Progress is toward humanity. It is never accidental. Progress is achieved in small increments by trying. Trying exerts progressive pressure. Not trying yields resistance to progress. Opposition to progress is harmful to humanity, inhumane.
Biologists categorize people as belonging to the animal kingdom. People are not animals because they have an attribute not shared by the animal kingdom. That attribute is the ability to make progress. The entirety of humanity is like a single animal, in that it either builds a nest for the future, or it cannot survive the devastation of the past. When people act like animals humanity suffers, both in terms of longevity and the quality of life.
Progress is scientific, economic, political, and religious. Its absence is recognized as harm to individuals, harm to their environment, and harm to their happiness. Progress is how people build a better future, but they are incapable of building it for themselves. They build it for other people, many of whom they have never met or never will meet. Those people live in other places, or in other generations. Individuals thrive because people who preceded them left a habitat filled with opportunity.
Inheritance is genetic, social, and economic. All three are strengthened by the diversity of all humanity. There is exactly one environment shared across genetic, political, and generational boundaries. Progress is how to make the world more habitable. People lack the necessary genetic characteristics to survive as animals. Each person is a part of the body of humanity. Will that body smile and celebrate human effort, or will it become extinct, because it failed to understand that humanity is not a gift, but an opportunity to progress toward becoming more humane?
One World, One People, One Future 