I've long been confused by the term "progress" as it's often used in politics and social science.

It seems to be the idea that society must "progress" toward an ideal society - free of conflict, hatred, scarcity. To essentially overlap the promise of paradise with the real world. The real world, of course, not fitting the mold of this idealized version of a "perfect world".

I won't nerd-out here too hard, but let's consider a few examples from fiction.

In the second Matrix film (unfairly shit upon, in my opinion) we have the scene with "The Architect", the program who built the matrix as it exists. He explains that the current version of the matrix in which humanity resides is, in fact, the second matrix he designed; the first version was designed as an ideal utopia - not unlike the kind of world people fantasize about mentioned above.

It was a failure.

People rejected this "perfect world". It was, apparently, not compatible with human nature - which is predisposed to expect conflict and often make conflict where there is none to fulfill an inherent psychological appetite.

In the Star Wars series, the Jedi very retardedly believe that "balance" in the Force means the eradication of the Force's darker influences. Failing completely to acknowledge light and dark as two sides of the same coin and perpetuating the idea of a pure, selfless society. The Force, naturally, finds REAL equilibrium in Episode III when the Jedi are almost entirely whipped out, leaving a more or less equal number of Jedi and Sith alive by the end.

My point is this: People do not know better than Nature. Fighting against our inclinations and what is observably true in favor of some artificially produced stand-in model of what we convince ourselves would be preferential is exactly the cause of, I would say, MOST issues we face as a species. "Perfection" does not exist any more than "progress" does. We do not "progress" with time, we simply change. The woolly mammoth did not "progress" into a modern elephant, its line adapted as needed, and could become something very much like the mammoth again if it needed. There is no linearity to it.

tl;dr - The world isn't perfect, can't be perfected, and that's okay.