That's not the best level of analysis.
Everybody is pessimistic and optimistic at the same time in different perspectives that can be dialectically changed in regard to what you define as "progress".
Progress in terms of what agenda?
You have a lot of them, and many are conflicting ones with varying degrees of potential conciliation (dialogue is possible) and some fundamentally irreconciliable (dialogue broken in a culture war, cold civil war, cultic war, hyperwar [1]).
Progress in terms of what agenda?
You have a lot of them, and many are conflicting ones with varying degrees of potential conciliation (dialogue is possible) and some fundamentally irreconciliable (dialogue broken in a culture war, cold civil war, cultic war, hyperwar [1]).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofYWf2SKd_c