The Myth of Progress

"I am longtime devotee of the God of Progress. Forward is good. More is better. Faster means I'm winning. If something hurts, it's probably growth. If something feels empty, well, that is just the price of forward motion. Up until recently I did not think of my devotion to progress as an allegiance to a particular mythology. I took it to be reality. Like gravity. Like time. I bought into it early and enthusiastically."

"Progress and purpose promised a payoff. That was the deal. Endure now, arrive later. The problem is that "later" is a mirage that keeps walking backward. At some point, I began to notice that many of the things I had labeled as progress had quietly made my life smaller. More efficient, yes. More impressive on paper, maybe. But thinner. Narrower. Tighter in the body."

"On my podcast 50 Words for Snow, where my cohost Emily Garcés and I hunt for words without English equivalents, I found the perfect word for my relationship with progress: the German danaergeschenk. A poisoned gift. A gift that looks generous but carries harm. A promotion that ruins your health. An opportunity that costs you your friendships. A milestone that requires you to amputate a part of yourself to reach it."

A longtime devotee of progress equated forward motion with virtue, treating rest as a delayed reward and discomfort as proof of growth. Progress promised future payoff, but "later" remained unreachable and kept receding. Many achievements improved efficiency or appearances while narrowing life, eroding health, relationships, and inner breadth. The German term danaergeschenk — a poisoned gift — captures opportunities that harm despite seeming generous. The myth of progress assumes linearity, accumulation equals meaning, and motion is inherently virtuous, pressuring continuous forward movement and invalidating stillness.

Read at Psychology Today