Our sages of blessed memory have said that we must not enjoy any pleasure in this world without reciting a blessing.
It was not uncommon for the children to be told they were being treated this way because it was their bad karma and they must have hurt a child in a past life.
As a consequence, progress has come to mean simply more power, more profit, more productivity, more paper prosperity, all of which are convertible into standards concerned only with size or magnitude rather than quality or excellence.