“It’s 20XX—how are we still doing this?”
~Too many people, too often.
I remember the first time I heard someone utter these words in a tone of bewildered frustration, like the mere fact of existing in a certain calendar year was supposed to have solved all our problems. They were reacting to yet another incident of police brutality—one that should have been unthinkable in our so-called modern, enlightened times. The raw anger in their voice was palpable, but so was the confusion, as though the unrelenting tick of the clock had somehow betrayed us.
But the betrayal isn’t time itself. It’s our own illusion that time naturally arcs toward justice. That illusion is far older than 2025, far older than any single moment in our shared human drama. We constantly reference the words attributed to Martin Luther King Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Yet we forget that King, and countless others before him, bent that arc through relentless struggle; it never bent by itself.
The passage of years can fool us. We assume that distance from past atrocities—slavery, genocide, war—means moral evolution. We say, “How can these things still be happening now, in the 21st century?” as if the modern date automatically equates to advanced ethics. But the truth is more unsettling: time is neutral, and without conscious human effort, it has a habit of protecting the powerful, burying injustice in revisionist histories, and comforting us with myths of guaranteed progress.
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The Myth of the March
The False Timeline of Justice
When we look back at history through textbooks, documentaries, or dramatized films, we often encounter the “march of progress” narrative: each century an improvement on the last, each decade bringing us closer to some final, equitable utopia. Slavery, for instance, was abolished in the 19th century, so that must mean the 20th century was automatically better. Women gained suffrage in many countries by the early 20th century, so the 21st must be more enlightened still. This tidy timeline sells us a comforting promise that the worst is behind us.
Reality: Progress and Regression Intertwined
What’s obscured by this linear story is that history is rarely a straight line forward. Time is full of backslides, outright reversals, and deliberate erasures of progress. A nation can be on the cusp of unity one year, only to plunge into chaos the next. Intellectual movements can flourish in one era but get crushed under oppressive regimes in another. It’s only in retrospect that we piece together a narrative that feels linear, compressing the chaos into neat chapters.
Look at post-Apartheid South Africa: When apartheid officially ended in 1994, it was celebrated as a monumental victory, a new dawn of equality. Yet the structural inequalities that apartheid left behind didn’t vanish at the stroke of midnight. Economic and social power remained concentrated in the same hands that had wielded it before, only under different branding. Today, while progress has been made in certain spheres, many of the racial and socioeconomic divisions from the apartheid era persist—testimony that dismantling an oppressive system requires more than just proclaiming it gone.
Likewise, the partition of India in 1947 is often heralded as a moment of triumph—Independence from British colonial rule, a new start. But the reality was millions displaced, families torn apart, mass killings, and a trauma that spans generations. Independence came, but it carried with it fresh lines of division, new resentments, and the seeds of future conflicts.
Then there’s Rwanda in 1994. The Rwandan Genocide occurred not even half a century after the Holocaust, a global event from which the world supposedly learned important moral lessons. We like to believe that humanity collectively said “Never again,” …but the record skipped, and “never again” became the chorus of a familiar tragedy—this time in Rwanda. As international powers argued, hesitated, or simply turned away, neighbors slaughtered neighbors by the hundreds of thousands. History is never as progressive or straightforward as we like to imagine.
Perhaps the starkest example remains Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Germany was highly advanced in many fields—philosophy, engineering, science, literature. Yet it was precisely here that a modern society slid into genocide and fascism. This historical fact alone dismantles the myth that knowledge, scientific progress, and a modern calendar year automatically guarantee moral high ground.
Time Doesn’t Heal, It Shields
The Comfort of Whitewashed History
Over time, the raw edges of any event can become blurred or even erased. The rallying cry “Time heals all wounds” is comforting, but it’s also misleading. Time doesn’t inherently mend injustices; it often just rebrands them or layers a new veneer over an old scar. In fact, the deeper tragedy is how easily time can become an accomplice to injustice, distorting real struggles into sanitized myths.
Consider the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. Today, almost every political persuasion claims some piece of Dr. King’s dream. He’s quoted in contexts that would have baffled him during his life. Yet in the 1960s, King was under constant surveillance, labeled a threat by government agencies, and despised by a wide swath of the population. The holiday celebrating him, the quotes posted on social media, the monuments—these came long after his voice was most needed and most vilified. Time can turn a radical hero into an easy soundbite, softening the memory of their radical demands and diluting their revolutionary spirit.
Similarly, Gandhi is revered worldwide as a saintly figure of nonviolence. Yet many scholars and critics point out his contradictions, including controversial attitudes toward caste and race. Over time, it became expedient to promote Gandhi solely as a peaceful icon for global audiences, overshadowing the complexity of who he was. The truth is always more complex than the historical statue.
Nelson Mandela was once labeled a terrorist by certain governments. He spent 27 years in prison. Then, upon his release and the official end of apartheid, he was suddenly a Nobel Peace Prize winner. But has South Africa truly dismantled the economic foundations of apartheid? A visit to many South African townships suggests otherwise. Time has softened Mandela’s image into a global symbol while leaving the hard work of dismantling systemic inequality partly undone.
The same softening happens with movements: Take the Suffragettes. We’ve come to remember them as noble women in Edwardian dresses handing out leaflets, but many were far more radical, staging hunger strikes, smashing windows, and even planting bombs. Their movement was criminalized, its members assaulted and force-fed in prison. Over the years, their story has been made palatable enough to fit into a nice historical arc—votes for women, check!—conveniently overlooking the disruption and sacrifice that real progress demanded.
The Comfort of Believing “We’ve Come So Far”
Complacency as a Drug
Every so often, we hear a statement like: “Well, at least it’s not the Middle Ages.” Such a refrain invites us to pat ourselves on the back for living in a supposedly more enlightened era. It’s a way of excusing or ignoring the injustices that remain, as though we should be grateful for scraps because they’re slightly better than what our ancestors had.
Another variant of this complacency is: “We’ve already made progress, so let’s not push our luck.” As if justice or equality is a finite resource that might be depleted if we’re too demanding. This complacent mindset acts like a mild but pervasive drug, lulling us into acceptance of the status quo.
Examples of Persistent Oppression
Consider post-Holocaust anti-Semitism. One might assume that after the Holocaust, the world collectively learned better. Yet anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence continue in Europe and the United States, sometimes masked in the language of “globalist conspiracies” or other dog whistles. The very fact that we can watch hate speech resurface in mainstream discourse suggests that the clock alone didn’t “fix” this prejudice.
Then there’s Islamophobia in the decades following 9/11. Entire communities were profiled, surveilled, bombed, and targeted under the guise of freedom or security. Guantánamo Bay still stands as a testament to how easy it is to justify discrimination and brutality when fear is stoked. If time were a moral cure, why do these biases persist and, in many places, intensify?
Meanwhile, the struggles for global LGBTQ+ rights further dismantle the notion that “we’ve come so far.” Even as many Western countries display rainbow flags during Pride Month, countries like Uganda have recently introduced draconian laws threatening imprisonment or even death penalties for homosexuality. Russia continues its crackdown on queer people, targeting individuals and organizations under the guise of “traditional values.” If the moral arc bends naturally, it’s taking its sweet time in these places. The fact that some regions can champion Pride parades while ignoring human rights abuses against LGBTQ+ people elsewhere reveals the gap between symbolic gestures and real progress.
The Future as an Excuse
Hope as a Delaying Tactic
Hope is essential for change—but it can also become a convenient future promise that absolves us from responsibility today. We romanticize the next generation, assume that our children or grandchildren will solve the problems we couldn’t. Politicians love to talk about a better tomorrow, often deferring actual action to far-off deadlines and intangible targets.
Examples of Progress Outsourced
There’s no clearer example than climate change. Despite dire warnings from scientists for decades, the world’s major powers continue to expand fossil fuel projects, while promising net-zero emissions by 2040, 2050, or some equally distant date. The looming environmental crisis is always someone else’s problem to solve—our job, it seems, is merely to set the target and hope it magically works out.
Then there’s the contentious issue of racial reparations. Nations built on slavery, colonial exploitation, or stolen land perpetually debate how and whether to compensate the communities whose wealth, labor, and freedoms were stolen. It’s often deemed “too soon” or “too complicated,” kicked into the long grass of committees and reports that rarely yield concrete change. We console ourselves that it’s good we’re talking about it—never mind that talk without policy is often just noise.
In colonial reckoning across Europe, a similar deferral reigns. Nations like the UK, France, and Belgium wrestle with their imperial legacies, but the conversation often begins and ends with vague expressions of regret. Meanwhile, priceless cultural artifacts remain locked away in European museums, and the demands of colonized or indigenous communities for restitution or even a fair accounting of history go unmet. The moral of the story: If it’s always the future’s job to fix the past, we never have to face the pain of actually doing it ourselves.
Progress Isn’t a Timeline—It’s a Fight
Justice Isn’t a Product of Time—It’s a Product of Pressure
Whenever rights have been won—be it the abolition of child labor, recognition of civil rights, or the legalization of same-sex marriage—these victories came about because people demanded them, risking their safety, livelihoods, and even lives. The notion that moral improvement simply accumulates with the passing of years is a dangerously pacifying myth. Rights can be rescinded. Freedoms can vanish. Any complacency invites a slow decay of what was previously achieved.
Look at Iran in the 1970s. Once seen as relatively secular and progressive, the nation underwent a revolution that ultimately installed a repressive theocracy. So-called modern progress was undone within years.
Then there’s Afghanistan in the wake of the 2001 U.S. invasion. For nearly two decades, there were incremental improvements in women’s rights—education, employment, greater public participation—though imperfect and uneven. When foreign troops withdrew and the Taliban returned to power, much of that progress evaporated almost overnight. Time didn’t defend those women’s rights from backsliding; power did, and when that power shifted, rights vanished.
Even in the United States, considered by some a bastion of progress, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, reversing nearly 50 years of legal precedent that protected abortion rights at the federal level. If you believed time guaranteed forward motion, that decision was a stark reminder of just how fragile progress can be.
A New Kind of Time
We like to think that each new year arrives with an upgrade in our collective moral software—as though 2025, 2030, or 2050 is inherently “better.” But the calendar doesn’t care who suffers. The ticking clock won’t fight your battles. As the world keeps spinning, injustice doesn’t age away like a bruise.
The future doesn’t arrive better; it arrives built. It’s constructed in every protest, every election, every classroom conversation, every local organizing effort. If we uncritically assume we’re trending upward, we become accomplices to stagnation—or worse, regression. The next time you catch yourself saying, “How can this still be happening in [insert year]?” pause to remember: the year itself has never been a moral compass. The only thing that truly steers us is how much we’re willing to show up, speak out, and take action.
Reject the myth of passive progress. Recognize that justice is never an inevitability; it’s an ongoing, collective effort. Instead of outsourcing hope to the unborn, channel it into present-tense courage. Instead of using the past as a static marker for how far we’ve come, treat each victory as fragile and worth defending. Instead of waiting for time to heal wounds, fight to ensure they don’t fester behind society’s complacent smile.
True moral progress is neither guaranteed nor linear. It’s a continual, deliberate act of bending the arc. If we want that arc to bend toward justice, it’ll be because we reach out our hands and apply force, right here, right now. The year on the calendar won’t bend it for us. Only we can—together.
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