> 1. There has been progress that's been good, quite a lot of it. The widespread eradication of everything on my original list is jut an unqualified good.
No doubt. But one could make an equally long list of all the bad stuff that's been concomitant with all this "progress", up to and including such enormities as the Holocaust and the invention of Muzak.
So how do we put these together and decide whether we're making progress or not? Andie's sound courtroom technique is to sweep the bad stuff under the rug and keep the jury focused on the good. A more candid but deeply Philistine approach would try to add up how much harm (some) people have suffered and subtract that from how much benefit (other) people have gained. If the answer is positive, presto! Progress! (But needless to say nobody on this list would be that Philistine.)
The chimerical notion of Progress doesn't help us to understand history or contemporary society any better -- quite the opposite, actually; by imposing a factitious master narrative it obscures the actual complexity and multidimensionality of events and the forces underlying them.
We can certainly ditch this bogus idea and still recognize that smallpox vaccine and the automatic dishwasher were and are Good Things.