260926: Systems So Perfect
Progressivism is the belief that sin lies not in man, originary, but in the structure of incentives he is embedded within—in other words, society and culture and institutions may be sin-conducive or sin-producing, and man may respond to these incentives by sinning. But the sin does not live within him; it is ecological.
Thus, the progressive desire is to build better and better systems, and eventually purge the world of sin entirely. We might say that the progressive project is one of interpersonal alignment, accomplished through mechanism design.
Eliot, “Choruses from ‘The Rock,’”:
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.