day no. 15,410: progressing towards what?

"Everything that merely progresses finally perishes. Every nation, like every family, exists upon a compromise, and commonly a rather eccentric compromise; using the word 'eccentric' in the sense of something that is somehow at once crazy and healthy... The nation fills up its own gap with its own substitute; or corrects its own extravagance with its own precaution. The national antidote generally grows wild in the woods side by side with the national poison. If it did not, all the natives would be dead. For it is so, as I have said, that nations necessarily die of the undiluted poison called progress." -- G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

Anything that pushes one direction will eventually fall off the edge. Progress is not merely uninterrupted inertia in one direction. Progress of that variety heads over the cliff and like the cartoon characters of old hovers over an abyss momentarily before the bottom drops out. True progress is a matter of taking a step with the left and then correcting with a step forward with the right. This kind of progress navigates the narrow road forward without falling off either of the edges. 

The progressive mindset is one of insisting on going forward in a particular direction without considering the problems attending that direction. It insists that better is ahead and demonstrates its faith by plowing forward. It does not account for the kinds of problems present in that direction. It grasps a naive hope that a future without problems exists in going just the one direction. The conservative impulse is to think in terms of compromise and trade off. If I go this way, what problems will be produced. If I solve this, what new issues will arise. This is the impulse of walking ahead with both feet, left then right, right then left, and always straight ahead.