In our pro-democracy series and some of our orbiting insights related to pro-democratic political philosophy we've been saying this word "regressive" on occasion. And before continuing with our series highlighting the problems of the media, feel it's important to dedicate a couple insights into what it means when we say progressive or regressive. The Webster's 1828 definition of progress or progressive, is "Moving forward; proceeding onward; advancing; as progressive motion or course; opposed to retrograde" while regressive, is "passing back; returning".
Now in some but not all cases, what was older is better. For example, we find the 1800's Webster's dictionary to be superior to the more modern Webster's dictionary because there's been a century + long attempt to reduce our lexicon through the simplification of language. Which is intentional and see our essay "American Brain Fog" on something called the Gunning Fog Index and the reduction of reading. Especially dense and complex reading which has not always but far too often been replaced with brief and simple reading such as text messages or simple feeds while pecking on devices, primarily cell phones. We've also spoken on time not being linear but more like a sine wave due to the precessional cycles of the Earth, which are also conceptualized in astrology via ages. Such as going from the age of Pisces to the age of Aquarius. But those are 25,000 some years in length and are thus speaking of deep time which then gets into the juicy ancient civilizations more advanced than our own stuff. Where the further back you go, on a nearly 26K year wave, the more advanced its consciousness appears to get. But in terms of short time, go back a couple hundred years and see how difficult it was compared to today, yet alone going back 2000 years to the dark ages which was way deeper in the trough of the sin wave, and thus less advanced and much more de-evolved.
Society should always be evolving. Which usually happens via two steps forward, and unfortunately sometimes one step back. But just like the stock market, which may crash short term, over the long term, it's always growing. If there's one thing our parents have learned from politics, it's to never take any societal progress for granted. For example, they grew up in the civil rights era, which was a massive step forward for women and black and brown folks in the 1950's and 60's, who prior to that point couldn't even vote. Yet, there are forces at work, regressive ones, trying to always erode that progress and evolution. We'll be more specific as to who the regressives are in this push / pull in the next insight but the hint is it's the folks who don't even believe in evolution at all.
Anyone who truly listens to us, knows about the basic yet, quite frankly advanced spiritual concept that we are in binary reality. With a sun and a moon, and day and a night, and male and female. Which are all the same thing by the way, hint hint. And we know the left vs right binary political framing to be a binary trap. Because these things are not all or nothing. Black & white. They are variations of degree and it's likely everyone has some of each. We, for example, have been quite conservative on our amount of sexual partners and our financial savings through the years. It's never our intention to turn our personal outputs, this podcast, our future creations, into just a left to lib vs con to right battle. What we find instead to be a much better framing is progressive or regressive. Evolving vs de-evolution. Forward and not backward and will continue to put things primarily into this framing.
Asking the ghost in the machine what “Political regression" is and it said: “it can refer to a few different concepts, depending on the context: Societal regression describes a situation where a society reverts to a less developed or less advanced state politically, socially, or economically. This regression might manifest as a decline in democratic values, a rise in authoritarianism, or a return to outdated or harmful policies. In the realm of policy-making, political regression might indicate a shift toward less progressive or less effective policies. This could involve a reversal of previously enacted reforms, the adoption of policies that undermine democratic principles, or a retreat from international cooperation and norms. Intellectual regression refers to a retreat from reasoned, evidence-based discourse in political matters. It involves a decline in the quality of political debate, a rejection of expertise, or an increase in the use of fallacious reasoning or propaganda. Overall, "political regression" suggests a movement away from progress, development, or enlightenment in political thought, action, or outcomes.”
In a democracy, political progression represents by far, the largest block of populace throughout our country, and the rest of the democratic world. 2/3 at least. A moderate and balanced political "progressive" is someone who generally leans and advocates for social, political, and economic reform. Progressives often seek to address issues such as poverty, inequality, discrimination, and environmental degradation through governmental and corporate action and know none of which will happen without social change. They typically support policies that promote justice, human rights, and equal opportunity not outcome. They also typically advocate for more government intervention in the economy to provide social programs, regulate industries, and promote public services. And we will add an important element to that, which is that those advocations mainly cater to a balanced economic center, being the middle class. Basically, they work toward governments least dysfunctional workings which is to function on behalf of We The People. Because, when you cater laws and policies to the middle class people, that spills into getting the poor more towards the middle class and no, we're not going to say the rich more toward the middle class and trigger regressives with the thought of horrible communism, as there will always be some poor and some rich, but does prevent morbid wealth and oligarchy, which are threats to democracy. Because it can't be said enough, you can't have a democracy without a middle class. The middle class is what builds the most strong, free, and powerful countries.
So political progress is anything that helps and benefits and provides more freedom to the majority of the people, meaning a well educated, well informed middle class, from the middle class out, which is allowed to have space and time for creativity, contemplation, and the pursuit of happiness. While regress is anything that hurts or removes freedom from the middle class.