Section Three

Experimentation

(Engagement with the Unknown)

Chapter Five

Hindrances to Progress

            Having described the great cycle of human progress, where it derives from, where it is centered and how it engages the community now I will highlight some of the insidious rationales that will tempt the progressive human being to either conform to some non-effective approach to social progress or busy them with the kind of circular thinking that can lead to the madness and frustration of conflicting paradigms.  The most dangerous aspect of these rationales is that they make ineffective, through psychological distraction, the lives of those who might otherwise be working toward progress.  They are negations of the potential energy that we rely upon for formulations of the progressive effort.  At this point we can discard altogether any distinction between the individual and society.  Any hindrance to personal development is understood as a detriment to social progress.
 
The Curse of Relativism
 
            Because of the simultaneous growth of both the population and their means of travel differing cultures began meeting at their edges over the last few hundred years.  These cultural collisions broke the isolation that protected the traditions and social boundaries of many populations.  As we discussed in the previous chapter labels were given to people that attached them to their traditions, appearances and belief systems.  This led, in many cases, to relationships that were so detached that acting out in violence and hatred failed to conflict with the internal laws of conscience that forbid such behavior.  In an effort to assuage this suffering scientists developed what they called social or cultural relativism positing that traditions and mores existed for a purpose of survival regardless of how offensive, cruel or strange they might seem and should be respected as parts of an organic whole.  The value of this ideology is one, that it inspired many to question their own traditions, and two, that it encouraged people to pause when confronted with alien ways of living before reacting with hatred and fear.  Relativism helped human beings to cope with the existential affect of these great cultural collisions, namely the reminder of the great mystery of existence.  Traditions, philosophies and religions are great comforts and to confront functional versions of these things that look outwardly very different excites a fear that our ways of thinking will not protect us as well as we had assumed.  Relativism helped us understand how regional variations in the environment helped to shape human relationships and the development of culture.  This comforted us with the notion that every population was thriving as a reflection of their geographic origin.  The danger in this is that it reinforced labels and provided us with a vision of humanity that was divided into different species that were competing for the same dwindling resources.  As we began to look at our world through the eyes of relativism we found that it actually led to greater detachment from our neighbors.  Once acknowledging the various responses to the environment we could then utilize the information to compete and enslave our neighbors, fueled by a detachment enriched by the use of dehumanizing labels.  As the means of travel changed our relationship with geography the same philosophy that sought to open up understanding between cultures helped us to divide into tribes without any claim to geographic inheritance.  The tribes of the 20th and 21st centuries are more and more recognized by economic traits and our relative understanding of one another is a curse that utilizes detachment for the purpose of enslavement.  Nowadays when people look at their brothers and sisters whom practice differing traditions they can comfort themselves with the idea that non-interference is a form of respect even though the period of isolated self-sustaining culture is long gone.  Non-interference now is a myth that covers up the oppression and turns compassion into pity.  In a world of perverted relativism all trades are unfairly weighted to the benefit of the rich who attempt to respect the rights of the poor by refusing to question the culture of poverty, a culture created by them and for them.
            The overlapping of cultures in the last few hundred years was so comprehensive that we can conclude that no culture is now completely isolated.  In other words, with minor variations and outward differences, we are living in a unified human culture.  Relativism is a philosophy specific to its history.  When anyone uses some cultural label to dismiss concerns about suffering human beings they are using the outdated ideas of relativism to excuse themselves from the social duty of support.  The curse of relativism is a cycle of rationalization that slowly eats away at our communal understanding of compassion.  Compassion is an investment; it is to suffer with the suffering, to carry some of the burden, to connect to the humanity of one’s neighbor through some action of alleviation.  To participate in progress one must not succumb to pity, that disinterested relationship with suffering, the kind of relationship where one feels above the suffering of his/her neighbor.  Pity requires that one believe that some are ill fated, that some human beings are worthy of sacrifice.  This elitist thinking is fed by relativism and a fear of intimacy that is growing within the human family.
            The greatest mistake of anthropology was an expression of relativism that stated that an anthropologist could never go native.  As they were studying previously isolated tribes they insisted that full inclusion into their subject culture was impossible or that inclusion undermined the objectivity of the research.  Either way they were treating their fellow human beings as different creatures and that was a rationalization rooted in non-relative notions like cultural pride and superiority.  A truly scientific approach would have affirmed one’s nativity, owing to a genuinely relativistic belief, and aimed the research at full inclusion.  Just as many of us must stand out among our fellows as arbiters of progress so too should those anthropologists have braved true intimacy and held faith in the humanity of the people they were visiting.  Anthropology is not a science; it is merely another word for spying on an enemy.  The time of cultural relativism came with its own strengths and weaknesses just as our time will and we can forgive those in the past but now we must not be guilty of the same indifference and relativistic assumptions about those that live in squalor or in luxury.  There is no functional cultural payoff to poverty and disease and those that would dismiss these things as part of a population’s heritage are filled with the kind of hate that longs for the destruction of all life.
            How does one motivated toward progress engage with this kind of relative escapism?  I have found that simply opening one’s mouth and attempting to describe the unity of humanity has profound affects upon these encounters.  I never feel bad about it; in fact they are the highlights of my recollections.  Most often people are not overtly defensive, they appear to me like a balloon that has experienced a little air loss.  Participation in the great dialogue of human unity is essential to the maintenance of equality.
 
Parasitic Thinking
 
par·a·site (p r-s t)
n.
An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.
 
            If we imagine progress as a tree with its roots taking nourishment from the art of reading, the self-purification process and the clarification of motive and a trunk representative of human harmony then this tree would branch out into those things we think of as culture and the arts.  Major limbs like science, art and religion would further branch off into specializations and the leaves would be examples of singular efforts that could be traced back to its sources or roots.  This tree represents how the human family relates to nature as an entity that is fully integrated with the natural world and growing as an expression of that relationship.  The character of this tree would reflect changes in the weather or catastrophes but the tree itself would struggle to remain strong.  The reason I create this image is to describe a particular type of intellectual approach that marks a great hindrance to human progress, one that stunts the growth of human knowledge.
            Parasitic thought is the type of thought that exists outside of an issue, upon some tangential element of a matter for the purposes of distraction.  I first became aware of this phenomenon while watching two political commentators discussing their favorite candidates for an election that was about to take place.  I was struck however, not by their arguments but by the topic of their debate.  These two men were speaking at length about their candidates’ methods for courting the press, of which they were members.  They spoke proudly of each party’s approach to representation and expression but neglected entirely to discuss what it was their party was representing.  I waited in vain for the discussion of style to end in hopes of learning something of substance but I soon realized that these commentators felt that the style was the substance.  The praise that they bestowed on their candidates for particular political maneuvers was suggested as evidence of proper leadership.  In other words they placed moral significance upon different methods of dress, speech and technology.  Their debate centered on political manipulation but never delved into the issues that required their leadership and how their chosen candidates’ styles related to those issues.  The entire discussion existed on top of a host discussion or concern and its existence, as a distraction, had a corrosive affect upon the primary point of contention, upon their purpose.  On the tree of human progress leadership was being sought, not self-promotion, and the parasites of the media were focusing in on promotion to the detriment of the desires of the people.  This kind of parasitic system of thinking can occur in a variety of ways but it always does its damage by acting as a distraction from healthy behavior.
            Parasitic systems can dominate our discussions, our written works, or any mode of dialogue or expression.  For this reason a tree is a sound analogy since these parasitic systems affect our networks of communication and primary social relationships.  Parasitic thinking is occurring when in discussion we talk about others or talk about the ideas of others or worse talk about the ideas that others have about others.  We will fail to develop intimacy with our fellow human beings if we cooperatively avoid talking about ourselves with one another.  This mutual and pandemic avoidance of intimacy owes its power to parasitic behavior.
            Books written about great books are most often parasitic.  Lectures given on great speeches are most often parasitic.  Gossip is explicitly parasitic.  A more complex form of parasitic behavior is found in social groups, companies or religions whereby some of its members fight to maintain their vision of the group by identifying it by one of its primary principles thus reducing the organism to one of the parts.  In other words, and obsession with one tradition leads to the corruption of an entire paradigm through the creation of inflexibility and social enforcement.  One engaged in parasitic behavior feels the pangs of attachment and the great freedom of living in the glorious network of the human family is traded in for a fatal commitment to one little twig or root.  Parasitism is the reason empires fall.  They are the branches of the human family that outgrow the strength of the roots.  Parasitic activity is that which favors a single quality over the truth.
            Intellectually, parasitic thinking is merely another form of losing the integrity of our object; it is narrow-mindedness, the polar opposite of holistic knowledge and humanism.  To write a book about a great human being is a profound effort of procrastination.  In order to engage the great tree of human progress one would be better served and challenged to write a book on greatness itself and thus experience a journey along many branches.  It is important for a man or woman of progress to be cautious about admiration.  One can admire a hero but admiration without emulation is merely idolatry and distraction.  Parasites gather in clusters of idolatrous attachment to people and ideas and weigh down the structure of human knowledge.  The light of reason is obscured by these mutations, these cults, and the tree of progress becomes overgrown with confusion.
            Just as we clean our homes, our bodies, our neighborhoods, our swimming pools, and our dogs we must clean our ways of thinking, our religions, our governments, our libraries, our museums.  It does not happen often that we clean these sacred places because people lose themselves in the clutter and that clutter is the source material for parasitic thinking.  The thinkers, philosophers, teachers, instructors, writers, artists, etc. exist so much in the outer branches of knowledge that they lose sight of the root that binds them together.  Lacking historical perspective, obscured by the great flood of minutiae and specialization, they view their epistemology as part of a web or network that has no centralized organization.  To those on the periphery, to the drones of society, life exists in fate, ignorant of the fact that the structure supporting them is held together by a primary set of principles.  In this way history is destroyed as the parasitic forms of thought multiply and compete weakening the integrity of the underlying tree of human progress.
            Working toward progress means eliminating parasitic speech and nurturing the courage to speak about one’s own insights and ideas while declining to speak about those that are not present or about ideas that are not targeted toward progress and clarification.  The science of living protects one from parasitic thinking by engaging one in the full scope of knowledge from its roots in the self to the expression of growth and interaction with the community.  The elimination of parasitic thought helps foster the kind of self-development that is total, that replicates the tree of knowledge so totally that one becomes an example of human wisdom, a seed of hope.
 
The Purpose of Art
 
            As we have seen the greatest obstacles to progress are usually activities that redirect the useful potential energy of human effort into futile activities that are either distracting or delusional.  The current cultural obsession with ‘the arts’ classifies as just such an obstacle.  Movies, parasitic books, parasitic painting, meaningless music, television shows, videos, websites, repetitive theatre, etc.  The arts of my time are an industrialization of sensuality entertaining and distracting in order to numb the faculty of reason.  I have already discussed how propaganda can serve destructive purposes but I have not addressed the attitude that maintains the illusion of good intention.  Many in the arts, whether they are filmmakers, painters, poets, or musicians assume that the artistic life has some categorical virtue attached to it.  Since art expresses some core emotional state that has a direction and life all its own artists have grown accustomed to seeing themselves in a mystical light.  However, the creative energy that artists access can also be used for evil.  It is a will toward elitism that suppresses this moral understanding of the artistic life.  If this is suppressed consciously it is done to maintain dominance, if it is subconsciously resisted it is done to maintain ignorance.  The power to create images and to recreate emotions comes with a heavy responsibility.  Artists have the same civic responsibilities that one should expect from scientists, preachers, basketball players, plumbers, mayors, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, lovers, or any human being.  Artists in my time are greatly corrupted by pride.  In their relationship to that great tree of knowledge many artists distance themselves from the brood roots of culture and maintain no interest in the unification or human harmony that strengthens us.  They are instead a fruit that blooms rotten, tastes rotten and falls to the ground rotten.
            Art has a purpose, as every organ in the body of human culture has, and that purpose is celebration of the human condition given that that condition is worthy of such praise.  A creative person that understands the need for human progress should be cautious before placing undue importance upon artistic endeavors for they are the fruits of the tree, not the tree itself.  Art, at its best, is disposable.  It reflects its time; survival and glory are after-affects of those works that most submissively served the principles that surrounded their creation.  In an environment of virulent competition and hostility art will fail to educate.  In a time such as ours people use the arts to satisfy their sensual desires.  One of the principal forms of that sensuality is the pride that art helps to validate, the pride of education, the pride of personal cultivation.  People distance themselves from others convinced that they are superior because of the books they read, the paintings they see, or the movies they watch and therefore endanger their membership to the social contract.  Each artistic experience further validates the growth of this pride and detachment from any personal science of progress hollows this experience more and more leading to the eventuality that awaits every self-destructive habit, a moral collapse.
            If there is great art it is that which attempts to reconnect us to those principles that secure growth and human dignity but even then we are attempting to use art for a purpose that it is ill suited to perform.  Art, at its best, is a celebration of unity and so one wishing to see or create great art has as his/her first priority the construction of the appropriate environment for its creation.  Every human being that wishes to identify with artistic creation, because of the necessity of a proper environment, is predisposed toward progressivism.  However, counter-balanced with the isolation that thinkers experience and the promotion of violence that threatens their progressive urges most creative people choose to sedate their reason in order to serve some institutional representative of the arts.  This cowardice is no different than the cowardice that explains the conformity we see everywhere but the artistic pride clothes this cowardice in fashion and prestige and so promotes itself as a protector of something essential to the human spirit when in fact it is worse than hopeless, it is insidious.  The freedom of speech has become the golden calf in my time, a false god protecting its believers from the responsibility of reason.
            Artistic creation was the means of my awakening but it is not what I submit to as an ultimate aim of progressivism.  I continue to make things that are beautiful, that celebrate the human effort toward ideals but I do not fool myself into believing that these creations will save us from the threat of destruction, that would be idolatry.  The creation of these things is a luxury and I remind myself of that whenever I forget my purpose or motivation.  Extravagance in art is a symptom of a civilization’s impending death for it is the opposite of a celebration of unity; it is the horrible expression of a savage, dominating and demoralizing greed.  While we work toward progress we must be careful with the arts for they often seem like safe-havens for our desires to think freely but they are merely pressure valves for a machine that is close to explosion.
 
The Trojan Horse Phenomenon
 
            One day while walking down the street I noticed the face of a beautiful woman and I remarked to myself that she had an interesting set of features.  Moments afterward I had an almost subconscious thought that she might have been surgically enhanced and my experience of her beauty was somewhat diluted.  I realized upon reflection that many of the people that I might look at in order to experience beauty were being disregarded because of my instinctual rejection of the artificial experience.  I began pondering this strange phenomenon, as it seemed to be a doorway to a greater understanding of beauty.  After all, weren’t plastic surgeons aiming for exactly that?  I postulated that any effort toward something, beauty for instance, must begin with an understanding of the object.
            I considered beauty and concluded that the experience of it is the result of being surprised by the uniqueness of a combination of features.  Most of the world’s features are known forms.  Mountains, rivers, noses, breasts, trees, clouds, legs, toes, rocks, shells, horses, chewing gum, etc.; all understood as nouns, forms or ideals.  When we stumble upon an arrangement of these features that surprises us, whether it is due to size, scale, color relationships, or other reaction of qualities, we are often affected by something we call beauty.  Otherwise, surprise is the signal of its opposite, the ugly.  What distinguishes the two?  Well, most features are nouns, objects, shapes and colors, form based things without any secondary symbolic significance.  However, our environment is enriched with our ideas, mythologies, beliefs and fashions.  These things fuse with the forms and create complexity that is recognized in the duality of moralism hence we experience beauty and ugliness, often as a subconscious moral reaction to surprise.  Because of the fluidity of these ideas human beings can disagree on the beauty of objects depending upon their moral perspective.
            So, returning to plastic surgery and how it relates to the phenomenon of beauty, we see that plastic surgeons are flooding the environment with monotony and thus decreasing the element of surprise that is essential to the experience of beauty.  The relationship of this phenomenon to progress is that the object that is pursued is actually being deteriorated by the pursuit.  The Trojan horse phenomenon is a kind of delusion of good will whereby we participate in the destruction of something we value.  Imagining a world without artificial appearance I realize that the essence of beauty is an inspired awakening to the physical world.  Sometimes a certain combination of features can seem so perfectly organized that one is overcome with consciousness of the material world and thus stands in awe of creation.  This mechanism depends upon an absence of enhancement since human enhancement can only be aimed at sensual and limited goals.  My focus on plastic surgery here is not moral.  I am merely using this phenomenon to illustrate how a pursuit can work against itself.  I am drawing attention to rationalizations that can corrode progressive living.  Another example of this Trojan horse phenomenon can be seen in the pharmaceutical industry where drugs are developed that actually work against health and health consciousness.  As the arts of medicine were once a gift, now they have turned into a form of invasion and destruction.
            When we engage in social progress we must measure our intentions against the objects that we pursue in order to verify that we are in fact not working against ourselves.  For this reason I cited no labels in the chapter on self-purification because I did not want to inflict further damage through a vehicle that presented itself as a gift.  Although most often this Trojan horse phenomenon will be an accident or simple error of judgment it is helpful to the science of living to have awareness of this possibility.  It is an especially useful reminder for those living in a world of false promises and guarantees to think cautiously.
 
The Watergate Principle
 
            The final obstacle to progress I wish to address is something I call the Watergate principle.  It represents a particular kind of failure in personal and business relationships regarding how parties deal with wrong doings.  As human relationships are bonded by trust, a mutual feeling of security that is nurtured by every interaction where that security is reaffirmed, intimacy results from the utilization of that safe space for the sharing and support of personal uncertainty.  Because trust is used to foster vulnerability any perceived harm or violation of that safe space can retard the growth of intimacy and threaten the survival of the relationship.  The Watergate Principle is a particular type of reaction to an alarmed relationship that can cause further disassociation and detachment and can ultimately lead to adversarial distrust.  An awareness of this principle and elimination of it as an instinct can aid in the development of unity and partnership with our fellows so its usefulness as a contrast to progress is obvious.
            More often than not human beings are quite capable of forgiving some transgression since most understand the difficulty of self-restraint.  However, total forgiveness is not only easier with the help of the person guilty of the offense it is necessary to the future growth of the relationship that the event be revisited by both parties and that some agreement be reached.  Otherwise dominance and oppression begin to take hold.  The confusion and despair that highlights those ruptures we have experienced in relationships whether they be with our friends, lovers or business associates radiates from the complexity of addressing the initial hurt, from the structure of this confrontation itself.  For this reason intimacy is endangered by carelessness in relationships, not because the careless act is so destructive, but the deliberation that follows requires such courage from the person affected.  Not only has the person been hurt, harmed or neglected, they must then describe the event to the person whom has caused it.  This is an action of profound courage and it is the greatest evidence that the person has already decided upon forgiveness but merely needs the other party to affirm an interest in better relations.  Now the person, upon hearing that someone has been hurt by their actions, who proceeds upon an action of defense and further proceeds upon an action of offense has firstly destroyed the environment of trust whereby such an even may/must be healed and secondly has moved forward to inflict more damage upon a soul in a great state of vulnerability.  This is the Watergate principle, immediate defense without consideration of the charge, thus a wrongdoing in itself, regardless of the guilt of the charge.
            A healthy person sees the sharing of a hurt as an invitation to intimacy.  A healthy relationship is not one without injury but one that handles injury with love and an outpouring of support and validation so that the effort required to make such a request for compromise be celebrated as a courageous appeal to unity.  Asking for help when one feels vulnerable in a relationship is a difficult task but it is perhaps one of the hallmarks of human optimism and love.  A person of progress is always on guard against the Watergate principle, that tendency to defend one’s righteousness out of pride and fear.  In a trusting relationship all feelings have some basis in truth.  In other words, two people that love each other share the pain of injury, always.
            In a more socio-political sense the Watergate principle is in operation when the effort to defend is stronger than the effort to investigate.  The principle derives its name from the Watergate scandal where a president who probably knew nothing of a burglary went to such lengths to defend and cover up the incident that he tied himself to it to his own fault.  The kinds of leaders we have become accustomed to are ones who have no talent for apology.  When someone is immediately defensive there is resentment lurking and people like this, who are diversionary in their communications, are to be avoided if one wishes to find higher levels of community.  The level of joy in my life has significantly increased as a result of my commitment to associating only with those whom consider my feelings of injury as not only valid but as a gift of vulnerability and trust.  
            I wish that the science of living did not require such caution so that I could end this work without highlighting all the obstacles that await those who pursue progress but it seems that this kind of science lends itself to confrontation and resistance from one’s community.  I would be remiss if I did not share with you the possible dangers that I see.  However, in the addendum of this section I offer a tool that will give one a head start in recognizing the accidental adoption of these dangerous rationalizations and thus protect the purity of one’s science.           

Addendum

Outside Perspectives

The Practicality of Seeking Teachers

            In summary, those embarking on a journey of self-discovery inevitably confront the world and the nature of this confrontation is reflective of the innate internal struggles of the seeker.  Finding integration between one’s knowledge of self and one’s knowledge of the world requires a relationship with humanity that is honest and intuitive.  The art of reading, the art of self-purification and the clarification of one’s motive combine to form a science of living that applies itself to the progressive formulation of new community relations.  This altruistic effort inevitably leads to confrontation with those forces in the world that work toward destruction and how we deal with those moments of conflict defines our success as scientists of progress, as cultivators of the human legacy of transcendence.  As I outline in the previous chapter there are types of self-delusion that can endanger one’s efforts and in this final chapter I will present a possible antidote to the self-righteousness and self-deception responsible for the corruption of true greatness.
            To those seeking self-realization concurrent with community harmony the world must be understood as a place of instruction, a classroom if you will.  If there is one word that defines the proper relationship one should have with the world, if one expects to experience progress, it is studenthood.  This state is one where we make reality the master and it is a shortcut to scientific thinking since it reduces us to observers and rids us of any need to justify our curiosity about the world with abstract defenses of the reason.  That being said, reality has flowing into it, through it, on top of it and out of it these forms and ideals that are fluid, that are the objects of our pursuit, abstractions and unknowns.  Being a good student means having the courage to stand comfortably in the darkness for the patient awaiting of insight.  In reality we seek the main object of our search, the one most misunderstood by the student, the self.  To develop knowledge about the self one must rely upon reflection.  In other words, feedback from others becomes the data of our research and in this way we become students of the social world.
            To pursue progress one must make a teacher of those that have achieved some recognizable closeness to this ideal.  As there are many human beings that are more comfortable in teacherhood one must be careful.  These eager teachers are always looking for followers.  If one is seeking continued studenthood through a constant submission to the unknown in order to maintain the continuity of learning through experience then such people are to be avoided like the plague.  That being said, seeking one’s teachers becomes an art very similar to the art of reading.  These arts share a foundation of critical analysis and a reduction to principles.  One of the most valuable side-affects of seeking teachers is that it sets up a relationship with our community that is respectful.  It keeps us in humble remembrance of our desire for learning and when we finally meet that man or woman that we wish to emulate we find in a short time that the process becomes mutual, that a friendship and alliance of principles is formed.  Studenthood has an equalizing affect.  The continuous search for divinity in our fellows is an uplifting but sometimes arduous effort.  It requires faith and a little bit of sustained naivety, the kind that inspires others to see our human family as something more beautiful than it might truly be.  A student is one that believes in learning, in the possibility of deeper insights and in the value of outside perspectives.  Bringing this into interactions means greater attention is paid to listening and that equates to a deeper respect for others.  That respect is a kind of reverence for all aspects of reality including the human beings that exist there.
            Studenthood is not an affectation or gesture, it is not done solely for the respect of others or for the harmony it encourages although these relationships are not accidental.  True studenthood appreciates these things as side affects of a hunger to know more deeply the human condition.  Genuine studenthood looks to others as part of the self.  The feeling that one gets from a student is only genuine if the student is both serious and challenging.  The student must also push his teachers to perform; he/she must passionately divide his/her teachers ambiguities into certainties making clarity a mutual experience.
            Those of us committed to a life faithful in the possibility of progress need support.  We need trusted advisors that can point out errors in our judgment in a way that is loving so that we may move forward in our experiments with thinking that is sober.  Finding such people is like walking on an invisible tight rope for our teachers are human beings in a constant state of change.  People die, people lose heart, people move away from us.  A student is challenged to continue his/her search adjusting to the pangs of loss for he/she knows that personal growth needs validation in the community.  There are for the lucky students friendships that last where two or more human beings act as virtual mirrors for one another.  In relationships like these both individuals are growing at their highest potential so there is the love of adventure and the full respect that humans long for.  Fellowship in the discovery of those principles that secure happiness is the sweetest fruit to be found on the great tree of human knowledge.
 
Studenthood is an attitude of submission to reality.
Studenthood is acceptance of the facts.
Studenthood is one’s greatest strength.
With studenthood the nature of humanity is improved.
With studenthood there is hope in confrontation.
With studenthood there is progressive living.