> But still we have to understand that it's our conscious effort, not just the "natural force of Progress".
Thank you, yes.
That so many people in the 'intelligentsia' seem to think it all happens automatically is a really dangerous meme. It is a big part of why so many TED talks are kind of fraudulent.
Society has to fix complex problems, but first the people in it have to recognize problems are actually real instead of pretending everything's great. The risk of being 'glamoured' (like the bewitching of the Lords and Ladies in Terry Pratchett's books) is real. You have to either acclimate in places that that live outside of the narrative (the flyover states, the continent of Africa), or use your imagination. Otherwise you risk being in an optimism bubble with your contemporaries, much as people bemoaning the world tend to wind up in bars together. It is super important to understand that reversals in fortune occur starting at the peripheral of an economic system rather than at the heartland, at the city. That is why whole countries are going into disrepair while almost nobody in the West notices. They just think it is shit because it was always (relatively) shit in the 3rd world or in the 'stix', but it is at the peripheral that things start to break down, that models start to not correspond to reality!