The article argues that treating 'progress' as an inevitable arc is less a neutral historical observation than a legitimizing story: elites and institutions use the belief in steady improvement to justify policies, defer accountability, and marginalize dissenting historical readings. Recasting progress as myth reveals how political actors weaponize temporal optimism to close off debates about tradeoffs, distribution, and risk.
— Calling progress a myth reframes debates about policy tradeoffs, making visible the rhetorical role that optimism plays in legitimizing institutions and blocking alternatives.
Jonny Thomson
2026.09.30
85% relevant
Fukuyama’s piece asserts that our institutions and morality have improved over time and uses that claim to defend liberal order; that directly maps to the idea that appeals to progress serve as a source of political legitimacy and narrative for elites and movements (actor: Francis Fukuyama making the progress claim).
Jonny Thomson
2026.09.10
100% relevant
The article's core claim — that history does not show inevitable advance and that the progress story is misleading — is the concrete element that exemplifies this idea.
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