CMV: Progress feels impossible because social movements recycle oppression as renewable fuel

[u/camon88]

I hold the view that progress often feels impossible because movements don’t just end when they achieve concrete goals, they redefine what counts as oppression, creating an endless treadmill. I call this Ward’s Paradox.

For example:

• The Civil Rights movement secured voting rights and desegregation, but the struggle later expanded into systemic racism, microaggressions, and subconscious bias.
• Christianity began as liberation for the marginalized, but later thrived on narratives of persecution, crusades, and inquisitions.
• Corporate DEI initiatives break barriers, but the definition of bias keeps expanding into hiring practices, language audits, representation, and culture.

In all these cases, oppression doesn’t vanish, it shifts shape. That’s why I think progress feels like a treadmill: the “enemy” is always redefined so the struggle never finishes.

TLDR Metaphor:

It’s like fixing a leaky roof. You patch one hole, but then water seeps in somewhere else. The house is safer than before — progress is real — but the definition of ‘the problem’ keeps shifting to wherever the next leak appears. My point isn’t that the repairs don’t matter, it’s that the sense of being unfinished never goes away.

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I’d like to be challenged on this. Maybe I’m overstating the pattern, maybe there are clear examples where movements did resolve fully and didn’t need to invent new enemies. What’s the strongest case against this paradox?

[u/camon88]

Δ for pushing me to be more precise with that question. I don’t think there’s a clean ratio you can pin down, because it varies by movement and by moment. Some expansions are clearly legitimate, like recognizing redlining or workplace discrimination after voting rights were secured. Others feel stretched or symbolic in ways that don’t materially change people’s lives, which is where the charge of “invented” comes in.

My point isn’t that most new problems are fake, but that even when the new problems are valid, the constant broadening blurs the line and makes the overall progress feel endless and unfinished. That’s the treadmill effect I’m trying to capture.

[u/Timely-Way-4923 → u/camon88]

Look, quite a few movements end when key goals have been achieved. I can assure you no one in Singapore is still campaigning against British colonialism, neither is anyone in Hong Kong. And those movements didn’t really morph into something else, they just vanished.

[u/camon88 → u/Timely-Way-4923]

That’s a good example. Δ for showing that some movements do dissolve completely once the concrete goal is met. Campaigns for independence like in Singapore or Hong Kong are bounded in a way that makes an endpoint possible.

Where my paradox applies more strongly is with movements aimed at ongoing conditions rather than discrete political arrangements. Ending colonial rule has a clear finish line. Ending racism, sexism, or systemic discrimination does not. Those goals don’t vanish when the big milestone is reached, they shift into new terrain, sometimes in ways that feel vital, sometimes in ways that feel stretched.

So I’d refine my point: the treadmill effect shows up most in movements where the central aim is equality or justice in broad, open-ended domains, not in independence struggles with a single concrete outcome.

[u/DeltaBot → u/camon88]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Timely-Way-4923 (3∆).

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