Progress and Athletics

 You have to watch what you say nowadays. Why is that? I suppose it’s because we have progressed so much you have to be careful you don’t end up looking stupid, not having progressed at the same rate as everyone else, and somehow in your stupidity giving away the fact. 

Progress of course was declared the great new Ideal some hundred or two years ago, leading us down the path of wherever it was going, and now I suppose we’re in its midst, the midst of its realisation I mean, us having done all that progressing, and now for instance people who used to be men can now be women and triumph at women’s sports, whereas previously they were stuck let’s say competing against other men who might have been that bit better than them, and so disappointment was their unfair lot.

 But now we’re leaping over all such unfair facts and hurdles, and everyone, or at least everyone progressive is rejoicing - though admittedly all this mightn’t be so wonderful if you happen to be a woman who began as one, so to speak, and now you’re up against and losing most depressingly to a woman who didn’t begin as one, but was originally of the more let’s say muscular gender. 

Setting that minor issue aside, it must be a proud realisation for such newly victorious athletes not simply to taste such noble victories, but to know their triumphs are also the triumph of a great philosophical ideal. And if they didn’t know, someone should explain it to them. 

And as for the losers who might perhaps have previously even been winners, they would surely find great solace in the same knowledge - again if someone was kind enough to explain it to them.