One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes, relating the idea that change does not necessarily equal progress:
How can an unchanging system [i.e. Christianity] survive the continual increase of knowledge? Now, in certain cases we know very well how it can. A mature scholar reading a great passage in Plato, and taking in at one glance the metaphysics, the literary beauty, and the place of both in the history of Europe, is in a very different position from a boy learning the Greek alphabet. Yet through that unchanging system of the alphabet all this vast mental and emotional activity is operating. It has not been broken by the new knowledge. It is not outworn. If it changed, all would be chaos. A great Christian statesman, considering the morality of a measure which will affect millions of lives, and which involves economic, geographical and political considerations of the utmost complexity, is in a different position from a boy first learning that one must not cheat or tell lies, or hurt innocent people. But only in so far as that first knowledge of the great moral platitudes survives unimpaired in the statesman will his deliberation be moral at all. If that goes, there there has been no progress, but only mere change. For change is not progress unless the core remains unchanged. A small oak grows into a big oak: if it became a beech, that would not be growth, but mere change… (from Dogma and the Universe in God in the Dock, Part 1; emphasis mine).
So, what do you think about this quote? If we don’t change, we don’t progress. But, at the core, down deep where the basic goodness is, the foundation is sturdy, we must remain steadfast, because it is upon this that we build, and in change, we progress. Am I on the right track?
I think the way you put it is fine. The main idea is the fact that something changes does not mean that it is actually progressing. Someone might divorce his wife, and that is certainly a change, but morally he is not necessarily making progress. That’s the only point. Progress implies building upon a foundation, not just changing something.