There seems to be something very wrong with the idea of progress and progressivism, in a sense that it seems to be a Trojan horse that’s filled by an entire army of bad ideas, ever since the times of humanism and the French revolution.
The progress was obvious and clearly visible in the beginning, but the whole thing was accompanied by the undercurrent of materialistic philosophy, which basically said that nobody will need God if he has indoor plumbing, electricity, sanitation, antibiotics, vaccines, education and wealth, basically assuming that God is some sort of a poor substitute for material wellbeing that will be achieved through progress.
In the meantime, the idea of progress reached a dead end, because the stated goals were either achieved completely, or shown to be completely unachievable, so now we have a civilisation that is addicted to the idea of progress but ran out of ideas about what direction further progress should take. Some are trying to absorb themselves into some kind of a virtual existence, basically increasing the level of illusion they inhabit by 1, the others worship Elon Musk who “invents” things that are either trivial and iterative, or nonsensical, others are trying to invent the new, improved digital gold, while others are obsessed with the navel gazing idiocy of gender and identity.
In the end, it has been demonstrated that all this real and supposed progress is a poor and unsatisfactory substitute for God – the opposite of the original thesis.
True progress, as it would be measured by the saints and angels, is to be closer to God, in both essence and will. This is the only way to attain true and lasting happiness and fulfilment. Removing material problems through progress is commendable, but happiness is not a mere absence of material misery. Happiness is something that happens when you are close to God. But for a civilisation that abandoned God and tried so hard for centuries to remove Him from every aspect of our lives, happiness is always a mirage in the future, something that will eventually happen once you get the n-th dose of some vaccine, once you get a new phone or a laptop, once you get that new electric car, once you remove sources of carbon dioxide, once you kill and eat all the rich people, once you get Dogecoin to the Moon, and Bitcoin replaces gold, and you get plugged into some Matrix where you will be enslaved by those who control your physical existence.
For saints and angels, happiness and fulfilment are now, because God is here.
God is the reality, and there is no happiness possible in illusions.