My theory is that progress is only a symptom of a discovery we've overlooked and never questioned.
The kickstart to progress happened with language and before every animal had to rely on the knowledge of its own experiences to survive (with the exception of other forms of communication for the necessities to survive and genetic communication with the slow adaptation of evolution)
First thing that came with it is that deathrate decreased since we then shared our experiences and even past a lifespan (which later become more extreme with printing)
With the discovery of shaping sound waves to deliver subjective interpretational information, knowledge cheated death and in some sense we cheated death.
What doesn't die tho wants to keep growing yet there is no space for eternal growth.
The intended balance on our planet and ruined the rhythm and we realised that too late.
Another thing I see language might have had its fingers in is how we see ourselves in relation to nature.
Having words to play with gave us many possibilities in thought and abstractions we could explore.
Abstraction requires meaning and meaningless makes religions.
I've noticed Chomsky sometimes likes to float the theory that language is related to discrete math.
In my theory what comes with that is that it's not great at dealing with continuous concepts or relations.
It seems like discrete concepts are prerequisite to identifying the "self" as a discrete entity.
Thus selfawareness came, but what's selfawareness if not a form of disconnecting yourself from the bigger whole.
Our disconnection made us selfcentered, we lost respect and think we deserve bigger bites than we can chew because through disconnection we do not see that we are actually harming ourselves also if we exploit our playground.
My point is, we are the river not the raft.
Now I also think we degraded ourselves our whole development internally is build around language yet language could never represent the actual complexity of what actually is , it's a reduction. Language also brings the existential focus on expression we grow up alienating ourselves from ourselves.
Sry for me english I hope you get what I'm trying to say
