What is Progress?

Who decides which is right?

In Antoine Nicolas de Condercet's "Progress of the Human Mind," Condercet puts forth a brief summary of his view on the development of humankind as well as a prediction about their future development. His whole idea focused on the eventual perfection of humankind. He thought that as society progressed, there would be clear steps forward that would lead humanity to become better and eventually perfected. The only problem with this idea is saying who gets to decide what is better or worse for humanity.

As humanity has grown and changed throughout time, obvious developments have occurred that most agree were for the best: development of tools and farming, achievement of freedoms like religion and speech, ending of slavery. And it seems that Condercet thought that all changes in society could be clearly marked as GOOD or BAD. However, in each time period what is considered good or bad changes. During the time of the Enlightenment, there were many revolutions in which people were fighting for what they considered basic human rights, and we support that. But there will always come a time when we can't agree on what a basic human right really is.

After the American Revolution, the founding fathers put together the Constitution, which outlined what they thought were basic human rights, and at the time most everyone thought they were right. In today's society, there are things such as "the right to bear arms" that we can't agree about being a basic human right. So while the thinkers of the Enlightenment were so influential in helping bring about political and scientific changes of thought, there will never be a time on the earth as it currently is when humans can fully agree on what makes a government good and what makes it bad therefore making it impossible to reach our "perfection" like Condercet predicted.

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