Watch these videos from Jeremy Rifkin who speaks sense, and this sense is common, it feels right!
Also read :
Fluid Society – egalitarian pluralism
The evolution of co-operation and forgiveness
lightning over Melbourne from David Campbell on Vimeo.

In the origins of progress; I diagree with the idea that progress is new. Budhists and Taoist and Christians believed in progress but in a different sense, and the Greek philosophers definetely did. And they could see a Utopia here on Earth. Economic progress is a very new idea, that we can progress by just using, owning, consuming resources.