Idea of progress : Does change always mean progress ?

In order to begin my presentation about the notion of idea of progress it will be necessary for me to define what progress means.

The idea of progress is basically linked to great changes in society, like in social progress, scientific progress and economic development these advances help improve our daily lives and give us a better quality of life. Over the past few years, the modes of consumption have greatly evolved usually considered as having a positive effect on our society however there are some cases where the changes can have a negative effect too. So now the cult of novelty and progress is so now being questioned. That is why some people protest against materialism and organise campaigns against consumerism.

In order to demonstrate that, i would like exhibit the way people nowadays consume and the abuses of this way of consumption.On top of that people try to react to hyper-consumerism and are setting up new systems.

We can ask whether change always means progress ?

To illustrate this notion, I chose to talk about different methods to make people aware of the changes in society that are here mainly the eating habits of the population, including obesity in the USA.

We saw in class a poor vision of progress through a cartoon showing a middle-aged family with two parents and their only child. They are gaining too much weight because they nibble all day the woman complains about the poor performance of Canadian athletes at the Olympics. Canadian athletes do not win as many medals as they did before. She wonders why Canada is not a dominant nation. I think that the message of these cartoons is effective because it is based on a contrast between what the mother says and what she actually does it is ironic.The woman criticizes Canadian athletes while her whole family is fat. The caricaturist wants to make the public understand that obesity is a curse and not a progress for the population, which can affect many aspects of our society.

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