Running in Place

The concept of progress:

we get fitter, we actually are somewhat training ourselves and becoming better able to find a mate, yet back in the day it would have been better able to evade predators, fight prey, in short, survive; to preserve ones life. Why? Because life itself wants to live: why else would we feel pain when hurt, when starving. Immense pain before death when you are killed - perhaps eaten - and a tremendous pain (even) when the body begins to feel close to it.

The pain sets in and we grow stronger, even though we are still not moving anywhere. We are bettering something (technology? perhaps ourselves or the ease of our lives) while all the same in fact not going anywhere. The root of progression is a moving forward that never begins. The running could do us good (whatever that means) but insofar as we remain in place the running creates the illusion of a progression that consoles us when we think we actually might not be progressing. We live the "truest lie".