So, how could there be a progressive social imagination, right? Well, some think they have one. Let's take a look and to be fair to the general population who get their knowledge from wikipedia... let's just go there.
Progressivism is the support for or advocacy of improvement of society by reform. As a philosophy, it is based on the idea of progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition.
Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from uncivilized conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society.
Figures of the Enlightenment believed that progress had universal application to all societies and that these ideas would spread across the world from Europe. The meanings of progressivism have varied over time and from different perspectives.
The contemporary common political conception of progressivism in the culture of the Western world emerged from the vast social changes brought about by industrialization in the Western world in the late 19th century, particularly out of the view that progress was being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor; minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with monopolistic corporations; and intense and often violent conflict between workers and capitalists, thus claiming that measures were needed to address these problems.
And, what is wrong with that? Well, it completely lacks the large data threads that compose a society. Its not just enough to want to advocate for improvement or demand better education, jobs, fairness in the workplace, equality... If you consider the amount of data that is stored in the individual, it is quite vast and layered for within are beliefs, traditions practiced in a place over time which grooms identity. These attributes don't just go away when people are educated, working or 'made' equal. And, exactly how would that be done anyway?
The progressive lives in a shallow social imagination not one carved out over time. Is that really possible? No, but they think they can shed their skin (pretend its not there) by high minded ideas which only leaves them and other people who jump on their band wagon with even less than they started with.
They start by giving themselves new names, ids, labels, and causes in order to virtual signal their agendas with the aim to gain power and prestige for themselves. They think they can write and enforce universal rules advocating for a world without borders. They promise everyone the world as if everything belonged to everyone in the same way. It just leads to confusion, disillusion and chaos.
So, what about change and reform? They sound so appealing. Well, they may but in fact, there is nothing new under the sun. Its best to seek a 'reformed' social imagination in the place where you are with those around you in that same place that understand you because they share in the same depth of social imagination as you do from being in a place over time.
Anything else which is brought in, engineered from the top down is just contrived and made to look like it works for everyone in the same way; but it cannot and it certainly cannot be called reformed because it wasn't reformed by those that had it to begin with grounded in a place. Thus, there can be no new evidence of real reform if you remove place, remove depth of data acquired in a place over time.
Progressive reform at best becomes a barnyard of cluckers looking for feed. Are you one of those progressives?
