humanizing view that turns people into raw matter to be remould by social engineers, better than Enlightenment liberalism or knowledge of genetics? Is it a progress when whites disappear or when good ol’ fathers let their place to mangina hipsters? Or even when the sheeple flocks to buy the new iPhone?

“Progress” is an illusory beacon

“Progress” is more than a buzzword. Inside the elite’s imagined world, which is fed to the masses through all sorts of institutions and communication means, it is a pole designed to tell people what to do, under the implicit threat that they won’t be trendy or cool or even accepted by their peers. “Progress” makes you believe you need to follow and obey to succeed at life, otherwise you’ll be “missing the train.” If you don’t get into the train or at least bow to it, you will be tagged with an –ist or –phobe and you’ll die alone and despised. Or, at least, this is what they want you to think.

For “progress” has constantly changed in content. Some progressives have been branded as dangerous reactionaries by other progressives who were willing to impose their own view as the only one. Even within the Left, some old-fashioned Marxists deemed feminism reactionary because they saw it as a mask of the bourgeoisie—with bourgeois women maintaining their class domination while blocking men of humbler social origins. Needless to say, these Marxists were also deemed reactionary by the feminists. Any progressive is the reactionary of other progressives whose idea of “progress” is substantially different.

“Progress” is idolized whereas its contents are always suggested, implied, or quietly moved. Various strands of progressives have been competing so that their version could lead the flock, which, of course, remains blissfully ignorant of these battles and prefers an easy to digest “we’re the progress, just obey us” narrative.

As for us, the red-pilled, we ought to see progress as it is: at best, as something relative we should define consciously with no one else influencing us through crooked tricks; at worst as a Leftist idol that can be entirely deconstructed.

The origins of a meme

LED lights consume less energy, but they’re bad for your eyes, and no artificial light as the beauty of a fire. Speak of a one-way progress

Where does “progress” come from after all? The Latin root of the word indicates both how relative and how tied to military campaigns it was. Progressus stems from the verb gradior, which means “walk, advance”, and was mostly used in a military context, as in the sentence “the army is progressing into enemy territory.”

“Progress” became non-relative when associated to ideas of wealth, utility, or happiness. Dante Alighieri’s De Monarchia (1313) chided those who kept replaying or commenting on ancient authors without adding anything new:

For what fruit can he be said to bear who should go about to demonstrate again some theorem of Euclid…? Such squandering of labour would only engender weariness, and not profit.

Later, philosopher René Descartes rejected the scholastic thought as an unsatisfactory bunch of pseudo-knowledge that could be discarded in favor of “real” research. Both thinkers allude to a “progress” which translates as an increase in capital: works leads to new “fruits” to be harvested. Even though this capital is knowledge, it is accumulative and not relative in character. Perhaps this idea of growth in knowledge was at the root of later versions of “progress.”

What is certain is that the later versions are much wider and dogmatic. The eighteenth century was a watershed of progressivism: the Philosophes shamelessly referred to Philosophie—that is, their own social and mental universe—as synonymous with “lights”, “reason”, and of course “progress.”

The most straightforward example can be found in one of the last texts written by marquis Nicolas de Condorcet, Sketch of a historical tableau of the human mind’s progress… chap.10, where the author, a committed 1789 revolutionary, mixed equalizing policies with more happiness, more “reason” and other purportedly cool things. Interestingly, Condorcet paved the way towards the white man’s burden where “progress” means whites teaching others to be happier and materially wealthier. (Eventually, “progress” became chiding whites for having had progressive ancestors.) Condorcet’s exalted writing made clear that “progress” included a number of apparently obvious goods and was somehow bound to happen. Of course his narrative had its convenient bad guys—priests, some colonizers, “despots” and others who lacked enthusiasm for the guillotine.

It must happen! Join or get lost!

This “bound to happen” characteristic was forcefully used by subsequent influencers. Karl Marx’s theory of history, where communism must happen someday once capitalism will have met an unavoidable limit, just enshrined what had been in the air for decades before. Now there are very few orthodox Marxists around, most cultural Marxists being ignorant of notions like the added value or the lumpenproletariat, but just like female hypergamy this core feature of progressivism is still here. Karl Popper’s refutation of this “sense of history” belief was conveniently ignored or drowned under academic noise.

It is important to notice the reversal from thinkers like Dante or Descartes to the later Philosophes. The first associated progress with the idea of potentiality—we can progress because we can do this or that. The second, however, turned “progress” into a historical prison. We are “progressing” because we are following a fated trend! Pray for equality or communism and go to the guillotine, gulag, or racial genocide—-nothing else is possible! Progress!

Condorcet, Marx and others were clearly hallucinating and trying to hallucinate others. Who knows, religions themselves succeeded by make-believe and crushing their rivals, so why not a theory of history?

Real progress is relative…

“The way forward” is a convenient myth. Just as inalienable rights are. Just as the generic “we” and “us” is—that empty expression people use to signal how integrated and fitting-in they are, without anyone wondering who’s that “us” exactly. If someone tells you about history on her side and the intersectional or humanitarian “us”, it is just an illusion and a disastrous spin. Nothing to worship here.

What is publicly deemed “progress” depends a lot on who owns the media, the universities, and whatever can steer the fashion. Which itself is a social stick and carrot device, pressuring people into being attracted to what’s cool and fearful of what’s not cool.

Real progress is only so when measured according to clear, explicit criteria. Real progress is relative as it depends on a previously postulated standard of reference or landmarks. Otherwise, “progress” can mean “more mediocrity equality”, “less whites racism”, or whatever the Left churns—something you didn’t make, something they injected into your mind through constant suggestion, something you must remain a slave to, something they constantly redefine and control. Progress worship, associated to the might of the media and of social pressure, is a deeper and more intimate form of slavery than any physical enslavement—which at least doesn’t touch the mind.

Now many of us tend to distinguish material and moral progress. Haven’t we progressed through technology? Well, this depends according to which criteria we judge and look. Mass production created pollution and overpopulation. Efficient medicine saved babies who turned into an army of gibsmedat and invaders. Comfort makes us fragile.

If tomorrow we went back to the Middle Ages, we would not regress absolutely. Of course, it would be uncomfortable, but there is nothing to worship in production ability. Those who’d survive may even live a much better life than they do now. And they would write history so that the collapse would not be an anomaly or a “regression” but the beginning of a new era.

It may not be easy to get rid of the “universal progress” mental conditioning. But it should be done. High-level Leftists know that many different endgames can be pursued, and they are not always dupes of their own idol. Franz Boas pretended that progress is relative so that science and the West could be broken—now this aspect of his thought has been conveniently brushed off so that another version of “progress” can be imposed.

Arch-planner Keynes famously quipped that “on the long term, we’re all dead”, not something that a real progress worshipper would say. Jewish pulpit occupier Albert Hirschmann spoke of a “progress inside reaction”, thus implying that progress is relative and that people otherized by so-called progressives can progress along their own way. The MSM have ignored how investing in BitCoin could make one rich before they could taint the BTC so it couldn’t obtain recognition as a progress.

…and some Leftist influencers knew it

Saul Alinsky: “The real arena is corrupt and bloody… the end justifies almost any means.”  Including making up totem poles and browbeating those who won’t follow?

Leftists have also been reactionary, although they never admitted it honestly, when it pleased or suited them. Rousseau and Marx idolized a mythical “state of nature” where private property didn’t exist. Boasians like Margaret Mead idolized backward tribes as remnants of a lost Eden. (And now, the same who forbid to tell of primitives that they are primitives have no shame tagging us retarded or reactionary or whatever. Only they should control “progress” and decide what it is! Bow down, you peasant!)

Jane Jacobs’ opposition to skyscrapers and promotion of smaller scales was absolutely reactionary when seen from the pro-skyscraper version of progressivism—yet it was integrated into the official version of progressivism. By the way, skyscrapers had nothing unavoidable: the bourgeois bohemians managed to conserve what was supposed to disappear simply because they could.

There is no one “way forward”, and this is all the better. If there was, nothing else would be possible, and we would be utterly powerless, locked up inside a train fated to fall into hell. But there is no reason for us to be headed this or that way apart from our own belief. We can go to any direction. True progress is absolutely dependent on our needs and our deep identity. Break the spell of the reified official version of “progress.” When our children will grow up outside of Leftism, they will thank us for it.

Read Next: 6 Leftist Concepts That Pretend To Be Positive But Are Not


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Post Information
Title Progress Does Not Exist
Author André du Pôle
Date January 26, 2018 5:00 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Blog Return of Kings
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/Return-of-Kings/progress-does-not-exist.6787
https://theredarchive.com/blog/6787
Original Link https://www.returnofkings.com/145085/progress-does-not-exist
You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

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