No, I don't think they have to be. I actually felt like there were many times in my life where I grew spiritually and emotionally as a person, such as during my Missionary trip, but when I got back home, it hindered my ability to progress in my professional life because I had to explain why I had a 2 year gap in my resume.
(I went on the trip right after university, and have a degree in accounting.)
More freedom less stress, maybe
In bio, the more failed experiments you go through the more likely you are to find a novel answer. So in my opinion, growth is not dependent on progress, at least not always.
I think the first thing I can think of as a consequence is probably diminished value? Saying a culture has a specific value and placing it on a spectrum is very black and white way of looking at something that is so abstract in nature. I learned about Hofstede’s (i think that’s his name) cultural spectrums (i think thats what they are called) this term in uni and he tries to place cultures into v neat spectrums and ranks societies into these spectrums, an example would be collectivism vs individualism.
USA would get 90 whereas North Korea might’ve gotten 20, etc. Though this was one way of looking at cultures I personally found it too black and white of a concept and I took these spectrums with a grain of salt. It doesn’t do grey area justice when you try to shove it into neat black and white boxes.
since the beginning of civilization, necessity has been the mother of invention so it's a bit hard to imagine a world where we don't measure progress and can still innovate like we do now.
Depends on what you consider as progress. My mom came to Toronto in the early 90s and my father in the late 80s, my aunt and uncle came very early in the 60s and they all lived in Chinatown at some point. My aunt and uncle would tell you that Chinatown has definitely grown, from what they saw to when my mother immigrated. My mother however would tell you that Chinatown didn’t grow much from when she came.
So I would say growth and progress are not intrinsically linked but related. Growth can still occur without progress. Chinatown still grows, at a much slower rate to say it’s progressed into anything noticeably different. Even where I grew up, in the north GTA suburbs after I was born downtown, there was a point where the community I grew up made a lot of progress, it was bustling with people and a hub for the community.
After a decade I definitely didn’t see any more progression in the area. Things grew quiet and although small gears changed, the main gears definitely slowed down. No more progression, no more gears added to contribute to more growth. Just what was there moved and slowly grew but no more progress was really made. However these two words mean different things to different people, so it’s hard to say whether my point stands regardless.
I think it’s hard for most to understand progress without a reference or a number to base things of off. I don’t think it’s impossible but I believe a world without measurement and quantification of progress will be one beyond the numbers. I think an example in my personal life was when I started using Instagram I was so stupidly focused on the numbers. I wanted a nice ratio point blank, for whatever reason when I rarely posted. Now, I’m considering opening a new account just to document thoughts and keep connections I truly care about, cultivating a safe space no longer about the numbers but the quality of things I post and connections I wish to keep. I believe I will progress much more in a new account than where I am now, stunted with my current account, forced to not move and not feel free.
Essentially a world without measurement and quantification of progress would feel like what I described? In a weird way haha. I wasn’t sure how else to explain it but yeah. I’m sure it’s possible, progress can still occur even if we may not see it, progress is also relative to every individual as well. Just there’s no more numbers and reference points attached. Things just progress, even if we don’t see it.
I feel like an increasingly common situation many people find themselves in is being stuck in a job that they hate, while still receiving promotions + accolades for it and feeling like because of that, they're obligated to stay. That's a big example that I've seen and experienced where progress actually stunts personal growth.
For your buildings: while I feel like the final 'growth' into an office building is very different compared to the other two changes, it's still a form of progress - just not a good one.
So i feel like growth and progress are very linked, but whether the progress is positive or negative is rlly dependent on the values of the community it's happening in
it means I would have been able to take more time to finish high school and not feel bad about it.